iMac with Elgato Eye TV.. help.

Hey guys. I have a 24" iMac i bought to use as both a tv and computer monitor. I bought an Elgato Eyetv 250 (tv tuner). The quality is HORRIBLE. I don't understand why, or how to fix it. If anyone can help me get better quality i'd really appreciate. I thought this monitor was supposed to be awesome..

i've played with some settings.. but nothing really seems to make a difference. i have a cheap standard definition sanyo television that looks beautiful compared to the monitor. really makes me mad. if anyone has an elgato eyetv or knows how to help i'd appreciate it.

The 250 (analog only) or the 250 Pro (analog and digital tuner)?

From what source (antenna, TV out, satellite reciever, etc) are you using and what cable are you using to connect to the EyeTV device?

250 analog and i have a coax running from the wall to the eyetv box, then a usb from the box to the comp

i spent a lot of money on the computer and on the tv tuner hoping i'd get great picture quality (as promised by the guy who told me to buy the stuff over the phone through apple). i just really want to know how to get the best picture quality i can get.

If you're complaining about displaying the tv to the full resolution of your iMac, then you can't be surprised. You are converting a low resoluiton source to something it was not intended for. You'll notice pixelization.

Look at the image in "Normal Size" and judge the image by that. It should look decent, but not digital tv quality. You can't expect miracles.

Perhaps you can attached an image of the "Normal Size" window.

I have to ask a silly question. Did you perform an exhaustive auto-tune when you hooked it up to the cable?

I've used my EyeTV Hybrid with analog cable and thought it looked fine. Currently I watch over the air HD and the 480i signal does look better than cable. At least a bit. Over the air analog goes from non existing to acceptable, but nothing near the cable signal I had.

Hey. You could always have a defective EyeTV.

Once you become accustomed to watching HD, analog signals will be at best, OK on an HD TV screen.

The resolution you are getting sent to the EyeTV is at best 720 x 480, compared to the monitor on your 24" iMac of 1920 x 1200. You will never stretch that incoming signal to anything acceptable in full screen on your iMac. However, anything you record should look fine when displayed on up to a 720p TV. Your recordings can and some stations will look as good as DVD (also 480) quality when displayed on a HD TV. Some lower tier stations broadcast junk video streams and they will typically never be acceptable except on a CRT, non-HD TV set.

Personally, would run, not walk, back to the store today and return the 250.... even if you haven't changed your TV's to HD yet and even if all the incoming signals you have available are in SD...

imho...Any salesman still pushing analog only tuners is doing a disservice to their customers, especially those who have already moved to HD, as the over-the-air analog signals are now scheduled to disappear at the beginning of '09. These tuners will basically become obsolete in about a year. Cannot recommend any tuner that does not have a digital tuner.

Don't be too mad at the salesman though. A lot of people still use and like that 250 non-Pro model. It was among the best out there for a Mac if you were wanting to capture analog signals. And it is totally acceptable on smaller monitors with resolutions of 800 x 600 and is OK even on screens up to about 1280 x 1024. Any higher resolution than that and it will be pretty bad.

Just keep in mind that your SD Sanyo is best case equivalent to 480 pixels. Your iMac has 1200. As xstep said, watching the incoming stream in a 480 window should give you every bit as good a picture as your TV. But, when trying to stretch it to full screen at 1200, as you've found out, not so good.

As far as ElGato devices with digital tuners, there are 3 options - the 250 Pro, the Hybrid and the HD Homerun. The 250 Pro and the Hybrid have both analog and digital tuners.

The connection you have at the wall - is it connected to an antenna or to a cable system?

If it is connected to an external antenna, you should be able to pick up your local TV stations digital broadcasts.

I will say there is a misconception that digital signals = HD.
Not so. The digital signals can run the gamut... 480, 720 and 1080. Even the digital signals at 480, will not be very good when stretched to 1200 on your 24" iMac.

So how good is the end product for digital transfer from VHS? That's my whole purpose for getting one. I have a similar setup to the original poster. I don't expect full screen glory, just decent resolution.
Also, I got the iMac with the 2.4Ghz chip and just upped the RAM to 2 GB. I know that Elgato sells a encoder/chip specifically for transforming video, supposedly to take the load off of the main processor. If I choose the EyeTV Hybrid, how much of a hit in performance can I expect? Should I not do much with the computer while the VHS is transferring?

You should be able to get your VHS tapes transferred to DVD looking pretty much as good as the original tape.

As far as encoding goes, the combination of the C2D 2.33 Ghz and the 5400 rpm drive in my MBP is much slower than my Win machine which has a P4 3.4 Ghz (even at stock speed). There is not nearly the issue with multi-tasking with the C2D as there is with the P4.

On my P4, I basically cannot do anything else on the machine while encoding if I want to be sure I have the best possible end product.

Since getting this MBP, I basically have fallen in love with the notebook and OS X. My Win machine sitting on the other side of the house, even attached to it's dual monitors with a 26" screen, has been relegated pretty much to this task of encoding. Due to this, I have really only experimented with the Hybrid and MBP in order to answer others questions about it. With the experimenting I did; while browsing the web, watching a streamed video, taking snapshots of the desktop, playing Jewel Quest, and running Neo Office simultaneously with encoding, I found no issue with the quality of the resulting video. I have not experimented with and would not suggest doing other CPU/video intensive tasks, nor heavy read/write tasks simultaneously, for instance playing WoW, CoD2, photoshop, or doing a back up.

ok thanks for all the input. my next question - what setup can i use to get optimal picture quality? i have comcast digital cable. the live cable feed runs out of the wall and into a comcast cable box. a coax then runs out of the box and into my SD tv. picture quality is fine. when i take the coax that runs out of the box and run it to the elgato i get no signal. when i run the coax out of the wall directly into the elgato box, i get a signal but poor quality. would the best thing to do be buy a digital HD tuner for my mac, an HD box from comcast, and then run the coax feed into the box, and a coax out of the box into the HD tuner, and then connect the tuner to my mac via a USB??

anyone have a suggestion for the best possible set up?

I have an Elgato EyeTV and the resolution looks horrible while on the macbook...but when I burn it to dvd and play it on a 27" tv..it looks fine....so try burning a copy and then let us know what it looks like.

The EyeTVs are cool..but buggy at times.

For best set up I would just go into Preferences and you can optimize it through there I think.

I just hooked up the EyeTV Hybrid to my 24" iMac. I didn't want to mess with my cable hookup, so I just bought a powered indoor HDTV antenna, since I was just interested in picking up my free local OTA HD channels. It looks amazing and I can record right to my harddrive.

hybrid and cable

hi:
i have a elgato hybrid and an intel imac 24"connected through a coaxial cable. the reception is poor at best with a lot of snow. i haven't been able to get hold of the elgato people, no answer to my emails. i bought the product at the apple store. i think it is a waste of money, well, unless i am doing something wrong.
g

Well, how is your cable reception to begin with? If it has snow already it's not the product's fault. In my dorm it's about crystal clear and it's a bit fuzzy on my mac but i think it's just because its a low-resolution analog signal, and since computer screens show more detail it appears worse even though it's really the same picture as a normal tv gets. I also use an indoor HD antenna to pick up local HD digital stations and those are a crystal clear perfect HD picture.

wait so now you're tellin me that even the hybrid yields a ****** picture??

what are everyone elses opinions?
are there other brands that consistantly work better than elegato?