Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/09/17/review_elgato_eyetv_250_plus/
Review When we reviewed Elgato's EyeTV Hybrid (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/09/25/review_elgato_eyetv_hybrid/) almost a year ago, we found it a darn fine analogue and digital TV tuner. With its analogue input port, it's a pretty good way to digitise your old VHS tapes and feeds from set-top boxes. The company has now released the EyeTV 250 Plus, which replicates the Hybrid's feature set. Did it need to bother?
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus: MPEG 2 encoding built in
We'll answer that question at the end of this review. Before then, let's see if there are any differences between the two products. Form-factor first: the Hybrid's a USB stick, while the 250 Plus is an external unit with an shiny white plastic and aluminium-look metal casing that's at home next to any modern Mac. Unlike the Hybrid, the 250 Plus isn't bus powered but needs its own AC adaptor.
The unit's front is home to an infrared receiver for the bundled remote control. It also has a port for the multi-format video input cable, which terminates in a pair of RCA stereo jacks, a yellow composite-video connector and an s-video plug. Turn the 250 Plus through 180° and you'll see a co-axial antenna socket and the unit's power feed.
The 250 Plus has its own power supply because - and here's the key difference between it and the Hybrid - it has on-board MPEG encoding hardware. Connect the Hybrid to your Mac and whenever you use the accompanying EyeTV software to record either an analogue TV broadcast or what's coming in on the analogue video port, it's your Mac that has to handle the encoding work, in real time.
Not so the 250 Plus. Converting the analogue signal into digital data is the job of the add-on, not the host. The upshot: your Mac doesn't have to work so hard, so its processing resources are freed for other tasks. And if you have a lesser CPU that might not be up to the challenge of encoding video at a given resolution, with the 250 Plus taking the strain, it might now be.
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus: the details
Fancy turning that old, unused last-but-two generations Mac to use? Want to use it as a DVR? The EyeTV 250 Plus might just be able to help.
We tried it out first on a 1.83GHz Core Duo-based MacBook Pro and recorded a standard-definition composite-video feed from a VCR. Firing up Mac OS X's own Activity Monitor as well as EyeTV, we found that with the Hybrid, watching the feed consumed 18-20 per cent of the CPU's resources. Press the Record button saw that figure leap to 95-100 per cent before settling down to around 65 per cent.
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus: digital TV straight to disk
We saw no such leap with the 250 Plus, with recording this time consuming 35-40 per cent of the CPU's time.
It's clear from the numbers that the MacBook Pro has plenty of processing horsepower to manage the encoding - provided it's not being expected to do other CPU-intensive tasks at the same time. But simultaneous web surfing, email checking and such like shouldn't pose any problems. If you own a faster, Core 2 Duo-based Mac the extra headroom your processor has for non-video tasks will be greater still.
To be fair to Elgato, it admits as much. Its website reckons any Intel-based Mac or a Power Mac G5 should be plenty powerful enough to handle real-time video encoding on its own, with greater or lesser room for other, simultaneously run tasks too.
We wanted to try the 250 Plus on an older machine, to gauge what kind of difference it makes, but alas our at-hand 12.1in PowerBook G4 is only equipped with USB 1.1 ports, and the Elgato product requires a USB 2.0 connection.
Fair enough, but that limits even further the number of machines that might find the 250 Plus' hardware acceleration helpful. Perhaps a dozen models released between late 2003 and late 2005.
Elgato's EyeTV 2 software is, for now, the Mac-based DVR application to beat - and one that's rather better looking than a fair few Windows-only apps out there too. We looked at EyeTV 2 in detail when we reviewed the EyeTV Hybrid tuner, and we'd suggest you take a look at that review - here (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/09/25/review_elgato_eyetv_hybrid/) - if you want to know more.
For now, though, it's enough to say that EyeTV provides the full range of DVR features, from tuning through to setting up favourite channels lists, scheduling recordings based on electronic programme gudie - it comes with a year's subscription to a number of online EPGs - and the ability to pause live tv.
It also comes with handy export pre-sets for Apple's iPod and AppleTV devices, automatically adding video files to your iTunes library.
The version of EyeTV that comes with the 250 Plus is accomanied by a copy of Toast Basic, a cut-down version of the popular Mac DVD and CD burning tool, so it's ready for archiving content to disc.
The 250 Plus has another feature absent from the Hybrid: a gaming mode. Essentially, it switches off the unit's MPEG encoding hardware and the EyeTV software's disk cacheing routines in order to ensure what you see on the screen is as close to the feed as possible - usually there's a short 1-1.5s lag. It's called Game Mode because it's intended for folk who want to connect a games console to a Mac via the tuner.
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus: Mac-friendly looks
Seems a crazy notion to us, but if you're someone who uses your computer as your TV, it allows you to hook up a console to it too and playing knowing your gaming moves, made in response to what you're seeing on the screen, isn't a second or so out of sync with the game state inside the console.
We didn't have a console to hand try it, but we could see with a feed from a set-top box that there was less of a lag between what was appearing on our Mac's screen and our TV.
So is the 250 Plus better than the Hybrid? If you already have a Hybrid and you're happy with it, there's no need at all to upgrade. If you have a modern Mac and you occasionally want to digitise analogue content, the Hybrid is €70/£49 pounds cheaper but will give you exactly the same TV and DVR functionality. And it doesn't require its own power socket.
The 250 Plus' video cables fit onto the unit better than the Hybrid's equivalents do, but since we've never had a problem with the Hybrid, does that matter? Again, to occasional users probably not, but if you're going to be using one of these products day in, day out, it's worth considering the pricier product because it's probably more robust.
Ditto, if you have an older Mac, but as we've seen, make sure it has a USB 2.0 port.
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus: boxed up with Toast 8 Basic
The 250 Plus comes with the obligatory micro-aerial, and as we've said before, don't expect a fantastic Freeview signal from one of these. If you don't have a feed from the roof- or loft-mounted aerial, use a good set-top antenna with a signal booster.
Finally, a word on hardware encoding. The EyeTV 250 Plus will digitise an analogue signal, but it won't help out when it comes to converting digital formats, say taking an MPEG 2 file and coding it for use on an iPod, PSP or AppleTV. For that task, you'll still need a gadget like Elgato's Turbo.264 - reviewed here (http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/05/24/review_elgato_turbo264/).
Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus is a solid but niche product. Owners of Intel-based Macs will find the cheaper EyeTV Hybrid USB stick more handy, particularly if they only have occasional analogue recordings to make - both products are identical for viewing digital TV. However, if you own a pre-Intel Mac and you want to use it for watching analogue TV, the 250 Plus is a good place to start.
 | Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus |
| Summary | If your Mac doesn't meet the requirements of the cheaper EyeTV Hybrid tuner, the 250 Plus is the DVR device for you... |
|---|---|
| Rating | 75% |
| Price | €199.95/$199.95 (£137) |
| More info | Elgato's EyeTV 250 Plus page (http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=products_eyetv250) |
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