Reality Check | Ephraim Schwartz » It's not Mad TV...it's Mac TV

November 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

It's not Mad TV...it's Mac TV

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The FCC has mandated that as of February 2009 all television broadcasts must be digital. Goodbye analog.

But just in the nick of time we have AMD--and there will be others--launching its ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac.

That’s quite a mouthful but then it does quite a few things.

Now I haven’t seen it in action, but like all technology geeks I want one anyway.

The 650 Combo is a USB device that plugs into almost any Mac to receive both digital and television broadcast signals over, or as they call it, off-the-air.

Plus it has two ports on the back. One for cable digital and or analog TV and a port for an analog TV antenna.

The product is new for Mac and has been out for the PC for a few months.

For me the beauty of the system is if you’re not one of those "I want my HBO" folks you can get an awful lot of shows without having to pay the exorbitant cable company subscription fees.

These companies, like Comcast and others, have had their hand in my pocket for far too long. If I can now watch TV on my Mac I’m set.

By the way, the device is already being used as a business tool
Matthew Kreiner, product marketing manager for the AMD Multimedia Group tell s me.

It is being set up in news rooms where reporters and editors can watch the news on their laptops.

Even the cable companies are using it to check the signal during installation and in financial services brokers are using it to watch the ticker scroll on CNN’s financial channel.

"If you are familiar with the low quality TV with bleeding red into white we clean that up," says Kreiner thus making the crawl across the bottom of the screen clear and readable.

Here’s what you get with the Combo box for all of $149.

• High definition free off-the-air service. In other words all the major channel affiliates of CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, for example, broadcast local channels for free. Connecting a pair of rabbit ears or one of those typical Radio Shack antennas to the box gives you all of those shows.

• Basic analog stations that are broadcast through the local cable company, until February 2009.

This could be channels 2 through 125 or whatever, that the cable company sends to a basic subscriber.

• ClearQAM – the box is also hardware ready, as Kreiner says, to receive unencrypted digital cable television channels that are broadcast free over the air.

A ClearQAM-ready box will give Mac and PC users the ability to watch basic cable, which will now be broadcast only in digital, for free off-the-air.

"Whatever is freely available over the air that the cable company transmits will be available," Kreiner told me.

The FCC will offer a $40 coupon toward the purchase of a converter box for analog TV owners to convert digital TV off the air to an analog signal.

But if you don’t want to subscribe to satellite or cable and you just want the major networks that are now transmitted for free over analog, you will be set with the Combo 650.

Happy Holidays.

Posted by Ephraim Schwartz on November 16, 2007 05:52 AM

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