Elgato Systems has introduced EyeTV EZ, a new USB 2.0-based TV tuner for the Macintosh. The device is shipping internationally and costs US$149.
The EyeTV EZ lets you hook up an antenna, cable or satellite TV connection to view analog raw, uncompressed TV signals. Unlike Elgato’s other EyeTV products, EyeTV EZ isn’t a Personal Video Recorder (PVR), it’s a tuner only. So the EyeTV EZ doesn’t use hardware-based encoding, and has markedly higher system requirements (a dual-processor G5 is required for high quality recording, for example). EyeTV EZ can also connect to external devices including camcorders, VCRs and game consoles.
Powered by the EyeTV software, EyeTV EZ can be used to record programs — you can schedule recordings using TitanTV’s electronic program guide services in the United States (users in some European countries can use tvtv instead). EyeTV EZ works with both the NTSC and PAL/SECAM video standards.
Other system requirements call for 256MB RAM, Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later, built-in USB 2.0 port and 589MB of disk space for one hour of recorded video at video CD quality).