There are three main steps. First connect the EyeTV to your TV signal and plug it into a USB port on your Mac. Next, install the EyeTV software from the included disc (and make sure to download/install updates). Finally you will need to perform an auto-tuning of channels. If you have digital cable TV service, I would recommend doing the full frequency search available in the advanced options, as it can pull in more ClearQAM stations that the normal channel tuning.

While this is technically a review of the EyeTV Hybrid tuner, the hardware only plays a small part (beyond actually receiving the tv signal, of course). Along with the tuner, you also get a remote control and a break out cable for Composite, S-video, and audio connections. Unlike some of Elgato's international tuners, no antenna is included in the package. The break out cable is used for connecting set-top boxes (cable or satellite), game consoles, or VCRs to the Hybrid. The remote control includes most functions of the EyeTV software, but has a fatal flaw for my setup; you must be able to actually see the Hybrid unit to use the remote. Since my Hybrid is behind the entertainment center, this makes the remote useless for me.

The rest of the review will focus on the EveTV software. As of this writing, version 3.3 was just released, so the review is based upon what is in that version. An alternative to the EveTV software is a third party software product called The Tube from Equinux. I have not used that software, so I cannot provide any information on it other than it's available if you find that EveTV 3 doesn't fit your needs. Also, I would like to note the setup I have been using the EyeTV Hybrid on: MacMini (early-2009) 2.26GHz with 4GB RAM and large 7200 RPM hard drive running Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). The mini is connected to a 46 inch Samsung LCD HDTV via Mini-display to HDMI adapter (running at full 1080p).

The first thing to do once the EyeTV Hybrid is setup is to start watching TV on your Mac! Unfortunately, the coolness factor quickly wore off while watching analog cable stations on such a large TV. Somehow, the quality of upscaling the image via EyeTV 3 just isn't up to the challenge of a 46 inch HDTV. Watching DVDs and other videos via this setup is wonderful, which makes me wonder what's up with the EyeTV algorithms. A suggested fix from Elgato is to turn off time-shift for live viewing, but that removes one of the best parts of a DVR, so I refuse to do it. Note that recorded shows do look somewhat better than live TV, but still not fantastic. On the other hand, HD shows (both live and recorded) look very good with this setup. The main downside with HD viewing is trying to watch sports or other high action TV. Motion blur is very apparent with anything moving faster than typical sitcom speeds.

In the set up section, I mentioned running the auto-tuning to allow EyeTV to create a list of available channels. The Hybrid is surprisingly good at picking up not only the basic stations, but also picks up a number of ClearQAM channels including all of the local HD stations. Once the auto-tuning is complete, you will want to use TV Guide to get all of the programming information. The Hybrid comes with a 1 year subscription, and TV Guide will cost $19.95 per year after that. While not overly expensive, you are prevented from using free services due to licensing agreements. Moreover, I had to set all of the ClearQAM channels to the appropriate TVGuide channel manually (a VERY time consuming process). In version 3.3 of the software, this is supposed to be more automatic, but I have not verified this claim.

After setting up the channels and doing some basic watching, you will probably be eager to start recording shows. This is something that EyeTV excels at. You can setup a single show to record, and entire series to record (which defaults to recording all shows with a title you don't already have recorded), or a smart guide that gives you the ultimate in flexibility. For instance, you can setup a smart guide to record only shows with something in the title, on a specific channel, at a specific time, and even only new episodes (no re-runs). The main downside is getting duplicates of shows. While EyeTV is smart at not recording something that already exists on your hard drive, if you have deleted an episode EyeTV will record it again in the future, because it doesn't keep track of which episodes you have already automatically recorded.

Once your shows have been recorded, you will notice that unlike many DVR suites, commercials will still be in tact. Elgato has provided no standard functionality for automatically marking or removing commercials. Luckily, EyeTV is AppleScript enabled, and the open source community has come to our rescue. Comskip is a set of libraries that will scan recorded TV shows for commercial breaks, and automatically mark those places in the recording. There is also a background application for OS X that can automatically skip past these recordings while playing them via EyeTV. I have found that the markings work fairly well, but the auto-skipping has problems, so I have disabled the background application. While disabled, I can still skip commercials simply by pressing the right arrow on my keyboard or remote.

Not only are recordings good for watching at your convenience, but EyeTV provides various functionality for exporting them as well. You can easily export the recordings to iPod, iPhone, and AppleTV compatible formats. If you are using comskip, you can even automatically delete the marked sections so that your exports are more compact before sending them to your devices. Another option is burning your recordings to DVDs. EyeTV integrates well with Roxio's Toast (a lite version is included on the EyeTV install disc) to archive your recordings. Finally, you can export to other file formats for further post processing or posting clips to the web.

The other main recording-based feature is sharing over your home network. With EyeTV installed on multiple Macs, they can all share their recordings, so you can watch them from anywhere you have a Mac. However, you cannot stream live TV to other copies of EyeTV. On the other hand, if you have an iPod touch or iPhone, you can watch your records or live TV anywhere there is a WiFi or 3G connection. To share your recordings, you will need to convert them to an iPhone compatible format (which can be done automatically). There is even an option to easily locate your EyeTV enabled Mac while on the road through a service provided by Elgato. I have not tried any of the sharing features, so I cannot comment on how well they work, but I have heard a lot of positive feedback.

To get the full DVR experience, you will want to run EyeTV in full screen mode. There is an option to start EyeTV in full screen by default, but setting this will pop EyeTV into full screen when a recording starts, which isn't always desired. Instead, I recommend setting up a hot key to enter full screen mode, and maybe some others for control while in full screen (Apple provides extensive keyboard shortcut customization through the System Preferences). The overall full screen interface is fairly nice, giving you control over almost everything you have in windowed mode. The main omission in full screen is the ability to do a text search on the program guide. I would rather not have to get out the mouse to do that.

A couple of additional features worth mentioning are parental controls and FM tuning. The parental controls allow you to choose a maximum content rating (such as TV-14) with a PIN override. You can also block specific content flags and even lock down the list of available channels. On the FM side, the Hybrid basically acts as a FM radio. While a potentially cool addition for those who still like to listen to conventional radio stations, I found it didn't work well in practice, due to not having a dedicated antenna. When hooked up to my cable TV service, the coaxial cabling in my house acts as the FM antenna, but doesn't do a very good job of it. I could only tune in a couple stations.

Most of my EveTV use has been relatively bug free. The biggest issue I have run into is some recordings come out completely black, even though I know the station was operational during that time. This has happened about a dozen times thus far (in 6 months of use), and causes a major inconvenience each time. I have posted this to the EyeTV forums, but thus far no solution has been provided.

The EyeTV Hybrid is a nice product. While the quality of the TV signal isn't as good as standard TV or digital set top box, it's good enough for most scenarios. I would recommend this to people with cable TV or over the air antennas. Satellite users should look elsewhere due to the lack of channel control for those systems.

Pros	Cons
Full DVR capabilities Picks up many ClearQAM stations TV guide has good set of channel listings Smart Guides offer great flexibility Many export formats and options Stream recorded TV over the network and Live TV to your iPhone Group channels into custom lists Extensible functionality via AppleScript Supports tuning FM radio stations	Quality isn't very good for analog cable channels HDTV has movement ghosting Software interface is relatively clunky Sometimes produces completely black recordings TV Guide support costs $19.95 per year Commercial marking is not built-in Remote can only be used if you can see the device
7.5/10 stars