Live TV Everywhere? (Part 2)

Last time, I talked about how a deal recently inked by Verizon and Intel may pave the way for getting rid of my clunky Verizon FiOS cable boxes, letting me stream cable TV over the Internet to all my TV screens, computers, and handheld devices.

Now, the downside. Powerful interests just don't want "a virtual cable service that would sell a bundle of television channels to subscribers over the Internet," to borrow the words of a New York Times article I cited last time. Among them is the nation's biggest cable TV outfit, Comcast, which is currently trying to get federal approval to buy the next biggest cable outfit, Time Warner.

Only the satellite TV companies DirecTV and Dish Network serve more customers than Time Warner Cable does, per the Wikipedia article on "multiple-system operators," or MSOs. However, the satellite companies each serve fewer customers than the top cable dog, Comcast.

All the cable-oriented MSOs are, by definition, companies that own a number of local cable TV outfits. I'll refer to them as cable TV "behemoths."

Cable TV behemoths such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable have lucrative contracts with the cable channel owners, paying them copious quantities of cash for the rights to carry bundled groups of channels.

For example, Disney owns the various ESPN sports channels and insists that cable companies like Comcast pay for the less popular ones, such as ESPN Classic, if they want to carry the most-watched sports channel, ESPN itself. Meanwhile, Disney gets revenue from selling ads on all the channels in its ESPN group.

That analysis comes from a Forbes article on the so-called "cable TV business model." And here's a New York Times article that discusses why MSOs are making life difficult for potential "cord cutters": cable customers like me who'd like to escape from the clutches of the cable TV behemoths entirely.

As an aspiring cord cutter, I'd like to ditch my current Verizon cable boxes and get every channel I want

• online
• on every screen I own
• in my home or on handheld devices on the road
• with all of my channels paid for à la carte, not bundled

Plus, I want a "cloud DVR," à la Aereo, the recent startup that sells online access to local over-the-air broadcast channels without the need for a cable or satellite TV box. My review of Aereo is here.

What I want to know is: can my wish ever come true?

* * * * *

It can't come true if the cable behemoths get their way. Afraid of cord cutters, they apparently have been pressuring channel providers to refuse to sell access to the likes of Intel. Yet Verizon has existing contracts with channel owners already. Moreover, Verizon is not, strictly speaking, a cable behemoth, since its FiOS network uses fiber-optic transmission, not copper wire.

My ultimate wish is for what techies call "over the top" (OTT) TV.

"Over the top" is geek talk for online access to the likes of ABC, FOX, ESPN, CNN, and AMC, right alongside the likes of Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Redbox, and Hulu Plus. OTT would use one seamless and easily navigable interface which disguises the fact that the first group of content sources is made up of erstwhile over-the-air/cable channels, while the second group comprises content sources that have always resided online.

By its very nature, OTT delivery of video content could put all channels — note that Netflix, Amazon, etc. would become "channels" under this scheme — on every device and screen that can connect to the Internet. The connection can come in any broadband form:

• wired hookups such as Ethernet cables
• WiFi wireless, or
• any 3G/4G cellular network, such as the one Verizon already has in place.

A column at Mashable.com talks about how my OTT wish almost came true with Intel's OnCue Cloud TV platform project. The column mentions several kindred attempts to unify live TV with other entertainment content:

• Comcast's "cutting edge" X1 box
• TiVo's Roamio Plus DVR
• Microsoft's Xbox One video game console

But the Mashable columnist, lamenting the demise of Intel's in-house OnCue project, says, "OnCue was the holy grail of television."

The columnist, Christina Warren, writes, "The problem wasn't so much getting the content providers to agree to offer content to Intel, but instead, the cost of that content." The cost of licensing content for OnCue, also once referred to as Intel TV, would have come to "hundreds of millions of dollars."

That number came from a Reuters article, "For Intel, Hollywood dreams prove a leap too far." Intel, the article says, "could not afford the distraction and expense" of developing OnCue at a time when its "massive" core business, the manufacture of computer chips, is "flagging."

Intel, says Reuters, "has struggled to manage the transition from traditional personal computers to mobile devices. … [and] it has little experience selling consumer products, much less television programming." Because its core revenue generator has been underperforming, it now wants to refocus on what it does best. Hence the sale of OnCue to Verizon.

But, the Reuters article suggests, OnCue would not have fulfilled my dreams entirely. For example, OnCue would not have offered TV channels completely à la carte. Channels would ostensibly have been "bundled right"  — the less-popular channels would likely have been "sliced off" — but they would still have been bundled.

What's more, OnCue would have centered on hardware, not content: a "black box" not unlike today's omnipresent cable box. It's not clear how big and clunky the black box would have been, but it seems to me that anything bigger than today's Apple TV or Roku, each not much larger than a hockey puck, would be too big.

Another OnCue problem, according to Reuters: "Viewers streaming previously aired shows from some networks would [not have been] allowed to fast-forward through commercials."

Boo hiss to that constraint.

Anyway, OnCue seemingly wasn't going to be my cord-cutting Holy Grail ... but perhaps Verizon's eventual take on the same OTT dream will turn out to be everything I wish for.

Stay tuned for more on cord cutting ...

Live TV Everywhere? (Part 1)

I have a desktop computer, a laptop, an iPad, and an iPhone. Each of the three TVs in my home is hooked to a cable box as part of my Verizon FiOS Triple Play bundle. One of those cable boxes doubles as a DVR that can feed TV recordings to the other two boxes. Two of my TVs connect to Apple TV streaming media players — and one of the TVs has a Roku streaming media player — that feed it video and audio content. And I also have two Sony PlayStation 3's that double as streaming media players.

Trouble is, no one device is capable of letting me view every single channel or content source I have legitimate access to.

In Verizon's Prime HD package, I get a huge number of channels — most of which I never watch. I can look at many of these channels only through one of my Verizon boxes.

Verizon's FiOS Mobile app for the iPad can stream a certain number of those cable channels, but not all of them. For example, I can't stream most sports channels in FiOS Mobile. Adding to the confusion, only a subset of the FiOS Mobile app's live-streaming channels work outside my home.

Meanwhile, just about every device I have can stream Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, and/or other streaming sources of content. Oddly, my Verizon cable boxes can't do that. So I have to keep a map in my head of what devices I cannot use for any given channel or streaming content source.

The main problem lies with Verizon. Verizon could in concept let me view any duly authorized cable channel on any of my screens.

It could also put apps — in Verizon-speak, "widgets" — on its cable boxes for Netflix and other streaming content sources. But that's a separate issue, to my mind, since I'm really hoping for a solution that would eliminate the clunky cable box entirely.

