Mac Mini as DVR

You don't make it clear what kind of TV service you have. As you appear to be American I can deduce that your TV service could be one of the following -

1. ATSC - a digital over-the-air service. Being digital all you need is the EyeTV 250 Plus, or the EyeTV Hybrid (USA), or you could get the HDHomeRun see http://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun_atsc
2. Clear QAM cable. The same tuners as above should work.
3. Digital Cable Card. Currently there is no Mac solution for this and unlikely to be so for the foreseeable future. You only option here is to use the Cable providers set-top box and connect a Mac via an analogue tuner. The EyeTV 250 Plus would do this job and would off-load the work of digitising the analogue output.
4. DirecTV or Dish TV (both are satellite systems). Here in Europe (and most of the rest of the world) all the satellite providers use the same basic standard of DVB-S and/or DVB-S2 and there are several suitable tuners available, however as far as I am aware, DirecTV and Dish use their own weird variations and as the US satellite TV market is minute compared to the global DVB-S/DVB-S2 market no suitable tuners are available. As such again your only choice is to use an EyeTV 250 Plus to digitise the analogue output of a DirecTV or Dish TV set-top box.

Note: having to do an analogue capture from a set-top box is so 20th Century, furthermore it will never offer HD quality.

If you are using a digital connection, then your old Mac mini will have no problems coping, and even if you use an analogue connection, as long as you use the EyeTV 250 Plus the work load is off-loaded to the tuner and again your Mac will be able to cope. If you use used analogue, and an old tuner like the EyeTV 250 (not plus), or the EyeTV Hybrid then your Mac would potentially struggle.

I have only ever used digital TV feeds and even an old PowerMac G4 has no problems.

Jeremy A wrote:
Ah. Sorry I didn't realize what type of service I had mattered so much. I've got Cablevision, which I assume is a Digital Cable Card service. I am considering switching to DirecTV though, as the cable service has a number of issues. I'm in the United States. I can't say I care much for HD quality, I still have an old non-HD CRT television. Therefore I don't mind having to do analog recording. **** I'm still using VHS tapes to record television programs. Do you really think the Mini won't be able to handle the basic MPEG2 encoding with the EyeTV Hybrid? I actually wouldn't mind recording the content as a DV stream and then encoding it later, if the EyeTV or Quicktime or whatever software is capable of that.

I'm really concerned about the copy protection issue. Right now I'm unable to record virtually all premium channel and pay per view programming with the DVD recorder. Will the EyeTV products present the same limitation or do they not care what the content is?

The only way EyeTV and similar software is able to record analogue requires outputting it in realtime as MPEG2, according to the Elgato website your PowerPC Mac mini is not up to the job of doing it by itself. If you do have all the bits (EyeTV software and the Hybrid tuner) then just go ahead and try it, however otherwise I would recommend the EyeTV 250 Plus. Of course you could also get a new Intel Mac mini and that will have no problems at all.

Regarding protection, as you intend to capture the analogue output I believe you should have no problems at all. Especially when you read http://support.elgato.com/index.php?m=knowledgebase&a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=2729

If you want a lower cost, you can purchase a Hauppauge 950Q USB tuner for $80 to go with the EyeTV. I've used it for 3 days and it works wonderfully. It took up to last night, but figured out how to set it up to automatically convert all recordings done.
* Open EyeTV
* Go through your new TV tuner setup for QAM channels and match up the channels with your guides
* Schedule your recordings
* EyeTV top toolbar/Preferences, set iPod/iPhone to iPod 640x480 (doesn't matter if it's iPhone quality or iPod quality. Both work.)
* Back on the EyeTV main screen, after you scheduled all recordings, go to the schedule screen.
* Click the first recording and scroll to the last and shift+click to select all.
* On the top columns, one of them says 'Export' I believe.
* Click the drop down and select 'iPod' or 'iPhone'
* All recordings are exported by the time you come home.

Jeremy A wrote:
Drat, it must be recorded as MPEG2, no DV? That's annoying. Well, I might look into that other solution you offered, with the different tuner. You say you used the EyeTV software with the tuner? Why did you have to use the iPod/iPhone settings, I'm not familiar with the EyeTV software but I assume that there are other settings that did not work for some reason?

With the settings I provided, all recordings make them fit for iPods and iPhones on the go.
I didn't see the statement of DVD burning earlier, but Toast is the DVD software.

But if you are looking for on the go iPod/iPhone h.264 viewing, the instructions I provided is the setup. You just need a good tuner like the 950q.