Recording TV to my Mac- recommendations?

In My Humble Opinion
1

VCRs? TVs? Stereos? I’m over them. I want everything to come through the computer. iTunes is helping me greatly with one leg of this.

Now, how about video? I came across a banner ad (I’m sorry, I’m so sorry) for EyeTV. It seems to be, basically, a cable-ready receiver and recorder for the Mac. Looking over the blurbs, it seems to do everythig that I’m gonna want. Specifically:

-watch live TV/ through the computer
-record shows
-edit captured video
-burn DVD player-ready discs (not necessarily DVD’s, though, which is fine for me)
-uses an easy-to-deal-with format (MPEG), as opposed to proprietary/obscure.

Basically, I want to be able to record shows and archive them in a computer and DVD-player friendly medium, so I can watch them on the computer at home, and bring them other places and watch on the DVD player. (Can DVD players handle QuickTime?) And it’s gotta be OS X-friendly.

EyeTV seems to do this well, without any extra hardware (aside from the EyeTV itself, and a few wires). But it’s the first thinjg I’ve come across, and I’ve yet to wholly research this. Anyone know anything about the EyeTV, or a comparable system? Whoever gives me the winning recommendation gets an episode of Seinfeld of their choosing. :wink:

2

EyeTV.

3

Sorry ** Troy**, but I’m still converting all my old cassettes to MP3s. There’s some quality loss, but it’s not significant.

However when I want to go from DVD to VHS, I’m getting some strange overscanning that I can’t seem to get rid of…

4

If you want to import old analog video footage into your Mac, the best way would be to get a Digital Media Converter, like the Dazzle Bridge. I have an older Sony DMCA-2 that goes digital-to-analog and vice versa, and for a while I was using that to import analog footage into iMovie for editing and archiving. I don’t think Sony makes the converter nowadays, but I believe the Dazzle is about $300 or so.

Can’t help with the live TV, sorry. The appeal of watching television while using the computer eludes me.