OnCue: the original,
pre-Verizon idea

Recent developments suggest that in fact Verizon now envisions something very like what I want. Verizon has just purchased Intel Media, an arm of Intel that had until recently been developing OnCue, a technology designed to stream cable channels over the Internet.

A New York Times discussion of the promising Intel-Verizon deal can be read here. Bloomberg News had this to say about the deal Well before the Verizon deal came along, the New York Times said this of the Intel OnCue initiative.

In my next installment, I'll talk about how I as an aspiring "cord cutter" want to ditch my cable boxes forever.

TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (Yet Again)

Recently, in TiVo Multi-Room Viewing (Again), I indicated my disappointment that my new (second) TiVo DVR can't share recordings with my first TiVo if the recordings are copy-protected.

I have a home wireless network. Both of my TiVos are nodes on it (in addition to my two Mac computers, a cable modem, and assorted Apple TV and AirPort networking devices). After a TiVo makes a recording, in theory that recording can be copied via the network to the other TiVo, in what the folks at TiVo Inc. call "multi-room viewing" or MRV. The only problem is, an awful lot of the programs are copy-protected: their digital bitstreams contain a flag bit that says, "This program can be copied once, i.e., only for a single generation. The copy cannot then itself be copied."

Owing to how TiVo Inc. has chosen to comply with an agreement it has entered into with CableLabs, a consortium representing the cable TV industry and, indirectly, the providers of copyright-protected programming to cable channels, that flag bit is in fact honored by not letting a copy-protected program participate in MRV.

Note that no programs on channels that are broadcast locally over the air and then carried on cable are copy-protected in this way, only many (but not all) programs on cable-only channels.

If a copy-protected program on the first TiVo could be viewed on a second TiVo, then the way that would happen is this: it would be copied to the second TiVo. Thenceforth, it could be watched on the second TiVo ... or the original could still be watched on the first TiVo.

But, no. TiVo Inc. chooses instead to not allow MRV copying of "copy once" originals. As far as I can tell, the main reason is the fear on the part of the cable industry and program copyright holders that the original bitstream could be intercepted and have its copy protection stripped while a legitimate copy is being made across the home computer network.

In theory, at least, TiVo Inc. could go to CableLabs and ask for special approval of a (presently unspecified) scrambling or encryption method that, if used by TiVo DVRs for MRV, would nullify the piracy threat. However, the granting of said approval is not something that has happened ... yet.


The present way of doing MRV ties the original version of a copy-protected program to a specific device: the actual TiVo DVR that made the recording. A non-copy protected recording is, on the other hand, tied to a specific home network, not a specific device on that network. I believe any "fix" for the present inability to share copy-protected programs among multiple TiVos on a single home network would need to make such programs network-specific rather than device-specific.

I believe it was the original intent of TiVo Inc. to do exactly this, but the CableLabs agreement got in the way.

TiVo Inc. apparently intended to base MRV authorization on the TiVo's Media Access Key (MAK). The MAK is a unique 10-digit number that identifies every TiVo. It can be brought up on a TiVo's associated TV screen by means of the Messages and Settings menu hierarchy of the TiVo. Once you know what your TiVo's MAK is, you can (for instance) enter it into TiVo Desktop/TiVo Transfer software on your computer to enable TiVoToGo.

TiVoToGo is the ability to copy (again, non-copy protected) recordings from a TiVo to a computer. Once the copies are on the computer, they can be viewed and/or decrypted, then converted to other video formats such as for use on an iPod.

The decryption of a computer file with a .TiVo extension, once it has been copied from a TiVo DVR to the computer via TiVoToGo, requires that you enter the MAK of the originating TiVo into the computer software doing the decrypting. (That is, the MAK needs to be specified both to copy the recording and to decrypt it. The latter may be done by the same software as the former. If it is not, the MAK has to be specified to both.)


Details of the TiVo encryption-decryption system are hard to come by. Apparently, the TiVo DVR takes the "MPEG-2 program stream" which contains the TV show's video and audio information, as recorded in digital form, and it puts some kind of digital "wrapper" around it. For the original video and audio to be played, the wrapper must first be removed. This is something that cannot be done properly unless the software knows the MAK used by the originating TiVo DVR at the time the wrapper was created — at the time the show was recorded by that DVR, that is.

When a recording is copied from its original TiVo to a computer or to a second TiVo, the wrapper comes along with it. The resulting copy of the original recording cannot be played unless it can be unwrapped first — which can't happen unless the computer or second TiVo knows the MAK.

As I found out when I added a second TiVo to my home network, all TiVos on the same home network share the same MAK! (A TiVo on a different home network, though, has a different MAK.) Clearly, if the MAK is the basis for unobstructed MRV'ing of material on a local home network, all TiVos on the same home net should be able to participate in unobstructed MRV sharing of copy-protected material, in particular. TiVos not on the same network, since they do not share the same MAK, couldn't share the recordings. Neither could computer software applications that have not been supplied with the original MAK.


I suggest as a possible solution to the current MRV impasse that the MAK might be used as a digital "watermark" which the recording TiVo (or any other compliant DVR) visibly embeds in the video of a recording that is being shared via MRV.

Below is a sample of a watermarked image:


In the simplest implementation, "watermarking" would indelibly stamp the copied video recording with the identity (MAK) of its source DVR, which, as I have said, is actually the MAK of the home network. Any DVR with the same MAK (because it is on the same network) could compensate for the watermark and effectively "erase" it from the video as it is being legitimately played back. Watermark "erasure" would be done for legitimate playback only. The watermark would remain a part of the original recording and all copies made of it. Moreover, if a third-generation copy were made from a legitimate second-generation copy, it too would bear the watermark. No matter how many generations of copies were made, every generation's copies would duly inherit the watermark.

In a more elaborate implementation of the watermark strategy, instead of using the actual MAK as the watermark, the watermark could be an encrypted version of the MAK that could be matched for purposes of "erasure" during playback only by using that same encryption key (or a closely related one) to manipulate the supposedly identical MAK which is known to the playback device or application. More on that possibility later.

Or, instead of using the (encrypted or not) MAK as the watermark, the recording TiVo could use the user name on the account to which the TiVo belongs. Because every TiVo on the home network has access, via the network, to the TiVo Inc. database, it could (based on the MAK) fetch the same user name when doing MRV playback of a copy-protected recording. The retrieved user name, instead of the MAK itself, could be used as the basis of "erasing" the watermark for playback.


