HDTV and Mac
April 29th, 2004, 4:23pm by MikeHow can you pass up a post that involves HDTV, TiVo, and Macs?!?!
From MacOSXHints.com, one of the best Mac how-to sites out there (along with macfixit.com), comes the post Record and playback high definition TV signals.
Bottom line — cable companies (but not satellite companies) are required to provide, on demand, FireWire capable HD cable boxes (they cost an extra $8-10 per month). With the right software (all free), you can record and play back your video on your computer (and if you have an HDTV with a FireWire-in port, you can broadcast back to your TV! ).The problems cited are (1) encryption is possible on all non-broadcast HD channels, and (2) the file sizes are huge – 12 GB for Star Wars Episode II. So you’ll need an external FW hard drive, too.
It may all be moot for us, though, since according to one commenter, “playback with VLC of 720p or 1080i content is going to need a *hefty* CPU and probably won’t play on anything but the latest and greatest G5’s
I’m sure that something similar must exist for Windows…