News for Sunday, 20 January 2008

Thanks to its compability and integration with OSX, EyeTV has become a standard for watching TV on the Mac. Elgato explains that all aspects of the suite have been redesigned, taking feedback from users into account.The functionality to edit movies, burn them on a DVD (requires Toast), streaming over wifi to your iPhone and export options for iPod, iPhone and Sony's PSP are still present. The list of functionality has been seriously extended, major improvements have been made related to searching items, sharing and navigation.
After having copied the application to the harddrive, a wizard guides you through the installation process, it lets you select a decoder, and offers to subscribe to a program guide (offered by TVTV). Opening "EyeTV Programs" will show you a home screen with EPG (Electronic Program Guide), recordings, playlists, ... . This window has been redesigned with Leopard-looks: the menu-items at a column at the left, and a coverflow-view in the contentpane.

What we appreciate most:

• - Sharing your library over WiFi, and the possibility to protect its content with a password. One can for example record movies in another room, and watch them later a Mac Mini or AppleTV.


• - The favourite channels let you iterate through a list of channels, without having to view all of them. For example, an "Actuality"-selection will only show you Euronews, BBC, etc.


• - Integrated program guide on the TV screen and on the one you're navigating through with your Apple Remote.


• - Automatic recording of programs that mach certain criteria, for example automatically recording all episodes of Prison Break, or shows on a given subject.


• - Improved editing for recorded videos: it's now easier to cut the ads out, before burning the program to a DVD, using Toast.


• - Estimates of the remaining disc space, and automatically erasing a disc.

On Elgato's website you can read a list of new features, compared to the previous version. The website TUAW.com has a demonstration clip, as seen on MacWorld.
EyeTV 3 is available as a software upgrade for € 39,95, or € 79,95 for a complete version, on Elgato's website.

Henceforth, some of Fox's titles will offer on a second DVD, a film version specially intended for Apple iPod, iPhone and AppleTV.
Of course, these films will have a DRM, to avoid being copied, and would be sent via itunes for you to enjoy. Apple has explained it's handling in this literature via: documentation. In summary, such a DVD will be visible on iTunes. To transfer a film in it's video library, it'll be necessary to enter a code provided with the disk, and also for connecting to the iTunes store that would add a personal marking to the video. This function, is only accessible at the moment on the USA and Canada iTunes stores.

In light of the fact that Monday’s Keynote was monopolized by the MacBook Air, we’ve been anxious to turn the focus to Time Machine’s new accessory, Time Capsule. To begin, this product is nothing short of revolutionary. This evolution of Apple’s Airport Base Station now includes a NAS, along with the standard router functions and a WiFi access point. Just like the second generation Airport Base Station, it is compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n in 2.4 and 5 GHz, with 3 Gigabit ethernet ports, WAN Gigabit, and a USB 2.0 port to facilitate a USB printer or hard disk. Despite the new functionality, it keeps nearly the same proportions as the previous Airport Base Station, and it is only slightly larger.
You can see the difference between the two (in 75 DPI), with the original Airport on top.

Time Capsule is 1.25 inches wider and deeper, and weighs only 1.83 pounds more than the Airport, which is entirely reasonable considering it contains up to a 1TB 3.5” drive.

Also, as shown in this picture, while the previous Airport necessitates a rather large external power brick, the Time Capsule is plenty large to include an internal transformer.
As for the hard disk, having capacities of 500 GB and 1 TB, this implies that the disk is 3.5” and should be internally connected via SATA, with no PATA drives of this size being available. We can hope that, being rid of the need for an external USB drive, the Time Capsule disk should be much quicker than any disk that you might attach to a previous Airport. From a networking standpoint, compared to previous USB-attached Airport disks, Apple should have developed a more robust networking protocol guaranteeing reliable Time Machine backups without errors. Hopefully those using the Airport Base Station will receive a firmware update to match the reliability of Time Capsule.
One of the many unknowns of this new device is how it reacts to heat. Time Capsule, not having any sort of visible ventilation, risks overeating the large 5-platter (in the case of the 1TB drive) hard disk. As most users will trust this disk with backups of multiple computers, this setup should expect to be robust enough to handle nearly any sort of heat environment. Perhaps, like other NAS units, Time Capsule could be configured to back up its internal drive to an external USB-attached disk for multiple redundancies.
The last issue is price. Compared to more traditional NAS boxes, Time Capsule includes more functions and better form for nearly the same cost. However, the difference between Time Capsule and an Airport Base Station is anywhere from $120 to $320, very close to the price of a standard Airport and standalone USB disk. The difference between the 500 GB and 1 TB, however, is a mere $200, making the price justified (for once?).
For additional information, please visit Time Capsule on Apple.com or Time Capsule on the Apple Store