Eye TV for Mac's

[H TWO]

If anybody has tried Eye TV from Elgato maybe you can help me. I bought it and it worked great from home but when I traveled to an RV park out of my area, I couldn't get it to work. They had cable hook up and my next door neighbor had reception on his tv but my Mac just said "no signal". Any ideas out there?

[RoadKingMoe]

Which EyeTV tuner model? Some support analog cable and others support digital cable. I can't remember if any of the previous models did both.

[H TWO]

It is the eye tv 250 plus--analog/digital tv receiver and video converter.

[RoadKingMoe]

Sounds like the campground had digital (clear QAM) cable, which the 250 doesn't support. Not sure where there's analog cable left any more.

My EyeTV Hybrid doesn't support digital cable either, but can use the NTSC output (analog) signal from a digital cable box.

[H TWO]

Need to dumb it down for me. I'm just trying to watch tv from my trailer and it now sounds like I may need a digital cable box. I'm good at what I do, but it doesn't have anything to do with all the stuff I've learned about towing a trailer (tire pressures, flooring, max speeds, hitches, refrigerators, pressure regulators on the water hose, etc) how do I make this thing work?

[RoadKingMoe]

There are seven ways to get TV these days, and your 250 can receive three of them:

Analog TV (NTSC) with an antenna the way it's been for many years. The 250 can receive that.

Digital TV (ATSC) with the same antenna used for Analog TV. The 250 can receive that.

Analog cable TV as it's been for many years. The 250 (and late model TV sets) can receive the unscrambled channels (mostly local stations), but you need a cable box from the provider for the scrambled ones.

Digital cable TV. It also has unscrambled channels (known as "Clear" QAM and again mostly locals) that can be received by the EyeTV "HomeRun" but not by the EyeTV 250. It also has scrambled channels that need the cable box AND a particular Content Authorization System access card for that provider. In your case, you need a cable box to receive both unscrambled and scrambled.

Satellite TV. You need an antenna and satellite box to watch that.

This is the breakout cable that should've come with your EyeTV 250 that you can use to connect to a cable or satellite box:



The block with two connectors are the stereo audio left and right connectors. The block with the yellow RCA female connector can connect to the Composite Video output of a cable box. The block with the multi-pin S-Video connector can connect to a similar connector on a cable box, if it has it, in lieu of the Composite Video connection, for a slightly better picture.

[H TWO]

Great explanation. Thanks