Elgato Debuts EyeTV 250 Plus DVR

Elgato Systems on Thursday introduced the EyeTV 250 Plus, a new hybrid television tuner and video converter with hardware-based encoding for the Mac. It comes bundled with Elgato's popular EyeTV Digital Video Recorder (DVR) software. It's available now for $199.

The EyeTV 250 Plus lets you receive ATSC (over-the-air digital television) signals, and incorporates a coaxial jack, which can be used for an ATSC antenna or analog television or cable. An included adapter cable lets you input Composite (RCA) video and S-Video signals, as well.

The EyeTV 250 performs hardware-based MPEG-2 video encoding, stored on your Mac and capable of being exported and edited using the EyeTV 2 software. The software also includes an Internet-based electronic program guide that will enable you to more easily schedule recordings of programs you want to watch.

Elgato has included a copy of Roxio's "Toast 8 Basic," a slimmed-down version of their CD/DVD recording software, to enable you to burn EyeTV videos to DVD.

System requirements call for a G4 or better (including Intel), 512MB RAM, USB 2.0 port and Mac OS X v10.4 or later.