In any implementation of MRV watermarking, the MAK would be crucial in three ways. First, the MAK would need to be specified by the receiving TiVo to the recording TiVo in order for the latter to gain access to the recording TiVo's Now Playing list. Second, the MAK would be required for the receiving TiVo to be able to "unwrap" the copied recording. Third, the MAK would be required for the receiving TiVo to know how to "erase" the video watermark at playback time.

Similarly, if the destination device were a computer and not another TiVo, the same three mandatory uses of the MAK would apply. All legitimate uses of a watermarked TiVo recording would be MAK-dependent in three interlocking ways.

If a watermarked video recording were intercepted and diverted in an act of piracy, all protocol-compliant computer software, or any protocol-compliant home-entertainment hardware such as a TiVo or another DVR, could simply refuse to play it if that software or hardware were not privy to the same MAK. Alternatively, protocol-compliant software or hardware could go ahead and play it in the assurance that the watermark would show up on screen and effectively ruin the playback.

Non-compliant software/hardware might also play it ... but the watermark would be constructed such that only protocol-compliant software/hardware, on the same network with the recording DVR and therefore privy to the same MAK, could successfully "erase" it during playback. Non-compliant software or hardware accordingly would be able to play the video only in a "ruined," visibly degraded way, owing to the presence of the uncompensated visible watermark.


In the scheme I propose, the watermark, which would show up on a TV or computer screen that was trying to play an unauthorized copy of an original recording, would be in some way based on the MAK of the recording DVR. The MAK uniquely identifies the TiVo account of the owner of the recording TiVo, whose responsibility it is to see that his personal recordings don't show up in someone else's hands. As a legitimate TiVo user wanting to avoid the consequences of having "my" recordings show up in "your" (illicit) hands — I might face de-authorization of my TiVo account, or worse — it would accordingly behoove me to make sure my home network was secure against piracy.

In a worst-case scenario, a video pirate might supply a customer with (a) a watermarked video recording derived from someone's TiVo, along with (b) playback software or hardware that is capable of "erasing" the watermark during playback, but only if given (c) the MAK used to watermark the recording.

That scenario could be averted by encrypting the watermark, as suggested earlier. That is, instead of having the watermark be the MAK itself, it could be an encrypted version of the MAK that would be matched for purposes of "erasure" during playback only by using that same secret key (or a closely related one) to manipulate the original MAK and "erase" the watermark. Our pirate (or his customer) would thus have to know the actual MAK of the recording TiVo, not just the encrypted version thereof which shows up as the watermark. He would also have to know the key used to encrypt the MAK for purposes of creating and "erasing" the watermark.

Such an encrypting key might at some point be discovered by the piracy community and compromised. Because TiVos are regularly updated from TiVo Central by means of an Internet connection or phone line, the encrypting key in question could be changed any time it was compromised. If that happened, MRV copies made with the old key would no longer work.

That is, unfortunately, unavoidable. Occasionally, blameless users would be irked to find a legitimate copy they made only yesterday no longer works today. But that's far better than the current situation, in which legitimate users can never make MRV copies of copy-protected TiVo recordings.

Note also that if the MAK-based watermark were encrypted, casual users who stumble across a pirated video online would be unable to learn the MAK of the source TiVo — which is a good thing. Yet TiVo Inc. or any other authorized watchdog, being privy to the original encryption key, would be easily able to identify exactly whose TiVo the pirated copy originated from.


I realize that the ideas I'm broaching herein are sketchy and provisional. They need to be vetted to make sure they are reasonably watertight. The various interlocking concerns who are involved in this issue do have a right to protect their programming against piracy. No one who says otherwise is going to win that argument.

Still, the key word in that preceding paragraph is "reasonably." It is generally recognized that dedicated pirates will find a way around any copy-protection system, given enough time. The aim is to make it very, very hard for them to do so, since making it absolutely impossible is impossible.

That said, any sketchy proposal such as this one needs fleshing out and thorough vetting by all concerned who would be betting their "family jewels" on the success of the methodology. Such fleshing out and vetting ought to be done in the context of developing a full industry-standard protocol for MRV and "to go" usage of copy-protected recordings made by home DVRs and potentially used by other DVRs/hardware devices/computer applications.

It is the present absence of such a multi-industry protocol and accord which is really to blame for my not being able to MRV my copy-protected recordings of TNT's "The Closer."

HD TV Shows at iTunes Store

With the recent release of iTunes 8.0, Steve Jobs and company at Apple has also made available, for customers at Apple's iTunes Store, TV shows in high-definition for the first time.

HD episodes of Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, The Office, 30 Rock, Monk, Lost, and many other hit series can be purchased for $2.99, $1.00 more than the standard-def versions.

When you click on a "Buy Episode" button in iTunes, if the episode is HD, what you are supposed to be buying and downloading is actually two versions of the show, one HD and the other SD.

I find that there is a bug in Apple's implementation, however. If you use a Shopping Cart at the iTunes Store, rather than 1-Click Shopping, you can't get the HD shows. In my tests, you only get the SD version placed in your cart, not the HD. Then when you click on "Buy Now," the SD version only is downloaded.

Other people have reported online that they don't even get the SD version, just an indication that the show is mysteriously "unavailable."

The solution is to go into iTunes Preferences, under "Store," and click "Buy and download using 1-Click." That deselects "Buy using a Shopping Cart." (Make sure you have emptied your cart before doing this.) Now when you click a "Buy Episode" button, you will get an iTunes dialog asking you to confirm your purchase (unless you have previously told iTunes to disable this message). Once you authorize the purchase, the download will begin immediately of the two versions of the show.

iTunes 8.0 will then have both versions in its library. You can play either one, either in iTunes 8.0 or in QuickTime Player 7.5.5 (which, if you don't already have it, you need to get).

The HD version of the first episode of Monk, Season 7, "Mr. Monk Buys a House," is currently a freebie. It plays with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels with a total bit rate of 4541 kbps. (QT Player shows the data rate as being a bit lower: 4107.45 kbits/s.) This is true 720p resolution.

QT Player's numbers for the SD version are 853 x 480 non-square pixels in a 720 x 480 frame, at 1624.86 kbits/s. The SD file for this close-to-one-hour show takes up 509.8 MB, while the HD version uses 1.37 GB — nearly three times the storage.

The HD version plays just fine on my Apple TV, either when synced or streamed, with full resolution that is visibly better than that of the SD version.

Despite what I seem to have read online, it does not appear that iTunes 8.0 is smart enough, if you inadvertently try to sync an HD show to your iPod Touch, to substitute the SD equivalent. Instead, you have to manually arrange to sync the SD version. (I sync TV Shows using a selected playlist; syncing TV Shows by show rather that playlist, however, does not get around this problem.)

