Miglia Technology has introduced the TVMax, a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) accessory for the Mac that’s especially designed to complement the Mac mini. It costs $249.
While the TVMax will conceivable work with any supported Macs, it’s designed especially with the Mac mini in mind, capable of being stacked underneath a Mac mini in a zero-footprint configuration — it measures 6.5 inches square (about 165mm) and 1.19 inches (30mm) high. The TVMax comes with a wireless remote control and is bundled with the Universal Binary release of El Gato’s popular EyeTV 2 software.
The TVMax lets you watch TV in windowed or full-screen mode on your Mac mini. It can convert analog video signals, such as input from a VCR, to digital video, and records in MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and DivX video formats using hardware-based compression. It can also output directly to the video-capable iPod. Inputs include a coaxial antenna or cable connection (the North American version includes a threaded connector), S-Video, composite video and RCA stereo audio.
EyeTV 2 enables you to watch, pause, rewind and skip forward live TV, includes recording capabilities and online programming guides, lets you edit recorded content to remove commercials, and more. You can also export video to DVD, either Roxio’s Toast software or Apple’s iDVD.
The remote control is infrared, working wirelessly with a sensor embedded in the front of the TVMax. The TVMax connects to the Mac using USB 2.0.
System requirements call for a G4/500MHz or faster, including Intel, 256MB RAM and Mac OS X v10.4 or later.