The continuing saga of my TV-less world continues (new readers start here) as the nice man from DHL has just delivered my Elgato Hybrid, turning my 20″ iMac into, well, a tele.
Set-up took all of three minutes – gotta love Macs – and I’m now watching BBC News 24 from my Virgin Media box on my “new” flat screen TV (with built-in computer).
(The set-up is this: VM box, Wii, PS2, turntable and DVD player all go into an amp/receiver. Sound goes to the 6 speakers, video signal now goes to the iMac).
So – two vital questions: is the picture good? Oh, yes. Not as sharp as my old CRT perhaps but better than many LCDs I’ve seen. And – possibly more importantly – is everything in sync? So far, so good. There appears to be no timing issues with the tele, the PS2 works (on a quick test) and I now have the advantage of being able to watch all my media (online, offline, disc and download) through one device.
Ok, I’ve admitted it before, I am a geek but, ignoring that for a second, what’s not to like about this arrangement? Was it hard to set-up? No. Is it easy to use? Most definitely. Can I seamlessly switch between BBC News 24, YouTube and a video podcast I just downloaded? Yes – and so can my five year-old daughter.
The lines between delivery mechanisms are already starting to blur – look at the BBC’s iPlayer as one example – and the tipping point for this stuff to move from geeks to “Joe Public” isn’t too far.
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How freaky is that! I replaced my old CRT TV for spanking new 37″ flat screen Samsung/Mac Mini/Elgato Diversity combo just a few weeks back.
Not quite so straight forward for me as I have SKY+ and that apparently is encrypted and can’t be pumped into the mac. So freeview only. Bit of a pain to set up but a booster in the attic later and I had every freeview channel going and I have to say this set up is magic.
The mac does all the SKY+ style recording, I have 1 TB of storage via my Windows Home Server, so that is a lot of music/tv/pics safely archived. I’ve added Harmon Kardon Sound Sticks which provides sweet cinema style sound and great for the old iTunes music. But my fav feature has to be the ability to auto export TV progs to your iPod. The missus now regularly records the bbc news overnight and has it docked on her iPod for viewing in tea breaks at work. Amazing!
I know I’m a little ahead of the game here but I think it is interesting to see the TV & internet converging. Figures for a number of years have been showing that people are shifting from watching TV to using the internet it will be interesting to see the two merge and what people do with it… I know I’m loving it and I’ve only scratched the surface. Now how much for that PS3 to add Blueray….