This shortfall, though minor, points up the inherent problem with the way Apple is implementing HD. It looks to me as if the only reason to bundle an SD version with an HD show is for the benefit of the iPod. (Maybe some older Macs than my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.5.4 will, like an iPod, refuse to play HD, but I don't know this for a fact.)

If the iPod Touch (or iPhone) could just be updated so that it would play HD versions, downrezzing them as necessary for the coarser screen, Apple could omit the SD version entirely — saving about 20 percent on download time and storage requirements, plus obviating the iTunes Store bug that causes problems when using the Shopping Cart.

Coming alongside the iTunes and QuickTime upgrades was an upgrade (version 2.1) to my iPod Touch software. As part of the upgrade, there was a concurrent upgrade to the iPod's firmware. I wasn't aware that iPods have upgradeable firmware, but since they do, I have to wonder whether they could be made compatible with HD video.

HD video as implemented at the iTunes Store has higher bitrates than the iPod can nominally keep up with, and probably uses B-frames ("bidirectional video frames") to slim down storage requirements. But if the iPod's bitrate limit and allergy to B-frames could be overcome, voila: (albeit downrezzed) HD video!

I can pretty much guarantee that future iPods/iPhones will have it. Is there any hope for current 'Pods?

The Convergence Scene

In Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 1) and Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 2) I spoke of equipping a Sharp AQUOS LC-37D90U 37" flat-panel LCD HDTV I intend to buy with a "media center PC": a Mac mini, suitably enhanced to capture and archive programs from cable TV. In my Apple's Forthcoming iTV post I discussed iTV, the pre-announced $299 product from Apple which can route media files from computers and their networks over into a TV and its associated audio gear. With iTV and a wireless or wired home computer network, you'd be able to point an ultra-simple remote control at an equally simple box next to your TV and summon up movies, music, photos, and any other sort of digital media files that your computer houses or can access.

All this is part of the "convergence" of home computers and home theaters. Convergence is the natural by-product of the fact that everything is now digital. Movies and other video items are digital on DVD, HD DVD, and Blu-ray; on over-the-air (OTA) digital broadcast TV; on digital cable; on satellite TV; on the Internet, if not always legally; at the Apple iTunes Store; on iPods, BlackBerrys, and cell phones, etc., etc., etc. Ditto, TV shows, podcasts, movie trailers, YouTube uploads, and so on — they're all available digitally. Photo albums and home movies, too, are computerized and alive in the digital domain.

For audio-only media it's the same deal. CDs are digital. So are the MP3 files you rip from CDs in iTunes or in like computer applications. So are the songs you download from the iTunes Store, or wherever.

As for home-theater gear: most of the TVs you can buy today are either flat panels or "microdisplay" front/rear projectors. Both create their images digitally. And audio/video receivers in home-theater sound systems can take in, manipulate, and optionally output audio streams that are wholly in the digital domain.


In fact, you can divide most digital entertainment content today into just four categories:

1. content on home computers and their networks
2. content online, including the World Wide Web and the iTunes Store
   
3. content on non-computer feeds coming into your home, such as OTA, cable, and satellite TV, satellite radio, etc.
   
4. content on hard media like CDs and DVDs

Apple's iTV is designed to bring category-1 and category-2 content into your home theater environment. Simple as that.

iTunes, with its CD-ripping functionality, brings some category-4 content — specifically, CDs — into your computer environment, including your iPod, as category-1 content. (You can use third-party rippers like HandBrake to capture DVDs.) The iTunes software also taps into a fair amount of the category-2 content: the sort available online at the iTunes Store.


The big problem, convergence-wise, is with category-3 content. How do you bring over-the-air, cable, and satellite TV, satellite radio, and so forth into your computer environment, where it lives as files holding category-1 content that can be bridged to your home theater by the likes of iTV.

I have no personal experience with satellite radio and can't comment on it. My interest is mainly in the "TV taps" that you can turn on and off in your home: specifically, the "cable-TV tap."

When you hook the wire that brings cable TV into your home to a suitable device such as a digital cable box — or a "digital cable ready" television equipped with a cable tuner and a CableCARD — you can turn on the tap at will and get any and all of the programming you've signed up for. Some if it is still analog, while much of it is now digital. Some of the digital cable channels are standard-definition, some are high-def.

You can even record cable programming that you are authorized to receive by saving it on a digital video recorder (DVR) built into the cable box. If you go to the trouble and expense of leasing a DVR box from the cable company, such temporary recordings of (even high-def) digital programming, made for the sole purpose of time-shifting the viewing experience, are perfectly legal.

Likewise, you can legally use a TiVo Series 3 HD-DVR to do your time-shifting. Put one or two CableCARDs from your cable company into this TiVo, and you can have it do what the DVR in the cable box would ordinarily do: capture SDTV analog, SDTV digital, and HDTV digital cable programming for later enjoyment. In the case of SDTV analog content, the programs are digitized and compressed by the TiVo itself. With SD and HD digital content, the TiVo just saves the original digital program stream as is.

I don't think, however, that you can export the digitized-or-saved content from either a cable DVR box or a TiVo to a computer. Oh, you can play that content back into a TV-capture device in a computer and try to capture it that way. The playback all too often is analog, coming out of the cable box or TiVo along component-video, S-Video, composite-video, or 75-ohm "RF" wires.

The best of these analog options is component video; it would be nice to find a TV-capture device for a computer that digitizes it, compresses it, and archives it. As yet, though, the only TV-capture devices I know of for the Mac or the PC take only S-Video, composite-video, or 75-ohm "RF" input. (One such product, which I intend to investigate thoroughly, is the ConvertX PX-TV402U PVR from Plextor, shown at left.)

None of these connection types other than component video has enough bandwidth to carry high-definition images without losing resolution. All introduce noise and artifacts into the picture. So ... it beats me why there are no component-video TV-capture devices for the Mac.


Better still would be devices that could capture digital video at 720p or 1080i, and even at 1080p, with no intermediate detours into the analog domain. Ideally, it would have to work with both broadcast (OTA) and cable, which unfortunately encode the signal differently. Optionally, it would also work with satellite TV, with yet a different encoding.

For the Mac, Elgato Systems' EyeTV Hybrid (shown in a laptop) already seems to do the job with OTA digital TV, but not with digital cable. For the latter, a CableCARD would be needed. Elgato has told me via e-mail that "It would be nice to have a product that supports the CableCARD however it is too early in the development of the CableCARD to be viable. At the moment, there are no such products available."

CableCARD is a thin device that slips into a TV set (or another device like a TiVo) and allows the TV's internal cable-TV tuner to gain access to the channels the cable company authorizes you to receive — including, of course, digital channels. The cable company brings the CableCARD to your home, installs it, and authorizes it. You (or the cable guy) just plug the wire that would normally go to a cable box into the TV itself.

