Watching Video on the Mac

The Internet is a great resource for video. The following programs, all free, take a lot of work out of finding and viewing and offer some extras. Some use your browser and some are stand-alone applications. This is a new world that I'l still exploring..

• Tooble lets you quickly find and view any video from YouTube and download it to iTunes for playing on your video iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV.
• Miro let you subscribe to a wide selection of internet videos, download them, and watch them fullscreen. Unfortunately a few require a Windows computer.
• Hulu Desktop Several networks put current and past episodes on the Internet at Hulu.com. Hulu Desktop lets you navigate and view Hulu’s entire library. It’s still beta with updates coming every few days. It requires an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz. and At least 2.0 GB of RAM.
• MacTutorial Viewer is a desktop viewer for video tutorials of Apple's iLife and iWork '09 programs.
• GoogleMaps is a application for Mac OS X that allows users to interact with Google’s mapping service. It provides maps to create and export customized maps and save a default location view.

EyeTV

One of the coolest gadgets I bought for my Mac recently was EyeTV 250 Plus from Elgato. It's a little hardware device that displays TV on the Mac and can record programs to the hard drive.

Plug the TV antenna into the input and the output into a USB port on the Mac. I get over 60 channels over the air. Install the software and it's ready to go. The software includes a program guide that is updated on-line. The software is excellent and very Mac-friendly.

• EyeTV receives free over-the-air (OTA) HDTV and Clear QAM. The picture on your screen can any size, including full size of the monitor
• Incoming programs are automatically and temporally stored on the Mac's hard drive. I have instant reply or if I am interrupted by a phone call or visitor I can pause playback and resume later without missing any of the program and can skip over commercials. You can optionally store these permanently or schedule program recording. It will even boot your computer when the time comes, if necessary.
• The remote control lets you operate the system from across the room, in effect turning the Mac into a digital TV.
• The on-screen program guide shows all available channel with program information up to two weeks in advance. Disable any channels you don't watch (foreign language, shopping etc.)
  • The on-screen guide synchronizes with TV Guide on the Internet. EyeTV comes with a free one-year subscription. After that it's $20/year, optional.
  • Schedule recordings like a TiVO. Recordings can be edited to delete unwanted material and commercials.
• Burn stored programs to a DVD for up to two hours with HD quality. It comes with a copy of Toast® Basic, although I didn't use it as I had a full version of Toast 8.
• It comes with a composite video and S-Video break-out cable. Use it to connect a set top box (one with analog outputs) to watch cable and satellite TV on your Mac, capture videotapes to DVD, and capture analog video to iPod/iPhone/Apple TV formats.
• EyeTV 250 Plus has a built-in hardware encoder so analog video is rapidly converted to high quality digital video without using the Mac's processor.

In short EyeTV turns my Mac into a digital TV that I can control remotely, with a TiVO-like recording capability and don't have to subscribe to the monthly TiVO fee for the system to work. I can edit the programs and burn to a DVD.

I bought the EyeTV 250 Plus, their high-end model. It retails for $200, but there are deals around. I got mine on aMUG special. The "Plus" has a hardware encoder for rapidly converting analog video (e.g. VCR tapes) to digital.
If I didn't need this feature I could have done just as well with the cheaper EyeTV hybrid. It doesn't have the hardware encoder, but I haven't used that feature yet and I have read it's not essential if your Mac has an Intel processor.