EyeTV: A Fantastic Addition To Any Mac

I’ve been using an Elgato EyeTV tuner for about a year now, and just realized that I should probably share a great product like this with y’all!

Not literally, mind you. I love mine way too much to part with it.

Anyways, the EyeTV is a small, simple USB device. Plug-in your coaxial cable and hook it up to your computer via USB, and you basically turn your computer into a TV. On my monitor, a 24” widescreen Dell, it’s like getting a brand new LCD or plasma TV at a fraction of the cost of a stand-alone set – and without taking up any more space. You can watch TV full-screen, or choose from a variety of sizes. I often have the news running in a small window, tucking it into the corner of my screen while I work.

Even better, it comes with Program Guide software that shows you a list of everything that’s on TV – and you can just click a channel to view. All you have to do is provide it with your cable provider info and zip code, and it does the rest.

You can also record programs, too – just click on the little record button on a show in Program Guide, or manually hit the Record button on the EyeTV “remote.” (Actually, it comes with a REAL remote as well, which works directly with the EyeTV box for changing channels and volume). You can save your recordings to a variety of formats.

And the EyeTV works like a Tivo – you can pause a live show and rewind, perfect for those quick trips to the kitchen.

The EyeTV Program Guide

There are a couple different versions to choose from. I’ve got the 250, which also gives you the ability to plug-in a VCR or camcorder and dupe content. The new EyeTV hybrid looks really, really interesting:

“New! Now with improved reception, FM radio, and TV Guide

EyeTV Hybrid turns your Mac into the world’s most affordable flat-screen HDTV and DVR. EyeTV Hybrid receives both analog and digital TV as well as FM radio, and can also record from a cable or satellite set top box, a video recorder, and a camcorder, using composite or S-Video (analog) connections.”

The only problem I’ve had with mine so far is that if I have it running and plug in my iPhone, it drops the cable TV signal. A simple restart of the EyeTV software is all it takes. I suspect this is probably more of a USB issue than anything else.

The only other problem with it – if you’re a Windows user, that is: this is a Mac-only product.

Choosing monitor formats

A friend from work mentioned he was in the market for a new monitor at home. Seems his trusty old 17" CRT monitor finally bit the dust, and he was ready for a flat panel. "Should I get a regular one? Everything seems to be high-def these days - maybe I should get one of those, instead? But I don't watch movies, so I don't necessarily NEED widescreen."

His question belied some confusion about monitors, mixing-up the nomenclature of modern monitors pretty thoroughly.

First, let's address "high-def" and "widescreen."

High-definition is not necessarily the same as widescreen, although a lot of big widescreen plasma and LCD TVs on the market today are high-def. Hi-def has to do with the number of pixels it packs into the screen area. The more pixels it crams into a given space, the higher the definition.

For a standard home computer, PC or Windows, there's not really a "high definition" option for consumers per se - and if there were, you'd need a high-end video card to take advantage of it. Video professionals may work on truly high-def monitors, but you and I don't.

In the video world, high-def is high compared to, well, standard definition. Fewer rows of horizontal and vertical pixels. My Sony WEGA TV at home is a good old fashioned standard definition tube television. Discovery Channel still looks great, but not as great as it'd look on High Def. But there's not really that dichotomy for your computer.

Now, regardless of whether your TV or monitor is SD or HD, it will probably be one of two aspect ratios: 4:3 or 16:9.



The aspect ratio is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. A "standard," squarish looking tube TV set is a 4:3 aspect ratio - 4 units wide for every three units high.

Widescreen displays, on the other hand, are much wider than they are tall - hence, 16 units of width for 9 units of height. Make sense?

For TVs, whichever you choose depends on what kind of content you view. If you're a movie buff, go for 16x9 - but just make sure you purchase or rent widescreen-format movies. I won't get into all the ins and outs of widescreen, high-def TVs here - that's for Consumer Reports. And besides the original question was about a computer monitor.

So anyways, I find that THIS is the area where people usually need to really think over their monitor needs. Certainly, widescreen format monitors are more popular than ever. If you shop the Dell monitor store online, you'll see that it's frontloaded with widescreens. My criteria for a monitor goes like this: I work in a lot of timeline-based applications, which mean a lot of long horizontal windows. And I'm a multi-tasker as well, needing to view many apps simultaneously. So, I prefer widescreen so that I have less left-to-right scrolling and a wider area to work with.

