Support Our Site
Get Better Gear!
- Notability For iPad: Much More Than A Note Taking App from Ginger Labs, Inc, US$0.99
- Scosche’s RH656m Headphones With Microphone Are Wonderful from Scosche, US$129.99
- IPEVO’s Typi Folio Case & Keyboard for iPad is First-rate from IPEVO, US$79.99
- Scosche’s boomSTREAM BT Speaker: Features & Compromises from Scosche, US$99.95
- FX Photo Studio HD: iPad Painting of Effects Made Easy from MacPhun LLC, US1.99
Top 5 Free Apps
iTunes New Music Releases
Top 5 Paid Apps
Discover New Music
- U2
- This record is perhaps U2's finest hour, yet it has been forgotten as a strange by-product of the ZooTV tour's overload, and is generally regarded by most fans as a poor effort. It is this sentiment t
- Harvey Danger
The sophomore effort from Harvey Danger, I was really looking forward to this followup to "Where Have All the Merrymakers Gone?" Unfortunately, "King James Version" failed to deliver any of the bri
- Ladytron
- Modern Lovers
This timeless masterpiece is little known, but it has inspired almost as many bands as The Modern Lovers' own inspiration -- and only slightly better known -- The Velvet Underground & Nico.
- Jellyfish
- The second and final album from this power-pop group makes me wish Jellyfish had been able to make just one more record together. The album is best enjoyed as a whole piece, flowing from one track to
Reader Specials
Visit Deals On The Web for the best deals on all consumer electronics, iPods, and more!
News
iPod and EyeTV: Perfect Union
Monday, September 10th, 2007 at 4:00 PM - by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
I have the best portable entertainment setup in the world: iPod plus EyeTV. I have an endless stream of video and movies, mostly automatically, and totally for free.
Ill back up, to make an embarrassing admission for a tech writer specializing in Apple-platform products: I havent been able to review the lions share of iPod accessories because the last iPod I bought was in 2003. Its been great, all these years. It plays music, holds nearly all of my music library, and the battery usually lasts for as much time as I want to listen to music -- even on long plane flights. But like everyone else, I was pretty sure that Apple would eventually get around to releasing a widescreen iPod that rocked at video.
Finally. I bought one of the new iPods shortly after they were announced. I went big, since history suggests this is a once-every-four-years purchase, and my iTunes library more than tripled over that period. Then moments after I got the confirmation email from Apple, I thought, "Well, I guess I need some video."
Im traveling a lot this fall, or at least a lot more than usual. Ill spend about 25 hours on planes in October, and who knows how many hours waiting in Airport terminals. Whats a weary traveler to watch?
Where to Get Your Video
iTunes Store: I put it here because its true. You can, of course, buy video from the iTunes Store. Its good quality, has artwork, and some programs, particularly hour-long TV specials, can be a great deal at US$2.
DVDs: For those of you with huge DVD libraries, you need to check out Handbrake, if you dont have it already. Ever wonder why you couldnt put a DVD in your Mac or PC, have it show up in iTunes, and hit an "Import" button to rip it into your library? Well, its likely because the United States Federal Governments DMCA has been interpreted to prohibit it.
Fortunately, theres Handbrake, a DVD backup utility thats open source, has a GUI interface, novice-friendly presets for types of DVD imports, and is free. If youve got a lot of DVDs and always wish you could carry them with you, this is the way to do it. Disclaimers: importing a movie takes a long freakin time (about an hour each on my Mac Pro), and if you want chapter names, youll have to add them yourself.
TV: And then theres the gold mine -- the cable connection you already pay for. I dont have a big DVD collection. (I think in my house weve imported the Led Zeppelin DVD, Pirates of the Carribean, and The Last Unicorn.) So if youre like us, and you have cable and a video-capable iPod, buy one of Elgatos EyeTV products. They arent inexpensive; weve previously reviewed the $200 EyeTV 250, which is a mid-range product in their lineup. Thing is, Elgatos TV tuners are the single best way to add value to your iPod, period.
(Quick note here: if you already have TiVo, there are several free tools for getting TiVo content onto your iPod, and Roxios Popcorn will do it, too. But if your goal is to get TV on your iPod, Elgatos products are a better bet.)
With the EyeTV software you can search the TV schedule. For example, "Daily Show," "politics," "comedy," or "movie" return programs of varying specificity. Ive been using this approach to discover and stack up a busy roster of programs to record. EyeTV can also be set to automatically convert all these shows to iPod format and dump them in your iTunes library. In this way Ive quickly built up more than 48 hours of TV and movies.
Sure, EyeTVs software doesnt have the best interface. Sure, the movies have comercials. But its free! You can watch the showws you record or not. You can delete what you dont like without guilt. You can record the video in whatever quality, to save disk space or maximize fidelity. People pay good money for the DVD version of shows. Im way happier with the broadcast version, minus the DVD extras, and plus iPod portability. Oh, and minus the DVD retail price.
Its worth noting that there are EyeTV products on either side of the 250 in price and features. Be wary of products that use your Macs CPU to do the video encoding -- these will seriously slow down your machine. Converting files to iPod format can be murderously slow as well, but the $99 Turbo.264 solves that problem. Another caveat: you need to hook up their products to both a cable connection and your Mac, so dont rush to purchase if your only machine is a laptop thats always away from the desk. Also be aware that depending on the specific model, EyeTV can do up to HD-quality recording, if thats how youre more focused on the TV experience than the iPod library.
YouTube: Okay, I said it. Im not huge on YouTube; at least, I havent subscribed to any channels, or otherwise made it a regular source for entertainment. But if you do -- or if you discover a long video youll want to view later -- you can use one of the bajillions of tools available to get YouTube content on your iPod. Ive been using JoeSofts Jax, which lets you drag-and-drop YouTube URLs, and there are others that weve covered before. If you have a favorite method for this, you can share it in the comments section, below.
Notice that all of this is also true for AppleTV, though as a TV-centric, internet-ready, non-portable product the emphasis is different than for iPod.
Whats your favorite iPod extension? Sound off in the comments below!
Recent Headlines
- Reading, Writing, & Saving the World
- Free Retro Gaming for iOS - Activision’s Kaboom!
- Apple Adds Chomp Bits to iOS 6 App Store Discovery
- Notability For iPad: Much More Than A Note Taking App
- Scosche’s RH656m Headphones With Microphone Are Wonderful
- Tim Cook & Larry Page Reportedly Discuss Patents
- Analysis: Amazon Kindle Fire Sold Out, Kindle Fire 2 Pic Leaked
Post Your Comments