I have watched TV on my Mac forever. My last tuner was ATI’s Xclaim on my G3, but ATI did not bring it into the OSX world. After moving to a G4, I looked at the choices, but there wasn’t much to be had. El Gato has a nicely designed USB product, but I wanted something more flexible and better quality.

I started out following a product out of Germany that looked promising. It was a PCI card that provided an antenna connection as well as A/V connections. At that point, it was a basic tuner with manual recording solution, but they promised they were looking at DVR scheduling functionality. I bought it mainly to get my TV back.

Installation was a breeze. Open the G4, plug in the card, close the G4, install the software. I then went through the automatic channel setup and I was in business. The picture is excellent, even when going full-screen. The remote control provides channel and volume controls as well as source input selections. Life is good. The G4 version even has an FM tuner built in. The connectors on the card provide RF (cable/antenna), composite & audio in, S-Video and Audio out.

When watching a show, you can press the record button to begin capturing the show to a file. The preferences allow you to specify the size and QuickTime codec you want to use. The card works well, but the software needs some interface work. It would satisfy the average PC user, but it is rather ugly.

The TV screen doesn’t have normal window properties, it just floats where you put it. The on-screen remote is too large and closed captioning is not available. While it doesn’t look the way I want, it does work and it is stable.

I connected my old analog camcorder to it and captured some footage. It worked very well, which provides a low-cost alternative to converting old tapes to digital. Also, since I saved the files in QuickTime format, QuickTime Pro lets you select portions of the movie to delete out so you end up with just what you want without having to import it into another program.

Since I purchased it last year, they have made improvements to the software, released a new G5 card and released DVR scheduling software. I was impressed with the reasonable upgrade fee so I could schedule shows using my card. While still in need of interface work, you can schedule your favorite shows if you know the date, time and channel that you want. The shows that you schedule now even get added to iCal.

What I Like: Good quality video, capturing from analog sources, great price, customer support has been excellent.

What I Didn’t Like: Software interface needs an overhaul; Channel numbers on remote are consecutive and don’t reflect the actual channel numbers; Needs integrated scheduling functionality.

Miglia Alchemy
G4 version $120.00 / G5 version $135

Note: At the time of this update, Miglia is having a Blow-Out Sale of the last few remaining G4-only cards, so you'd better hurry!

April 2004