You, however, may work primarily in 8.5x11 spreadsheets that require a lot of vertical scrolling - so maybe a 4:3 is appropriate. It's closer to the feel of your standard piece of paper when you're working with email, Word docs, or spreadsheets. If you're a "one simple Word file at a time user" and you open up a document on a widescreen display, you'll be looking at lots of empty whitespace all the time.

My feeling is that a lot of businesses probably go with 4:3 displays because they're cheaper, users don't watch movies on them, and they're perfect for simple Office applications, as described above. Or, maybe space is tight and displays must fit into a certain area, ruling out widescreens.

All that said, if you get a large enough widescreen, it will still be as tall as a good 4:3 with the benefit of more width. And, more width also means that you can have multiple documents open on the same screen, at the same time. Which means less toggling back and forth, or minimizing/maximizing to the Start Menu (Windows) or Hiding (Mac). The iMacs come to mind - they're widescreen, but big enough that the proportional "smaller" height is still better than what you'd get with a 19" 4:3 monitor.

Note that all of this applies to laptop displays as well. Many manufacturers are really pushing their widescreen models, but you can still get the standard aspect ratio screens as well.

The screen shot below shows the work area of my primary monitor, a 24" Dell widescreen. Note how I can have a web page and a word processing window fully open, side by side. It gives me 1920x1200 pixels (which technically, is 16:10 not 16:9). I use two widescreens like this, and it's pure computing nirvana!



Now that I look at the non-widescreen offerings on the Dell site, I see that, well, there just aren't many. There are a bunch of 19" and 17" monitors with 1280x724 resolutions (that "squarish" 4:3 look), but nothing bigger. My feeling is that there will always be a few out there, but for the most part they'll be phased out.

So, maybe by the time you're in the market again for a new monitor, the choice between 4:3 and widescreen will have been made much easier for you!

A Dirty Job

One thing I see a LOT when helping people with their Macs or PCs is DUST. That’s because while a lot of people might keep the outside of their systems relatively clean, they probably don’t think much about what might be going on inside. Why would it be dirty in there?

Fact is, any tower-based system is a dust collection bin. The fan in the back that blows out warm air…where do you suppose that air comes from originally? That’s right – there are intake vents in your PC, maybe several. The intakes, usually in the front, are there to keep the inside from getting too hot: fans in the back pull air over all the components.

A couple of things can happen if you don’t check for and deal with dust build-up. First, when everything inside gets coated with a layer of fine dust, everything runs hotter. This can cause components to wear and fail more quickly.

More importantly, what often happens is this: big, gross balls of dust, carpet fiber, and pet hair accumulate over the intake vents and inside fan propellors. This reduces or totally stops air flow, and then – combined with the finer dust covering interior components – everything REALLY gets hot. And, your fans will live a much shorter life as well, because they’re working very hard at removing air that isn’t there. Kind of like if you run a pump dry.

I snapped a few photos of a recently retired PC - this is what I typically find:



On the left, you can see dust clogging-up the openings where air should be flowing freely. On the right, dust has collected on top of the video card.

I’ve seen dustballs the size of my fist, and that’s not an exaggeration. When I’m working on somebody’s machine in my basement “lab” and see this sort of trouble brewing, I usually put on an allergy mask, take it outside, and blow out the large bits with a can of compressed air. Then I vacuum out as much dust as I can using a crack/crevice attachment and a soft brush attachment.

You can do the same, and help your machine run better. After all, your computer runs on software – but at heart it’s still a machine with moving parts, little motors, and circuit boards. There are even ball bearings in there somewhere!

You can probably find the instructions on how to open your case from your manufacturer’s web site, and some systems are so easy to open you might not even need them. When the side and/or top cover and face covers are off, you’ll probably get a better view of where the intake vents are.

Now, you do want to be very careful about vacuuming – avoid wires and such and don’t press or drag a plastic vacuum hose or tool directly onto any surfaces other than solid metal or plastic casing areas. If you’re not sure about vacuuming, just don’t do it . Just blowing it out and maybe clearing the intake vents and fan motors of gunk and getting rid of the big stuff will have you breathing a sigh of relief.

Do I have to mention that you should NOT try to clean anything inside with any sort of liquid? Well, you never know…

Also, this kind of dust collection is not usually a concern for laptops or iMacs; those types of systems are sealed-up pretty well.

If you have questions about cleaning out your system, feel free to ask!