Then you don't need the cable box — unless, that is, you depend on interactive, two-way cable-box communications for getting a program guide, pay-per-view, or video-on-demand. CableCARD can't deal with those three functions. If you can dispense with them, you can tell the cable guy who delivers the CableCARD to take his cable box and put it where the sun don't shine.

The next revision of CableCARD will eliminate the two-way interactivity problem. Unfortunately, CableCARD 2.0 will not be backward compatible with the CableCARD-equipped TVs of today. Those TVs are merely "digital cable ready." TVs expected in 2007 0r 2008 — the ones with the new CableCARD 2.0 slots — will be "interactive digital cable ready."

(An editorial aside: a few years back, the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., mandated that cable companies offer CableCARDs to their customers and that TV makers put CableCARD slots in their TVs. Score one for "government interference in the marketplace." CableCARDs are a goo idea. But the commissioners were too namby-pamby to mandate the equivalent of CableCARD 2.0 right off the bat, ensuring that there would one day be a clumsy, confusing, consumer-angering transition between the original CableCARD and the newer, non-crippled one. That day is going to be here soon. Score one for the marketplace libertarians who would have shown the FCC the door in the first place.)

(Note also that there is already a move afoot to make even CableCARD 2.0 obsolete. It's called OpenCable. Here is it's website.)


Why are we having such a long wait for everything to fall into place, convergence-wise? Espeically with regard to category-3 "TV tap" content, there is no good solution yet for capturing and archiving it. Why not?

You can, if you like, blame the typically long gestation period for any cutting-edge technology. You can blame the Feds either for not exercising strong enough dominion over teh technology or getting in its way, depending on your political persuasion. But part of the blame stems from the legitimate anxiety that content owners have over digital rights management (DRM).


DRM is, in essence, copy protection that can be supervised digitally — plus, of course, access authorization. Do you have legitimate access to a digital cable channel such as Fox Digital or HBO? DRM decides. Can you make a temporary time-shifting copy of, say, 24 or The Sopranos? DRM decides. Can you make a permanent archival copy on a computer hard drive or a home-brew CD? DRM decides. Can you upload your copy onto the Internet for other people to download? DRM decides.

DRM extends to "hard" digital media such as DVDs, HD DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. CDs don't use it — which is why they were so easily "napsterized." The digital copy protection on DVDs has, meanwhile, been compromised, which is how HandBrake allows you to create legal archival copies of your DVDs.

DRM also extends to online content. If you buy a song at the iTunes Store, it plays back only on your authorized computers, or on the iPods sync'ed to them.

DRM also extends to over-the-air digital TV broadcasts. By law, anybody can access OTA content, but can that content be recorded? If so, how may those recordings be distributed and used? Here is where the infamous "broadcast flag" rears its ugly head. Until struck down by a federal court, a mandate by the FCC was bout to require that TV makers build into their TVs the ability to respond to a set of bits (a "flag") in a digital broadcast that could (optionally, at the behest of program originators) block or hamper digital recordings of the content in the home of the user.


Digital content, unless access or copying is blocked somehow, moves easily from device to device — say, from a Blu-ray disc player or a cable box to a TV. If the receiving device can capture it in the form of a digital recording, content owners would like to be able to limit such recording activity to that which is legal under copyright law. Modern digital copy protection schemes typically allow them to place their digital content into one of three categories:

• copy freely
• copy one time
• copy never

This is done by "flags" inserted in the digital content. These copy management flags are separate from but akin to the broadcast flag. Since over-the-air TV broadcasts are "free," they themselves do not typically invoke such copy management flags. But when your local cable-TV company retransmits these broadcasts, the copy management flags may come into play.

A "copy freely" program sent out by a cable-TV company can be copied at will as many times and for as many generations as you like. A "copy never" program cannot be copied, period. A "copy one time" program lets you make as many first-generation copies of it as you like, but the copies will be flagged "copy no more," or "no more copies," so copies of the copies cannot be made.

The same kind of flags can be used with content on HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Plus, copy protection flags can be brought into play whenever you try to transfer digital content in your home from one device to another in your home: over a computer network, via Firewire, via DVI or HDMI, etc. If you try to transfer a "copy never" program, the source and receiving device may collaborate to keep you from doing so. The same with a "copy no more" program.


At this point, I don't think anybody really knows how well DRM and copy management work in the real world. There are two potential problem areas. One, DRM might be too "leaky"; it might let copyright violations occur too easily. Two, DRM might be over-strict and keep consumers from exercising their legitimate rights. In fact, it's possible that DRM might be both too leaky in some respects and too strict in others.

We have yet to find out how well DRM works because today, before we run into DRM, we typically run into "brute force" methods of copy protection.

If you have a cable box today that has a built-in DVR, chances are it simply does not provide any way to export a digital signal — with the obvious exception of HDMI, or its predecessor, DVI. HDMI/DVI use uncompressed digital video signals only; these signals require too much bandwidth to be shunted into a recording device.

Recorders need digital video that is still compressed, the way it comes into the cable box before it is decoded and sent out over HDMI to the TV. Some cable boxes do offer the ability to send compressed digital video out over Firewire to an outboard recording device. I have heard surprisingly little about this, and I do not know whether my own cable boxes can do it. As yet, I have no recording device which could capture the Firewire output.

That's exactly what I would like my anticipated Mac mini to do. Now you know why I feel like a pioneer, when I'd much rather feel like a settler!

Apple's Forthcoming iTV

As I said in Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 2), I'm looking to feed a Sharp AQUOS LCD flat panel TV with input from a Mac-based media center, probably a Mac mini. In researching that plan, I learned that Apple has a pre-announced product, code-named iTV, that may fit into my scheme.

Here is an article about iTV. The article includes photos, such as the one at left, of the giant screen behind Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his presentation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco, California on September 12, 2006.

iTV's details are sketchy. We know that iTV:

• is a "a wireless video streaming set-top box to be released in Q1 2007."
• appears to have a footprint identical with that of a Mac mini. I assume you can stack it under or on top of a Mac mini.
• features a built-in power supply; USB 2.0 and Ethernet ports; HDMI audio/video output; optical digital audio output; RCA stereo analog audio outputs; and 802.11 (I assume 802.11g) wireless connectivity.
• is "controllable by the standard Apple remote [and] will come with an updated version of [Apple's] Front Row [software] interface that shares Front Row's smooth 3D graphics, but differs in that it has a menu on the right side of the screen."
• "works with ... iTunes on both PCs and Macs," and
  
• "will sell for $299."

