Digital Television - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 437

Table 27-3 Some Examples of PC-Based TV Receivers

Receiver MacOS Windows

Miglia-Alchemy TV Yes No

Hauppage-WinTV No Yes

ElGato-Eye TV Yes Not currently but technically feasible

HDTV ready. This is a neat solution because it basically just receives the DVB transport
stream and any decoding and presentation is done by the application. This allows you
to write your own plug-in modules and intercept that decoding process to extract data
feeds.
Some varieties of these TV tuners also receive radio, and if you don't want an out-
board box then a PCI card is a viable alternative.

27.8 TV on the Go and Mobile DVR Products

Another area that is growing in interest is the use of the DVB-H standard. This gives
mobile-equipment manufacturers the opportunity to build TV services that can be enjoyed
by viewers on the move.
Pace has anticipated the demand for recording this kind of material and viewing it
in a time-shifted manner. At the IBC 2004 conference, they introduced a handheld DVR
product that features a 40-GB drive and a 5-inch widescreen display.
Another contender in this area is Nokia, with its very unusual-looking portable
media-player device. The next chapter explores these mobile video technologies.

Alchemy TV: http://www.miglia.com/
Win TV: http://www.hauppage.com/
El Gato: http://www.elgato.com/
Pace Micro Technology: http://www.pacemicro.com/
Nokia: http://www.nokia.com/