Monday, December 20, 2010

Elgato EyeTV HD

I own both the EyeTV HD and the Hauppauge HD-PVR.  The short version is, get the HD-PVR (unless your primary use will be digitizing VHS tapes. See below.) For the same money, the HD-PVR has more features and is more flexible.

Here are the shortcomings of the EyeTV HD:

1. No digital audio input. The only audio inputs are analog stereo. This means that the already compressed audio coming out of your cable box gets compressed again into AAC. Since I primarily make my recordings into blu-rays, this presents another problem:  AAC is not a blu-ray ready format. So, when making a blu-ray, the AAC audio must be converted into uncompressed LPCM format. This increases the space needed for the program and the muxer you are using to make the blu-ray cannot give you an accurate estimate of how much space you will need. And of course, no surround sound.

2. The EyeTV HD can only be used with EyeTV. The HD-PVR can be used with EyeTV and HDPVR Capture on the Mac and with the included Arcsoft package on Windows. If the EyeTV and EyeTV HD combo have problems with your particular program material/source, then you have no alternative capture software to go to.

3. The EyeTV HD does not have any audio/video passthrough like the HD-PVR does.

4. Despite what the Elgato literature says, the EyeTV HD does not do VBR. It is CBR. This will result in files that are unnecessarily larger than the same file captured on the HD-PVR. I've contacted Elgato about this and even sent them video clips demonstrating this. I never heard back from them.

On the plus side, especially for those who will be digitizing VHS tapes, the EyeTV HD seems to have a more robust encoder than the HD-PVR. In other words, in my experience, the HD-PVR will restart/fail to lock much more often than the EyeTV HD on glitchy footage. Also, once the HD-PVR restarts, it seems to take much longer to recover than the EyeTV HD.

So, in my case, I use the HD-PVR almost all of the time. I use it for all of my DVR recording and even for VHS digitizing when the VHS is one continuous recording in SP mode. Otherwise, I'll use the EyeTV HD.

UPDATE:  03/29/2011 - I heard back from Elgato after 7 months (I had to prod them to get a response.)  They still claim VBR for the EyeTV HD even though that has been demonstrated as false. But I did get my answer:  there will not be an update for this unit or for units in the future.  They did offer me a refund, which I turned down. The unit is still useful, it's just not what they claim it to be.