This was pretty much an impulse buy from Apple's online store as they were offering a third off the price and I thought that if I have to buy a TV licence, I may as well get all the channels I'm paying for. I'd read a lot of reviews and come to the conclusion that the included mini aerial was unlikely to work here in Cambridge. I plugged the thing in, fired up the configuration assistant, and sure enough, not one channel! I tried two 'amplified' indoor digital aerials from Maplin and neither helped so I took them back. After some fiddling, I actually managed to get the included aerial to tune in 65 channels by pointing it out of the kitchen window. This is obviously not a practical solution so I've ordered a proper exterior aerial, a DAT-45 (seems to be the one to get for weak signal areas). Hopefully we can rig it up in the loft and won't have to put it outside but I'm not going to hold my breath.
I have to say, when I've had it working, this thing is awesome! The software, EyeTV, really is superb. Really well designed and well written. The TVMini appears also to be capable of handling HDTV broadcasts when they arrive. I guess that's true, because the device just passes the MPEG stream straight to software.
...one day later...
With Markus' help I have now installed the DAT-45 in the loft and it works fine! Just requires some fiddling to get it in the right direction for tuning all channels. It's still not quite perfect (on one set of channels/frequency) but it's getting there.
I've also discovered in deinterlace settings in EyeTV. If you really want the movement on screen to look like a real TV you need to choose the 'Progressive scan' type of deinterlacing. Double-buffering/v-synching is then turned on and you get something that looks a lot more like the high refresh rate of a television. Uses a lot more CPU but makes World Cup football look a lot better! It would be great to have the option to make EyeTV always switch to progressive scan in fullscreen mode.
It would also be nice if EyeTV would mute the sound or hide the video window altogether when it is making a scheduled recording. I don't think I've seen an option for that.
