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Jewish World Review May 20, 2005 / 11 Iyar, 5765 Alchemy's Mac TV Solution: Good, Not Yet Great By Mark Kellner
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Alchemy DVR is a card that'll slip into G4 and G5 PowerPC Macintosh
computers and let you hook up a cable line, over-the-air or satellite
antenna, and turn your Mac into a "personal video recorder," or PVR,
as well as a rather nice desktop TV.
One of the greatest attractions is the price: $159 for the board and
software, which is a bargain of sorts, since competing products,
mostly external boxes that connect to the Mac, can cost double that,
if not more.
But a bargain is no bargain if it doesn't work: my first unit
couldn't be "seen" by the Mac's brain, no matter how hard I tried. A
replacement card did work, which leads to a moral: make sure you know
the exchange policy of your dealer if you choose to buy one of these.
Better still, see if they'll test your card in the store before you go.
When working, however, the card offers some rather elegant features.
On learning my ZIP Code (stet), it found the potential cable systems
I could use, and let me pick the right one. The card scanned the
available channels and stored their names, which were for channels
1-99, since I was connected directly via a coaxial cable and not
through a converter. In the latter case, I could probably go through
channel 124, which would leave out many premium, or movie, channels.
Despite this limitation, the unit performed very well in terms of
tuning and playing video/audio. The Mac I'm using has some very nice
external speakers (the JBL "Creature" model) and, coupled with a 20-
inch LCD display, make for a very nice viewing experience. Even
better, I can watch the TV picture in a small window while working or
full-screen.
The PVR features take a bit of getting used to: the Alchemy product
uses the online TitanTV listings grid, which is a very good system
and which can generate instructions to program the computer to view
and record a show. This is done through the Apple iCal (stet)
application, which can be a bit balky, and recordings have been
somewhat hit-or-miss for me. I've recorded several important shows,
but missed others. Bottom line, you'll need to practice with this
before depending on your Mac to get the season finale of "Desperate
Housewives," reportedly First Lady Laura Bush's preferred Sunday
night viewing.
There's also an infrared remote control you can connect to the card
(which also accepts S-Video and composite video cables), but I didn't
even bother. My office setup is such that it's easier to use a
keyboard or mouse to control the tuner, so I did.
Bottom line: the Alchemy is a good product, but it may need some
refinement from its maker and a steeper learning curve for users
like me before it qualifies as great. But if all you want or need
to do is record and/or view TV at your desk, it's a tremendous
bargain. Details can be found online at http://www.miglia.com/index.html
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JWR contributor Mark Kellner has reported on technology for industry newspapers and magazines since 1983, and has been the computer columnist for The Washington Times since 1991.Comment by clicking here. © 2005, News World Communications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of The Washington Times. Visit the paper at http://www.washingtontimes.com |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||