I note in passing that iTV does not have an internal optical media player for DVDs and the like. What could Apple be thinking?


iTV's network connectivity will allow its use as a front end to access recorded media files — movies, music, etc. — on the Internet or on a home computer network, whether wired, wireless, or a combination of the two. My particular network could build in a Mac mini, but it wouldn't need to, since I already have other Macs on a wireless AirPort network.

The iTV itself would serve as my network's video connection to my flat-panel TV, ideally via its HDMI port. It would provide an audio connection to a separate sound system, ideally via either HDMI or the digital optical audio output.


Another article about iTV appears in Wikipedia (with a link to this page offering streaming video of Jobs' full Yerba Buena presentation). The article mentions rumors "that the iTV will sport other features, such as a built in DVR feature, or even Live TV, but this is highly unlikely. Like the iPod, the iTV will start out as a mainly recorded media [gathering] device" — that is, on a home computer network.

In Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 1) I looked at two TV-related Mac products from Elgato Systems, EyeHome and EyeTV Hybrid. The first of these looks like a direct competitor to iTV — whose advent will probably spell curtains for it, since EyeHome is, like iTV, a networked media-client hub. The second Elgato product, EyeTV Hybrid, offers the live TV and DVR features the Apple product apparently lacks. It is not itself network-oriented.

When you think about it, then, iTV (like Elgato's EyeHome) is all about gathering, accessing, and playing existing media content from many disparate network sources seamlessly — a worthy goal.

But the EyeTV hardware, in its Hybrid form or as EyeTV 250, is all about capturing live content piped into the home via cable or satellite or obtained over the air via an antenna. This function is one which Apple has not addressed.


iTV seems very carefully designed not to be usable as a high-def digital video recorder — by running a Firewire or USB 2.0 cable to it from, say, a digital cable box.

Some digital cable boxes (I am told) can output HD video content in digital form on Firewire, potentially allowing it to be recorded on external devices such as DVD recorders. I've never tried it, so I don't know its ins and outs. Nor have I heard of any cable boxes that output USB 2.0. But iTV is seemingly not going to be in the business of allowing digital cable-TV content to be archived on it, or even via it to its back-end computer network.

It would of course be nice if iTV could record digital 720p and 1080i HDTV programming as such. Or, if not capturing it directly on its own hard drive, at least passing it along to other computers on a home network.

But, alas, no. iTV has no intrinsic video input capability. It can retrieve already recorded video material from a home network or from the Internet, but it cannot capture live TV.


Even if an external TV-capture device like EyeTV Hybrid could be connected to iTV's USB 2.0 port, as if to enable the iTV to capture a television signal, how would the requisite EyeTV software be installed on Apple's iTV?

And even if Apple's iTV could somehow host Elgato's EyeTV software, Elgato's EyeTV hardware can't accept digital cable input ... not without the signal already having been converted to merely standard-def analog by a separate cable box.

Specifically, EyeTV lacks the ability to accept TV signals in digital form directly from the 75-ohm wire that feeds a cable box. It does not have an onboard cable-TV tuner. Nor does it accept a CableCard for decoding digital cable input. Nor does it have a Firewire input to allow it to receive a digital signal output from a standalone cable box.

In fact, Elgato tech support informs me: "There are no products for the Mac or PC that can natively decode the encrypted signal from the cable company." That's where CableCard support could come in handy. As far as I know, most or all digital cable channels are encrypted to ensure that only authorized cable boxes (or CableCards) can receive them. This includes premium channels like HBO, high-definition channels, and in fact any and all digital channels that are not part of the cable company's basic tier of service.

My own cable company, Comcast Cablevision of Baltimore County, Maryland, charges extra for all digital channels, since it basic tier channels are still all-analog. So all digital cable channels that are available to customers require decoding.

Currently, no products for either the Mac or PC will do that. That may change someday. If it does, I could conceivably make a Mac mini into the equivalent of a TiVo Series 3 HD-DVR, but with the ability to permanently archive high-def and standard-def TV content in its original form.


There's also the problem of bandwidth, though. Broadcast 720p and 1080i signals require up to 19.2 Mbps. They're only lightly digitally compressed — though cable companies typically squeeze broadcast digital channels down, bandwidth-wise, yet more.

Suppose you could somehow input 1080i at up to 19.2 Mbps into iTV and wanted to record it on a Mac mini, to which the iTV wirelessly networks via one of Apple's AirPort 802.11g products. 802.11g (also called WiFi) can run as fast as 54 Mbps, with a "typical" rate of 25 Mbps. That conceivably could be fast enough for shunting a single HDTV signal around a home network — assuming optimal wireless reception conditions. So, technically speaking, it might be possible for Apple or a third party to enhance iTV to serve as an HD-DVR — a high-definition digital video recorder.

Hence it would be nice if digital cable boxes and satellite receivers offered USB 2.0 output of their digital video signals for use by the likes of iTV. Then any digitally compressed TV signal received by the cable box might be exported into iTV, where software such as Elgato's EyeTV could capture it, either on iTV itself or elsewhere on the home network, via 802.11g.

That would be nirvana, but it's not apt to happen. Think of the copy-protection issues. Though you have a legal right to archive, for you own enjoyment and use, TV programs you legitimately receive, content providers are not about to make it easy for you. We've all heard about the "broadcast flag" that might one day be inserted into digital TV programs so you can't copy them. There are other flags in digital television that can do the same sort of thing. I've yet to hear whether, or how, they're in use today, but you can bet they'll sprout right up once a product something like iTV makes digital-TV capture simple for the masses.


Meanwhile, the prerecorded content Steve Jobs has in mind for iTV play is mainly what's available at Apple's iTunes Store. There you can now get songs, as always, plus movies, TV shows, podcasts, music videos, and movie trailers. All but the original music-only files feature video. The movies and TV shows are of near-DVD video quality, 640 pixels by 480. (DVDs are something like 704 x 480.)

That's a long way from high-def. Apple is betting that the convenience, usability, archivability, networkability, and reasonable pricing of their media content will offset the lower video resolution. Apple may be right. I can't be the only one to have noticed that 720p and 1080i/p HDTV content remains decidedly "niche" in appeal and availability, years after the HD revolution supposedly began.

Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 2)

In Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 1) I may have gotten the cart before the horse. I was musing about how to record TV on a Mac mini equipped with an add-on TV tuner. I was also pondering how to play that and other digital content back into a new LCD flat-panel TV and sound system, probably via a digital media player that communicates with the Mac over a local area network. But first, I think, I ought to consider what the Mac mini can do videowise, all by itself.

