EyeTV 3.0.2 update adds features and even more polish

By Stephen Withers
Friday, 09 May 2008 04:41

Opinion and Analysis

Elgato's EyeTV TV tuner software is well regarded among the Mac community, and for good reason. The latest update - version 3.0.2 - delivers some mainly geographically-specific new features along with a little spit and polish for users at large.

Firstly, the software now supports H.264 broadcasts as used in Norway and New Zealand, and on a test basis in some other areas. H.264 (also used for videoconferencing and for some streaming and downloadable video on the Internet) requires fewer bits to achieve a given quality than MPEG-2 does. Broadcasters benefit from being able to transmit more channels within their bandwidth allocation, while users score by needing less disk space to store recordings.

Some North American users will benefit from being able to include closed captions when exporting files for the iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, QuickTime Player or iTunes. The captions are exported as a separate track, which is displayed according to the settings of the playback device or program.

Swedish users are now able to use the tvtv EPG.

Separate deinterlace settings are now provided for standard and high definition programs. This is a convenience feature for owners of Macs that are fast enough to deliver progressive scan for SD but not HD.

Cosmetic changes include improved readability of On Screen Menus, and badges on the thumbnails of recordings that have not been played.

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