Evolution TV

Company	:	Miglia Technology Ltd
Price	:	RM 1,150
Rating	:

Miglia's Evolution TV is a USB2.0 TV Tuner which allows you to watch, pause and record full-screen TV on your Mac.

The first thing you'll notice once you take it out of the box is how light the Evolution TV is. Though some may argue that this makes the product feel 'cheap', the weight makes it very portable and easy to place on fragile areas. Furthermore its brushed-metal aluminium finish makes it a perfect match for any Mac hardware, especially the PowerBook and PowerMac G5.

Setting up the Evolution TV is easy. After installing the software (supplied on the included CD), you plug in your TV cable and hook it up to your Mac via its USB2.0 port. Then you define your settings by selecting your country, TV mode and input mode before scanning for channels. This may take several minutes but once they're set, you can easily select the channel to view by clicking on the user-defined names.

You can watch TV in different sizes, not just full-screen. One cool feature is that you can adjust the transparency of the TV window. This means you can make it semi-transparent so you can see what's underneath. In other words, you could, in effect, watch TV and do your work at the same time! (Just don't tell the kids about this!)

Recording your favourite show is also a simple process. Having defined the file format, just press the Record button for instant recording. To schedule future recordings, you simply program the channels, dates and times, just like your VCR. Evolution TV's scheduler also synchronises with iCal.

One of the main strengths of the Evolution TV is the file formats in which it can save your TV recordings: MPEG 2, MPEG 4 and DivX. File sizes vary according to your settings and file formats. For my testing, a 7 min clip in 'normal' MPEG 4 format was around 100MB. If you think this is big, don't worry. MPEG 4 files can be instantly edited in iMovie and saved (or shared) as a smaller size.

All in all, the Evolution TV is a cool product. It can it do everything your old VCR could and more. It allows you to quickly edit your recordings, for example cutting out the ads, using your favourite software. And it makes it easy and convenient for you to burn your favourite shows to DVD.

Just as how the iPod has replaced the Walkman, Evolution TV is the VCR of today.

Technical specs:

• TV/Antenna/Cable in, Composite, S-Video IN, Stereo audio in connectors (RCA)
• Max viewing size: 720x576 (PAL), 720x480 (NTSC)
• Max audio sample rate: 48 KHz, 16 bits, stereo
• Video Output: MPEG-2 (.mpg), MPEG-4 (.mp4), DivX (.avi)
• Unit weight: 800 gm

Minimum requirements:

• Power PC G4 800MHz or higher
• 256MB RAM
• USB2.0
• Mac OS X 10.3.x or later

Evolution TV is available at all Apple Centres.