The Mac mini is a bare-bones desktop Mac which you trick out with a monitor, a wired or wireless keyboard, and a wired or wireless mouse. It has a front slot for DVDs and other optical media. You can hook the mini to a flat-panel TV via its DVI port, insert a DVD, and have Apple's Front Row software play the DVD right on the TV screen.

In the setup I have in mind, I expect to route video to the TV with a DVI-to-HDMI cable and 5.1-channel audio to an audio system over a cable plugged into the audio output of the mini. For the video connection, I could also get away with hooking the DVI-to-HDMI adapter which Apple includes with the mini to a DVI-to-DVI cable which I already have on hand. See below for more.

Front Row is media software that is controlled by the Apple Remote shown at left in the picture above, and alternatively by keyboard shortcuts (if your mini has a keyboard). It also plays back home movies, photos, and music files from the mini itself or shared by any computer networked to it. "Apple’s zero-configuration technology, Bonjour, lets Front Row find your content easily," says this review from Macworld.

So far, no call for a keyboard or mouse. But, as this later Macworld review notes, you need these input devices to get everything working to your satisfaction. (That review, by the way mentions "Apple’s forthcoming iTV product [which] better fills this niche by doing away with the computer interface and relying solely on a simple, Front Row-style menu system." I see I'll have to find out more about that iTV product.)

Another Macworld article tells of one reporter's experiences using the mini as a media center. It's amplified by this further article discussing issues people have run into connecting the mini to an HDTV.

In the first article, the reporter (Christopher Breen) found that "When outfitted with the proper peripherals (and those peripherals are correctly configured) the mini performed as a workable media center as long as its media files were stored on the mini or a hard drive attached to it. As a client tasked with streaming media from another computer, Front Row and the mini have a way to go."

But Breen (in my opinion inexcusably, these days) wasn't using an HDTV! He needed to use Apple's optional DVI-to-video adapter ($19) to hook the mini to his dinosaur non-digital SDTV. He also notes that you need to buy a special adapter to convert the mini's audio output connection to TosLink, the standard for digital optical transmission of audio signals. He says that "Griffin Technology’s $20 XpressCable includes the adapter necessary for the cable to work with the mini’s audio jack." Shame on Apple for not including it with the mini.

Breen found that the dumbed-down 800x600 resolution the mini chose for his TV was fine for DVDs but made ordinary computer graphics "a bit squished and fuzzy." There was also the drawback that the Front Row software gave him no control over the audio volume, though his AV receiver did.

Breen added in Elgato's now-discontinued EyeTV 200 tuner/recorder/playback/editing box and Eye2 software to "watch live TV, record TV programs, create schedules for [TV] recordings, and automatically export those recordings in a format compatible with an iPod with video." This use of the mini as a TiVo-like device worked, but with drawbacks. I'll skip those drawbacks for now.

Breen, by the way, recommends Belkin’s $99 MediaPilot as a combination wireless keyboard/wireless mouse, over Apple's Bluetooth-based equivalents. But the Belkin's software, he says, isn't yet compatible with the new Intel-based Macs. Pah!


Breen tried streaming video from his other Macs to the mini wirelessly via AirPort, with mixed results. Part of the problem was that his Airport signal strength was marginal. But even switching to wired Gigabit Ethernet didn't cure all the woes he encountered, with Front Row refusing to play some of the remote video movie files it should have been able to cope with.

Breen later followed up with this postscript discussing how to obviate some of those drawbacks, summarizable thus: "Despite creating the fastest network possible as well as providing Front Row with the slimmest movies possible, it and iTunes refused to play them unless I created an alias of the original movie, mounted the network volume where that movie resided, and copied the alias to the mini’s Movies folder." The solution: "... movies [i.e., computer movie files] must have their streaming option enabled" by means of a procedure which Breen details.

Even so, streaming video "choked" over anything but a wired Gigabit Ethernet network. A "solid AirPort" wireless network wasn't fast enough. And movies that were "too long," if they also had high bitrates, wouldn't stream even over Gigabit Ethernet.


Now, on to the mini-to-HDTV connection perplexities discussed here. One such perplexity is, of course, that the mini provides (only) a DVI video output. DVI was all the rage on HDTVs a couple of years ago, but it's since been overtaken by HDMI. Both DVI and HDMI are digital connections. They're capable of routing uncompressed digital video signals from a source device such as a DVD player or a Mac mini to a TV. But DVI uses a bigger, clumsier connector and doesn't carry any audio signal whatsoever.

Shame on Apple for not putting HDMI output on the mini, then. In fact, I think I can guarantee that the day after I buy a mini, Steve Jobs will announce an all-new Mac mini, replete with the latest-and-greatest version of HDMI, which happens to be HDMI 1.3, and everything else that it needs to bring Apple front-and-center in the race computer-TV convergence reace. That's probably when the anticipated Apple iTV product (see above) will debut as well.

Anyhow, the current mini requires that you buy a DVI-to-HDMI conversion cable in order to hook it to an HDTV's HDMI input. Or you can get either a DVI-to-DVI cable and a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, or an HDMI-to-HDMI cable with a similar adapter. You can find what you need at reasonable prices at Pacific Custom Cable.

There is also the question of what screen resolution the Mac will use with any given model of HDTV. For example, according to this part of the previously mentioned article in Macworld, with a Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42-inch plasma TV the Mac mini's screen resolution automatically changes to 1,600-by-900 pixels at a refresh rate of 60 Hertz.

The Panasonic TH-42PX60U's native screen resolution is 1024 x 768, a common value in plasma HDTVs. That native resolution is neither of the two standards of HDTV resolution: 1920 x 1080 for 1080i and 1080p, and 1280 x 720 for 720p. The 1600 x 900 of the Mac mini's self-selected output exceeds both 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 720, in both the horizontal and vertical directions. It has the correct widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio (note that 1024 x 768 does not translate to 16:9, so the Panasonic's screen pixels are not actually "square").

But the Mac mini may not actually produce full 1920 x 1080 resolution for input to a true 1080p display. In fact, it's not clear whether the Mac mini will sync to a resolution and refresh rate that your HDTV can handle. If, say, your HDTV can sync to 1080i, 720p, or 480p at 60Hz, then perhaps it cannot sync to what amounts to 900p resolution at 60 Hz. It's unclear whether the mini is smart enough to self-select another resolution/refresh rate in such a case.

You can manually set the mini's Displays preference panel to use a different screen resolution if you like, at the cost of making text either too small to read or too "bloated." This can be done in the Displays panel of System Preferences ... but only if you have a properly sync'ed picture on the screen to begin with.

