Miglia TV and HD TV

The video signal you get into your Mac Mini will create a video file. That video file will be the HD resolution that the Miglia device supports.

Weather or not you get "high definition" on your TV will depend on what resolution you can get through your VGA cable. If you can set your TV to 1024x768 for example then the video will play at that resolution. HDMI will always be a better option, but your video will not be "crippled" like the next generation of HD DVDs will be because you are not using HDMI.

Hi kick bags ***,

It says on the blurb that this broadcasts in high definition and i have my mac plugged in to an HD TV.

This is incorrect, the miglia device does not broadcast anything. It receives content and captures TV content. It stores it on your hard drive in lossless file in the format the TV provider was broadcasting in, this is usually mpeg2.


However it will only recieve HD if there is a HD broadcast available and currently the BBC, ITV C4 and C5 are only trialing HD broadcasts in London. They are broadcasting the HD content in h.264 (mpeg4) something which the TVmini cannot receive as this is a limitation in they eyetv software.

Would i have to connect the mini to the HDMI input on my TV for it to be High definition?

No.

The Tv mini will only receive Free to Air broadcasts and I doubt very much the BBC etc will ever broadcast encrypted content.

so once the content is captured you can connect your mini to any display via vga, dvi or hdmi and.

You only need to connect an HD receiver to your HDMI connection if you are watching encrypted content, eg sky HD.

Thanks for the reply Tim, i've only just got round to
checking it. However, i've got a couple of questions.
If the mini device cannot receive mpeg4 does this
mean it cannot receive the BBC etc. HD broadcasts.
Also, can HD be broadcast in other other formats
e.g.mpeg2 that the miglia can recieve?

I have heard on some forums that the eyetv software will pick the bbc HD1 channel in its listing but it cannot play it. However you can try record it and then use VLC player to play the content.

HD can be broadcastedin mpeg2 also but at the moment the BBC, ITV ,C4 and C5 are only trialing it in mpeg4. The reason being is the freeview spectrum of frequencies is only very limited so they don't have the bandwidth available to broadcast HD in mpeg2. Infact as itv, c4 and c5 are sharing a multiplex they can't even do simulataneous broadcasts.