Advice needed on TV-Tuner card for Beige G3

In article <1gt0rsv.mzxbko19kt4owN%shane@wonk.demon.co.uk>, Shane
Badham <shane RemoveThis @wonk.demon.co.uk> wrote:

 > GR Allen <grallenca RemoveThis @yahoo.ca> wrote:
 >
  > > Greetings:
  > >
  > > I have a beige G3 233 running MacOS 10.2.8, and would like to add a video
  > > card that does TV-IN and has compatible MacOS X TV tuner software. What
  > > Video Card would you folks recommend for this legacy Mac ?
  > >
  > > Thanks.
  > >
  > > G.R.Allen
  > > Toronto
 >
 > Cant give a hard recommendation, but I have been reviewing the market
 > recently. If you must have a card it seems that Miglia is your best bet.
 >
 > I have a Formac TV Pro card. but it uses an extension codec and wont run
 > under X or Classic, only if I boot into 9.2.2.
 >
 > All other options are expensive, but some are better, e.g. El Gato's Eye
 > TV series. I will probably go for Eye TV 410 (Freeview), as we loose
 > analog TV in the South West in 2008.

Miglia cards require a G4 or G5 because they use software compression.
I haven't seen any video cards with hardware compression. I think you
will need an external box (Firewire or USB).<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Advice needed on TV-Tuner card for Beige G3 

In article <1gt0rsv.mzxbko19kt4owN%shane@wonk.demon.co.uk>,
shane DeleteThis @wonk.demon.co.uk (Shane Badham) wrote:

 > Cant give a hard recommendation, but I have been reviewing the market
 > recently. If you must have a card it seems that Miglia is your best bet.
 >
 > I have a Formac TV Pro card. but it uses an extension codec and wont run
 > under X or Classic, only if I boot into 9.2.2.

Have you checked out

<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://xtv.sf.net" target="_blank">http://xtv.sf.net</a>

? It's an open-source application that worked pretty well for me in
10.0-10.2.x -- sadly it won't load anymore in 10.3 for me, and the
developer stopped working on it.

It was a *lot* more reliable and faster than Formac's own software,
though. Only downside was that it could occasionally Kernel Panic on
first launch, but I worked around that by simply putting it in my login
items. That way, I could boot my Mac, and either it'd Kernel Panic, then
I'd just restart (no data loss as I hadn't done anything yet), or it
would work. If the latter, then it would keep working fine until the
next restart.

There's also a copy of Formac's beta software for OS X floating around.
It's also discontinued, and it eats a lot of CPU, but it basically
works. (Occasionally, <a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://superced.dyndns.org/" target="_blank">http://superced.dyndns.org/</a> is up, in that case
you can find a link to it there - I guess it's Cedric's private machine
and thus isn't on all day...)

None of these apps do VideoText (close-captioning etc.), though. If you
need that, you'll have to boot into OS 9. I've also heard from people
who claimed it worked for them under 10.3, but for me none of them
worked reliably. Formac's once ran for 5 minutes, but then it crashed
and from then on even a reinstall didn't make it work anymore.

 > All other options are expensive, but some are better, e.g. El Gato's Eye
 > TV series. I will probably go for Eye TV 410 (Freeview), as we loose
 > analog TV in the South West in 2008.

I'm also looking into the available options right now. Haven't found
much, though. One odd thing about EyeTV is that it's so much more
expensive. The ProTV was 120 Euros back then. The smallest EyeTV is 299,
and the one I'd need (for digital cable) costs 399... Okay, it does hard
disk recording, but it needs my Mac to do that, so hardware-wise
shouldn't be that much more expensive than the ProTV and a D-Box, the
latter costs about 130 Euros...

Anybody have an idea why the cable box is 100 Euros more than the one
for antenna? I mean, antenna needs more hardware because it actually has
to receive signals, and the cable box doesn't even contain a keycard
slot... ?!