Macworld found 1600 x 900 just right for both computer use and DVD playback on the Panasonic TH-42PX60U. But there was also a problem with "overscan" — the tendency of almost all TVs to put the top, bottom, and side edges of the image beyond the boundaries of the screen. This has been standard practice since the early days of television, since the image on a picture tube shrinks with age. In the digital era, overscan hides the ofttimes noisy image edges.

But computers want to use every pixel of the screen, so displaying their video on an HDTV can cause problems. Macworld found the mini's Displays preferences to have an option to compensate for overscan. Using it put a black border around the whole image on the Panasonic. A DVD then would not fill the entire screen.


The Macworld article also mentioned the need to use the mini's Displays panel to create a custom color profile for the Panasonic, to keep the metallic color of the Mac's windows from having a pinkish cast.

Here is one of the great things about using a Mac as a video source; I don't think the Macworld article did it justice. The Color tab of the Displays preference panel lets you calibrate your display, thereby creating an ideal profile you can use evermore for that display.

The calibration is fairly easy to do. You are walked through a series of steps in which you use the mouse (or, better still, the arrow and tab keys) to adjust a drawing of a filled-in apple-in-silhouette so it is a neutral shade of gray (i.e., lacking any tinge of color) and has exactly the same lightness or darkness as the area surrounding it. This process of adjusting the renditions of grays, oddly enough, makes sure that all colors, at all brightness levels, look just as they should. I think of this as adjusting the image's color balance, but the correct term is performing a grayscale adjustment.

I find on my MacBook Pro that I get the best results if I temporarily change the screen resolution to its lowest available value, so that the apple shape within its surrounding area is as big as possible.

After a number of these color balance or grayscale adjustment steps — and you may want to back up and repeat some of them to get them all just right — you are next asked to choose a "gamma" value via an adjustable slider. This determines how much contrast the screen image will appear to have. If gamma is too low, the image will look flat and washed out. If too high, the image will be objectionably dim for the most part, with glaring highlights.

Next, you choose a target "white point" — a "color temperature" which determines how yellowish-to-bluish the cast of the overall image will be. Ideally, you'd like the white point to be D65, or 6504 degrees Kelvin. Most HDTVs don't hew to that supposed ideal, for reasons I won't go into here. Often, their best approximation is their so-called "Warm" temperature setting, but color temperature may still vary widely with brightness levels within the image. The Mac calibration I'm currently discussing can compensate for all this — but only, of course, when the Mac itself is being used as the HDTV's video source.

One nice thing about how Apple implements all this calibration stuff is that you are doing it in a separate window on the "computer" screen. In another window you can display, say, a freeze frame from a black & white DVD. As you make all the calibration adjustments, you can immediately see the effect on the DVD image. If, for example, the DVD image looks tinged with a bit of green, you know right away you have made some mistake in the calibration and can correct it accordingly.

That's basically it. At the end of the calibration process, you decide whether or not you want to deny other users of your Mac access to your color profile, and you give your profile a name by which you will thenceforth be able to select it in the Displays panel. End of story.

I'll have more to say on the Mac mini connection in my next installment.

Media Center Mac Mini for My Bedroom? (Part 1)

I'm pretty sure I'll be getting a flat-panel LCD for my bedroom soon, probably the highly-thought-of Sharp AQUOS LC-37D90U, a 37" 1080p TV. My original intent was to feed it with one of the new TiVo Series 3 high-def digital video recorders, suitably equipped with one or two CableCards for digital cable reception. But it occurs to me it would be more fun to use some sort of Media Center PC instead.

Media Center PCs are big in the world of Windows-based machines, but I'd rather use a Mac as my media center hub. The ideal Mac for the job would seem to be an ultra-compact Mac Mini, a midget computer-in-a-box to which you BYODKM — bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse.

"How to turn your Mac Mini into a media center" at engadget.com tells one way to do this. It hooks the Mac Mini to two products from Elgato Systems, EyeHome and EyeTV. The article is unclear about which EyeTV model is best. It recommends EyeTV 200 but says it was unobtainable at press time. It also mentions EyeTV 500. Both those models now seem to be obsolete. The one to use seems to be EyeTV Hybrid (see picture at left).

EyeTV Hybrid hooks into a USB port on a Mac and accepts a cable-TV cable connection as it's input source. Using software supplied with it, it tunes into cable channels and allows them to be watched on the Mac's monitor or screen and/or recorded to the Mac's disk drive. The Mac in effect becomes a TiVo. In the picture to the right, the Mac is a portable, but it could equally be a Mini. In that case, the flat-panel TV would hook to the Mini's DVI output via a DVI-to-HDMI cable, and it would serve as the Mini's monitor.

That's how cable-TV video can delivered to the Mac Mini to be recorded, and how it can be watched on the LCD flat panel. But media centers are about more than video; they involve other sorts of content too, such as photos, home movies, music files, etc. Here's where the EyeHome comes in.

Instead of (or in addition to) running a DVI/HDMI hookup from the Mac direct to the flat panel, I can run an Ethernet connection from Mac to EyeHome, and hook the EyeHome to the TV. Using the EyeHome software, I can stream every kind of computer media to the TV and its sound system.

The EyeHome has a menu interface that shows up on the TV screen and is controlled by the EyeHome remote control. From those menus I can select the media files I want to watch and hear. The EyeHome fetches them from the Mac and feeds them to the TV and sound gear.

EyeHome can also do its stuff wirelessly. Instead of an Ethernet cable, it can communicate with the Mac by means of Airport Express. The AE unit is simply set up to extend a network provided by one of Apple's Airport Extreme base stations. I have such a base station already, and I also have a couple of AEs in use.

The December 2004 issue of Home Theater had a review of a similar setup to the one I'm contemplating. Theirs was an EyeTV 200, not an EyeTV Hybrid. They liked the EyeHome, with few reservations. The EyeTV 200 had some drawbacks.

First of all, the EyeTV 200 is (or was) a standalone box connected to the Mac via Firewire, not a "stick" plugged into a USB port. Fair enough — I might go instead with a box-like EyeTV 610. Be that as it may, one hitch with EyeTV is that its program guide is limited to that at the TitanTV website. It's not clear to me how ergonomic that would be — especially since the only way to feed EyeTV with digital and/or encrypted cable channels requires that you hook it to a cable box via an RF connection and let the cable box do the channel selection. So how would I get EyeTV to consult the program guide and to administer the box accordingly?

It would be nice to find an EyeTV model that can accept a CableCard. So far, I'm not sure any of them do.

Nor am I sure whether EyeTV can handle high-definition digital cable channels as such. Unlikely, in view of the RF-only input connection.

More later.