The first step was to install the PCI card. This only takes a few minutes. After that is complete, you need to start up your Mac, and install the software. I highly suggest you get the latest software from the manufacturer's web site, as they release new versions quite often. A restart later, and you can start to use the AlchemyTV DVR card.

The obvious use for this card is to watch TV on your Mac, without having an external box. Everything is contained in your computer, except the remote control (and receiver). Because the PCI bus has good bandwidth, this should allow for the best TV viewing quality of any TV-on-Mac product. However, this promise is not fulfilled.

Click to see full sized screen shot

Quite simply, the quality of television coming from this card is horrendous. The screen shot to the right is a sample of one of the good looking scenes. Every single channel looks as fuzzy as the days of rabbit ears antennas, even though the signal here is high quality cable. Removing splitters in the line did not increase the quality of the reception. According the Miglia, this could be due to the use of a cable modem for internet access. Well I have news for them: most people who are going to buy this product are going to also have cable internet. Therefore this excuse is simply unsatisfactory.

While the signal does not look good, the recording feature works alright. You can press the record button (using the on-screen control) to start recording the current TV station, or set up scheduled recording times. To schedule a recording, you can use the built in interface, iCal, or TitanTV. I found it quite simple to set up a scheduled recording. The major downsides with this feature are the inability to watch the TV show while it is being recorded, the program cannot wake up the Mac from sleep to record, and you must have the AlchemyTV DVR application running.

While recording, you can use any of the available Quicktime codecs, even ones you may have downloaded yourself. I found it best to use the MPEG 4 codec at about 75% quality. This provided a good image at about 4 GB/hour. Other formats will take more or less hard drive space, just pick what you need.

Click to see annoying vertical lines

Another big draw to this particular card is the remote. However, for me, this was also a big drawback. First, the IR receiver has a very short cord, making it hard to position (although it does pick up through a wide array of angles). The real reasons I do not like the remote are the battery (it requires a button/hearing aid battery, which isn't as nice as a AAA solution), and the small number of buttons. Besides the numbers, volume, and channel controls, there are 10 other buttons such as power, recall, and full screen. It may be because I am a male, but I like a remote with more buttons for recording, sleeping, and many of the other standard TV/VCR/DVD functions. Moreover, the buttons are small, and were difficult for me to push without hitting another.

The software side of things isn't any better. The main software is not very Mac like, with the TV window not having a title bar, strange keyboard shortcuts, and dialogs with uncommon wording. However, the main software application was not near as bad as the remote control software. The remote control software allows you to control other applications other than AlchemyTV. Thus, you could control iTunes, DVD player, or anything else. But, like the rest of this product, the software was a disappointment, as can be seen in the "Problems" section of this review.

Finally, a major misconception I had about this card was that it would have the ability to pause and rewind live TV (similar to TiVo). What led me to believe this is the DVR acronym in the name. This card/software has no such feature, something that comes standard on PC cards in this price point.

The remote control software that comes with this card is nearly useless. When trying to change actions, it would regularly freeze up System Preferences, or just stop working. It made trying to add new applications to the control list unbearable, and changing of old actions a big waste of time.

Unfortunately, this card was not all it was supposed to be. It is receiving the lowest rating I have given any product to date. Three points were taken off for the extremely poor quality of TV viewing, one more for a sub-par remote, another point removed for software that did not live up to Mac standards, and one last point for not having the expected DVR/PVR capabilities. I really wanted to like this card, but the negatives outweighed the positives for me, and I ended up sending it back for a refund.

Pros	Cons
Watch and Record TV on your Mac Can use the remote with other applications Saves video using any Quicktime codec iCal and TitanTV integration	VERY poor quality TV reception The remote has less buttons than standard remotes The remote uses a button/hearing aid battery Software for controlling the remote barely works The software for watching TV is not Mac-like Cannot watch TV while recording a scheduled program The card cannot wake the Mac from sleep to record No DVR/PVR features (rewind, pause live TV) A lot of hard drive space needed for recording TV shows
4/10 stars