Elgato eyetv Hybrid

My eyeTV Hybrid showed up today, so I set that up this evening. I don’t have a decent antenna at the moment, so it was only able to pick up a faint HD signal while inside the house. I’m going to slap on a better antenna later this week. I did hook it up to an analogue Cable TV feed, but the quality wasn’t too hot. Didn’t have time to debug why, might be the old Coax cable, or something else going on - but the install process was simple. Drag eyeTV into Applications, start it up, answer questions, and watch TV. Doesn’t get much simpler.

I’ll write a better review once I’ve got an antenna on it so I can pick up some HD TV.

October 17, 2006 · Filed Under Uncategorized

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First evening with the Sony HDR-SR1 HD Camcorder

We picked one of these up yesterday in a HD TV+Camcorder deal we cooked with the Sony Store.

I did alot of searching on the net about the new AVCHD format it uses, but all I could determine was that only the Windows based software it ships with can pull the video off the Camcorder for editing. Not good, especially since I’m more of a Mac guy these days :(

One of the unanswered questions was “What if I record in SD? Can I pull it out in a useful format?”. That was tonights test - and the answer is yes. When recording in SD mode, it uses standard MPEG2 compression, and even the files on the HardDisk (it appears as a USB Mass Storage Device) are .mpg for SD recordings. Windows media had no problems playing them, but QuickTime Pro can’t open them directly. VLC on my Mac played it, and reported:

main debug: received first data for our buffer
main debug: pre-buffering done 1310680 bytes in 0s - 10871 kbytes/s
main debug: creating demux: access='' demux='' path='/Users/ken/Desktop/M2U00002.MPG'
main debug: looking for demux2 module: 43 candidates
main debug: using demux2 module "ps"
main debug: looking for a subtitle file in /Users/ken/Desktop/
main debug: `/Users/ken/Desktop/M2U00002.MPG' successfully opened
ps debug: es id=0xbdff format unknown
main debug: selecting program id=0
main debug: looking for decoder module: 25 candidates
main debug: using decoder module "a52"
main debug: thread 35147264 (decoder) created at priority 37 (input/decoder.c:159)
a52: A/52 channels:6 samplerate:48000 bitrate:448000
main debug: no aout present, spawning one
main debug: looking for decoder module: 25 candidates
main debug: looking for audio output module: 2 candidates
main debug: using decoder module "libmpeg2"
main debug: thread 35151360 (decoder) created at priority -47 (input/decoder.c:159)
libmpeg2 debug: 720x480 (display 720,480), aspect 768000, sar 32:27, 29.971 fps
main debug: no usable vout present, spawning one
main debug: window size: 853x480
main debug: looking for video output module: 4 candidates
main debug: VLC is looking for: 'a52 ' 48000 Hz 3F2R/LFE frame=1536 samples/1792 bytes
main debug: Registering subpicture channel, ID: 2
main debug: Registering subpicture channel, ID: 3
main debug: Registering subpicture channel, ID: 4
main debug: Registering subpicture channel, ID: 5
opengl debug: Texture size: 720x480
main debug: got 1 direct buffer(s)
main debug: picture in 720x480 (0,0,720x480), chroma I420, ar 16:9, sar 32:27
main debug: picture user 720x480 (0,0,720x480), chroma I420, ar 16:9, sar 32:27
main debug: picture out 720x480 (0,0,720x480), chroma UYVY, ar 16:9, sar 32:27
main debug: looking for chroma module: 9 candidates
main debug: using chroma module "i420_yuy2_mmx"

So I used VisualHub to reencode the file into DV format, and then successfully opened it in iMovie HD. Ironic, since it’s not a real HD file, but it’s at least enough to let me know I can use the Camcorder on the Mac, and bypass Sony’s software. Hopefully Apple, Adobe, Ulead and all the only NLE’s add AVCHD support soon, so I can get to using the HD features… however I’ve still got time, as we don’t take delivery of the TV until mid November after we move in.

October 16, 2006 · Filed Under Uncategorized

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