Cheers,
-- Uli
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.zathras.de" target="_blank">http://www.zathras.de</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Advice needed on TV-Tuner card for Beige G3 

On 2005-03-06 22:41:42 +0200, shane RemoveThis @wonk.demon.co.uk (Shane Badham) said:

 > GR Allen <grallenca RemoveThis @yahoo.ca> wrote:
 >
  >> Greetings:
  >>
  >> I have a beige G3 233 running MacOS 10.2.8, and would like to add a video
  >> card that does TV-IN and has compatible MacOS X TV tuner software. What
  >> Video Card would you folks recommend for this legacy Mac ?
  >>
  >> Thanks.
  >>
  >> G.R.Allen
  >> Toronto
 >
 > Cant give a hard recommendation, but I have been reviewing the market
 > recently. If you must have a card it seems that Miglia is your best bet.
 >
 > I have a Formac TV Pro card. but it uses an extension codec and wont run
 > under X or Classic, only if I boot into 9.2.2.
 >
 > All other options are expensive, but some are better, e.g. El Gato's Eye
 > TV series. I will probably go for Eye TV 410 (Freeview), as we loose
 > analog TV in the South West in 2008.

I own a miglia card and happy with it but this is a g5 1600. I'd
suggest external miglia (its new) or eyetv (external)

CPU will be free to do other tasks. Also be sure to ask EyeTV, Miglia
if you will be OK with your configuration. Both are clean companies,
they won't trick you I guess.

Ilgaz Ocal<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Advice needed on TV-Tuner card for Beige G3 

On 2005-03-02 05:26:32 +0200, GR Allen <grallenca RemoveThis @yahoo.ca> said:

 > Greetings:
 >
 > I have a beige G3 233 running MacOS 10.2.8, and would like to add a video
 > card that does TV-IN and has compatible MacOS X TV tuner software. What
 > Video Card would you folks recommend for this legacy Mac ?
 >
 > Thanks.
 >
 > G.R.Allen
 > Toronto

I replied to guy who replied you by accident, you better read it. I
just remembered a nightmare happening here with TVs and I better tell
you.

If you are using cable TV and cable for internet access, you may live
amazing distortion. TV card chips as far as I figured are more fragile
to modems sending data from cable.

I say, speak with 2 companies, Miglia and El Gato (eyetv) and tell your
configuration, especially the cpu part. Both companies have a good
reputation so you can trust the reply.

That TV distortion is clearly connected with the no-brand splitters
cable companies love.

Have a nice day

Ilgaz Ocal<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Advice needed on TV-Tuner card for Beige G3 

On 2005-03-02 05:26:32 +0200, GR Allen <grallenca RemoveThis @yahoo.ca> said:

 > I have a beige G3 233 running MacOS 10.2.8, and would like to add a video
 > card that does TV-IN and has compatible MacOS X TV tuner software. What
 > Video Card would you folks recommend for this legacy Mac ?

If you're not planning to upgrade to 10.3 or better, check out
XTelevision (xtv.sf.net). It's not very polished and it occasionally
Kernel-Panics at first launch [1], but it will let you run a whole lot
of TV cards. It even worked with my ProTV Stereo PCI card, and better
than the OS 9 software that shipped with it ever did.

Sadly, it doesn't load on 10.3 anymore. But it's free, and there's lots
of cheap TV cards out there, so this maybe a low-expense option.

Otherwise, the other external devices mentioned have had great reviews,
but they require USB or FireWire ports. Rumor also has it that USB 1.0
isn't really fast enough for a TV card. So, if you have a USB or
FireWire card in your G3 (233 is a grey G3, not Blue-and-White, right?
Those don't seem to have USB or FireWire built-in), they may be an
option.

If you don't have USB or FireWire, the PCI cards and xTV may be your
only options. I can't recommend the ProTV card, though. They screwed me
over with that one, promising OS X software and not even ever producing
a debugged version of the OS 9 drivers.

HTH,
-- Uli Kusterer
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.zathras.de" target="_blank">http://www.zathras.de</a>

-----
[1] Workaround: Put it in Login Items, that way it will panic before
you've done anything that can get damaged or lost by the panic -- and if
it launches successfully, it'll just work upon each restart.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Advice needed on TV-Tuner card for Beige G3