Elgato Video Capture allows Macs to record analog video
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 8th 2009 11:31AM
posted May 8th 2009 11:31AM
[Via Electronista]
posted May 8th 2009 11:31AM
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I agree with you. And all my old powerpc mac had that include in the computer.
hurray, something nobody really wants!
uh.. wow. i didn't pay that much for a usb-video adapter 10 FUCKING YEARS AGO.
Jeez, that thing costs 140 bucks? Wow, welcome to 1996!
What happened to suddenly make all those capture devices that use $2.50 chips and were no more than $30 to suddenly all become at least $70? At a time where you'd think nobody would try to get rich on the old analog format, I smell an illegal agreement between companies to milk the people,, the whole thing stinks to high heaven and if there were competent antitrust investigators this would not be something they could have pulled.
Long history that shows shenanigans were not liked for ages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust
I had this as part of my Pinnacle DV500 capture card... 10 years ago? Granted, it needed the PCI card to work, so having all the components together seems convenient, but the price seems way out of whack to me.
Coincidentally, I'm moving to a new apartment, and I was just looking at the box of VHS tapes and wondering how I was going to transfer them to my Macbook Pro...
~T
I guess that's it, they know that the people in the market for something like that want to get rid of their old tapes ASAP so they jack up the price while they got you where they want you, so that only leaves the question as to how they got everybody to agree to make these things hugely expensive and how they got the asian companies to stop shipping the cheap kind (that use the same chips of course).
Jeez, can we get some more uninformed knee jerk reactions from people who've never seen or used a product from Elgato? First, Elgato has been around since 1992 and they've delivered quality Mac hardware and software for both analog and digital TV in the US and around the world. I've owned two of their products (the original USB analog product and the recent hybrid analog/HDTV stick). They aren't perfect but I've also used PC TV products from Hauppage and others during the same period and the Elgato products are head and shoulders better in many ways.
The current product appears to have the capabilities of the hybrid tuner but without the tuner. The tuner costs $50 more and includes a cable that plugs into the side of the USB stick and has inputs like those shown in the new product. The software is probably a subset of the EyeTV 3 software that comes with the tuner. I bought the hybrid tuner specifically to capture video from several "historical" sources (VHS, 8mm, DVD camcorder) and the results have been greatly appreciated. The cabling, though, is rather unwieldy and the new product corrects that defect as you can see from the picture.
I would still recommend getting the tuner which bundles in the video capture capability (with software that is pleasant to use unlike what I dealt with on the PC). But I can see how the marginally lower cost, simpler cabling and probably simpler software might appeal to someone uninterested in the tuner capability.
Looks like this is available in the US for $99
http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/buy.en.html
PC had these types of devices years ago and for less than half the price.
What, so you could record video game footage from your tv, directly to your mac? that'd be good for uploading gameplay to youtube then!