Recording TV Shows with Toast & EyeTV

Posted: Thursday, January 10, 2008

Life is busy. Tired of missing your favorite shows or simply want to save them for watching again later on DVD or your iPod? Even if you have a DVR, you probably can’t export the contents to your Mac, much less your iPhone. With Toast 8 and EyeTV, you can turn your faithful Mac into a digital video recorder, saving shows automatically that you can view anywhere: on your computer, on your TV, or on a portable player. And it all works with both regular and HDTV! You can even burn DVDs with your recordings.

Assuming you already have Toast 8 or Popcorn 3, all you need to do is add one of the Elgato EyeTV recorders, such as the EyeTV 250 Plus, EyeTV Hybrid USB stick, or the HDHomeRun network tuner (which allows any Mac on your network to use one of the two tuners in the box). Whichever way you go, Toast and Popcorn make it easy to save the programs you've captured on your Mac to DVD or export them to your iPhone, iPod, Apple TV or other media player.

Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus with remote.

The EyeTV recorders do a lot more than just record video to hard disk, however. The software interacts with the free TitanTV online program guide to schedule recordings, and maintains a list of past recordings stored on your hard disk, so you can use it like you would a TiVo box, but without the monthly fees. It even lets you pause live TV, skip commercials, and enjoy instant replays. Since most newer Macs, and many older ones, have video output capabilities, you can plug the output from your Mac into a TV set, and then use the remote control to watch or record video from the comfort of your couch.

The EyeTV 250 Plus can accept almost any form of analog video, with a coax jack for antenna or unscrambled analog cable input, and S-Video and RCA jacks for plugging in sources like VCRs, camcorders and DVD players. Digital cable or satellite users can also connect, by using the set-top converter box supplied by their provider to change channels, and then plugging the output from the converter into the EyeTV, which should be tuned to channel 3 or 4, depending on your service. It even comes with an infrared remote control, so you can control all functions from across the room.

Using EyeTV

Open the EyeTV software and three windows appear: a resizable video window, a program list of all available recordings on your hard disk, and an onscreen controller (which you can use along with or in place of an infrared remote). The onscreen controller (pictured below) tells you what the current show is and how far into it you are, and provides typical fast forward/reverse/pause/record/volume/channel functions, as well as instant replay, mute, program guide, and 30-second commercial skip buttons.

The EyeTV controller.

Step-by-Step from Videotape to DVD

Now that you know something about the features and capabilities of EyeTV, here's a step-by-step guide to burning your recorded EyeTV programs to DVD or converting them for your iPod, iPhone or other media player.

1) First, decide what types of inputs you want to use with your EyeTV, which will dictate the model of EyeTV recorder you buy. Connect things up according to the EyeTV instructions, the run the EyeTV software setup program to sign up for the online program guide (so you know what you're watching, and can program future recordings). The setup process will also tune all the channels coming off your antenna or cable input. The program guide supports over-the-air, cable and satellite services.

The EyeTV program guide.

2) Next, choose a future show to record by clicking the red Record button that appears next to it. You can even set a show to record all season long, so you'll never miss another episode of American Idol or Gray's Anatomy. Better yet, if you set the preference to "Start EyeTV when a device is plugged in," it will wake up your Mac from sleep to record, and even boot up your machine if it is off (with OS 10.2 or later and automatic login enabled in your Mac System Preferences)! No worries about having to leave your machine on all the time.

3) When you're done recording, the show will appear in the Recordings window, where you can select it for playback on your computer, or select it within the Toast 8 Media Browser to use in a DVD or export to a portable player.

EyeTV recordings in the Toast Media Browser.

4) Once in Toast, you can customize your DVD menus, add additional video or photo slide shows to your disc, or export the video for your iPod or other media player. To export for iPod/Apple TV/iPhone, select the video you want to convert, click the Export button at the bottom, and choose one of the easy presets from the drop-down menu. Click Save and you're done!

Choosing an export format for your EyeTV recordings.