07-15-2009, 11:19 AM

i just rec'd my 24" iMac. wow, the screen is huge!! lol.

now instead of getting an inexpensive flatscreen TV with dvd all-in-one, i'm thinking of the possibility of using the iMac for occasional TV watching.

i have one of those cable pkgs - tv, internet, etc. with the main cable box (?) sitting under timecapsule. while working, i'd like to sometimes just have a small screen on imac to keep track of a story i'm following on tv, etc.; not really interested in using as a full fledged tv.

how easy and inexpensive would this be? anyone know if possible and how to do this? (i'm good at following step by step directions.)

07-15-2009, 11:57 AM

I think what you might want is the Elgato EyeTV. It plugs into a USB port, and then you run the coaxial cable from your cable box into it, allowing you to watch TV on your mac.

07-15-2009, 12:02 PM

If you want HD you may need to look for a different converter for the eyetv product.

Elgato has some hardware, but it's primarily for over the air based signals - but their eyetv software supports a lot of other video converters - see:

EyeTV 3 | Technical Information

07-15-2009, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by Nethfel

If you want HD you may need to look for a different converter for the eyetv product.

Elgato has some hardware, but it's primarily for over the air based signals - but their eyetv software supports a lot of other video converters - see:

EyeTV 3 | Technical Information

The Elgato hardware has a coaxial cable input. That can be used to get input from an over the air antenna, but I don't see why you wouldn't be able to just as easily connect it to your cable box and get HD or whatever it is that you have... I could be wrong though, as I have never actually used the product.

07-15-2009, 02:08 PM

The latest ElGato TV hardware fully supports cable TV and will even display your cable TV guide on screen. The only cable system that ElGato does not fully support is the Verizon FIOS TV cable system. The fact that Verizon uses Fiber Optic transmission presents some problems. ElGato is working on that.

Regards.

07-15-2009, 02:13 PM

What about cable that's encrypted that would require decoding by a cable box? That would present a problem for the elgato hardware AFAIK where you would need something to take the video output from the cable box into the computer (also for viewing of pay channels like HBO or ShowTime, etc.). Granted, if you're on a clear feed with no encryption it should work.