As you dear readers will know, I had some recent ventures into the world of PVR’s, and specifically, MythTV, and you may have read about the failures I came across.

Well, after a recent visit to the Apple Store in Birmingham, I made a choice, one which cost me £40! I bought an Elgato EyeTV DTT USB Stick. What is it? Its a TV receiver built into a USB stick, about the size of those wireless adapters. Plug it into your laptop or desktop, hook up an antenna, either roof top aerial or the mini-aerial included in the box, and very soon you’ll be watching TV.

The software, EyeTV, which is compatible with many other PVR devices, is simple to install. You’re asked to sign up for tvtv.com which provides TV listings, and during the setup you do the initial tuning. Clicking the Auto-Tune button does a quick scan and picks up any TV and Radio signals in your area (you can also do an exhaustive scan which takes longer but can pick up missing stations).

To record, either press the Record button on the controller while watching any show, or click a programme in the Guide, and click Add Schedule. When you’ve recorded a show, you can play it back on your Mac, or export to iPhone version, AppleTV version or send it to Toast to burn to a DVD. Another nice feature is the Wifi access – you can set programmes to automatically convert to iPhone versions for Wifi viewing, so if you’ve got your mac on all the time, you can watch those shows, streaming over Wifi from your iPhone or iPod Touch, which is done using the built in web server in Mac OS X.

Recordings come in MPEG-2 files, wrapped in an EyeTV wrapper, which includes thumbnails and info on the recordings. You’ll use about 2.2GB for an hour’s recording. Exporting will obviously reduce that file size, so if you are low on space, it might be good to export to AppleTV for storage. 

A exhaustive scan of channels picked up about 64 channels in total (radio and TV), all coming from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter. Comparing that to my Virgin Freeview box, and there are some missing. Specifically, I could not pick up E4+1, Dave or Virgin 1, despite being able to get them on the freeview box. This is probably just differences between the lowest signal strength each device needs to get a signal. 

Not all channels picked up listings from tvtv.com – those listed in blue have no listing, but you can manually select these channels from a search list, and then will be able to get listings. Those that don’t have them at all can be picked up from the signal transmission, and you select DVB for those channels to get the listings. 

For me, the killer features are the Wifi Access, and the smooth integration into Front Row. If you have the EyeTV software running, and grab your Apple Remote, you can switch between Front Row and EyeTV by holding the Play button. From there you have access to almost all features, scrolling through channels, and setting up recordings, using the Menu. Then you can quickly switch back to Front Row for your Podcasts or Movies.

For 95% of my watching and recording TV, this is perfect. If I had a spare Mac MIni, i would turn it into a media centre, and use the EyeTV as my main Freeview box. Having full control over TV, movies, podcasts, and purchased TV from iTunes through one small remote would be lovely, as would the Live TV functions (EyeTV records what you watch as you watch it, allowing you to pause, rewind and replay live tv. You can limit the buffer used for this in the Prefs).

Overall, the EyeTV was a great purchase, Its functional, small enough to throw in my bag when travelling, and I can see it staying in regular use, at least until we move and get Virgin+ or Sky+

Notes: I purchased the Digital only version, there is a Analog+Digital version at a higher price. There are also dual tuners, allowing you to have picture in picture, or record one channel and watch another.