Bad News(3) is that no court has yet determined which of these two sections takes precedence, but then there's Good News(3): specifically, I just don't care. Good News(2) is that copyright law also says that you have the specific right to duplicate that DVD for your own purposes - such as moving it from one form of media to another - provided that you purchased the thing legally. Bad News(2) is that breaking such encryption is illegal under the terms of US Copyright Law. The good news is that the trade organization that developed the scheme brought the same amount of insight and know-how to the problem as Sherwood Schwarz brought to the average episode of "Gilligan's Island," and the scheme was quickly and thoroughly cracked. The bad news is that DVDs, unlike CDs, are encrypted to prevent copying. The whole point of iTunes was that you could convert all of the discs you already have into a useful, friendly, and eminently huggable digital format. No ghosting, no snow, the colors are 's like the show came straight off of a DVD.īut maybe you're not necessarily keen on spending $300 to acquire video files, nor does the idea of having an entire season's worth of "The Apprentice: Martha Stewart" in your pocket fill you with awe and wonderment. Grabbing Letterman with enough resolution to make a 4圆 print out of every frame is nice, but the real bonus of popping for high-def is that it's a digital signal. That's because I've got the EyeTV 500, which records in high-def. And note that in the above screenshot, that episode of "Late Show With David Letterman" is particularly gi-normous. No sweat EyeTV's export feature is customizable. Needless to say, you're probably going to want to resize the file to something that your hard drive (and the storage capacity of whatever-it-is you're going watch that video on) can handle. EyeTV also features a simple but slick little editing tool tuned specifically to the task of deleting commercials and other nonsense.ĮyeTV - Garbage in, garbage out: it's the perfect TV processor. Just select a show from your "EyeTV Programs" window, hit "Export." from the "File" menu, and wait and watch while the show is duly transmogrified into a universal MP4 QuickTime file. But there is indeed an onscreen programming guide (through ) and if EyeTV isn't a superlative PVR, at least it's a solid one.Īnd it'll give you the video files you want. "According to Jim" will doggedly record every Tuesday at 8 PM, even after the network has decided that thirty minutes of dead air would be just as entertaining and they cancel the show. You can't tell it to simply record every single Stockard Channing show or movie that comes along, for example, and if there's a last-minute schedule change, EyeTV isn't smart enough to figure that out. Alas, it falls somewhat short of the desired ideal. The temptation is to describe the EyeTV as like a TiVO for your Mac. But! With the ability to live invisible and undetected inside your office cubicle (good) and to record TV shows (even better). The high-scoring idea is that you plug this shiny little box into any available USB port, hook it up to either your cable or a set of rabbit ears, launch the EyeTV software and bingo: your $3000 Mac is now a $100 TV set. Didn't your cellphone company teach you that one-time signup fees don't count? Well, what could possibly be simpler than having fresh content delivered straight to your Mac minute by minute, and automatically saved to disk? And it's free! Just think of the $329 cost of the EyeTV 200 box as a one-time signup fee. ![]() Your allies in this struggle are many and powerful: So you're going to need to start converting things that are actually watchable. And you were just barely interested enough in that to sit through it live. ![]() The point is that whether or not there's a video iPod inside someone's chest cavity waiting for its moment to burst out and start tormenting Siguorney Weaver, having movies and TV shows on your hard drive is going to be a big deal.īecause otherwise, I mean, you're stuck with a $400 iPod Video that can only show iMovies of your sister's wedding. Not to worry by the time I upload this, the Big Announcement will have been made and I'll have replaced the preceding intro with something that stresses that I obviously knew what the announcement was going to be all along. Okay: definitely there's a possibility that there'll be an iPod that can play video, which will be released sometime, today possibly, or maybe sometime next year. As I sit down and write this (about 12:30 EST on Wednesday afternoon, the video iPod is a Maybe.
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