Sunday, May 11, 2008

Freeview HD on a Mac

With Freeview launching their HD box a few weeks ago, and not having taken advantage of HD goodness I 've been wrestling with whether I can justify another box in the lounge alongside MySky, Xbox and a Media Centre.

I am planning to ditch the Media Centre for an Apple TV based on UI alone - it's just too complicated for anyone who doesn't know the set-up.

I've been talking to Philip about this who is *the* man to talk to about all things apple.

He has put me onto Eye TV which he has been testing for a while now.

Philip confirmed yesterday that Eye TV v3 can happily record Freeview HD locally with readily available EPG feeds.

I am planning to hooking that up to a simple antenna, recording shows on the mac and pitching them to Apple TV. More work for me but one less box in the house.

And if enough people ask, Philip can start his own blog so I don't claim his ideas without attributing his input :)

4 comments:

blueminiboy said...

Sounds good. I had discussions with said individual regarding mac tuners. The question is, what happens with the epg? Is it extracted from the Freeview feed?

Kiwimac

Miki Szikszai said...

Philip has sent me an applescript to deal with this - send me an email and I will pass it on

Al said...

Hi Mike,

The setup you were talking about here is exactly what I was thinking of setting up. Any followup as to how it is working?

In particular what is the quality of Apple TV exports from the freeview feeds?

If not great, worth keeping an eye on the Handbrake guys, they are about to let loose a version that will transcode just about any source to their built in presets. Their AppleTV one is highly regarded.

Miki Szikszai said...

Hi Al

I've been using this for a few weeks now.

A few learnings

1. My MacBook Pro could not deal with HD transmission - SD was fine. I have an early Intel Core Duo so probably not enough processing grunt.

2. Running this on the cheapest recent imac (4 months old) is great. HD transmission is picked up fine (but only just - some pixellation) and the export to apple TV from Eye TV 3 removes this - makes it a little jumpy but still better quality than SD.

I am using a tuner from digital-everywhere.com. Its a FireDTV T/CI