MacEdition Pro News : October 10, 2002: TV times drives iPod skins
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Golden Convergence comes to your desktop
What would you call a digital hub that doesn’t hook up to to all those hundreds of channels out there in TV Land? Well, you can’t call that device a Mac anymore!
The good folks at Dr. Bott have hooked up with El Gato Software to distribute El Gato’s EyeTV, a video tuner/recorder device that hooks up to your USB port. Eric Prentice, CEO of Dr. Bott, said the distributor took a page from the Victor Kiam marketing method handbook when they decided to pick up the EyeTV product line.
“EyeTV is one of the few products that has changed the way I do something outside of the computer world. I almost never used to watch TV, and when I did, there was nothing on.” Prentice said. “Now EyeTV records the few shows that I’m interested in and I watch them whenever I have spare time, never wasting a minute on commercials or shows I don’t want to watch.”
The EyeTV unit, which retails for US$199, comes with a handy search application that will allow you to preprogram the device to record shows to your hard drive using MPEG-1 at the rate of 650MB per recorded hour of broadcast. You can also burn your favorite episodes to CD through Roxio’s Toast (which supports VCD formats).
Those wishing to kick back and do a little channel surfing will be happy to know the software is compatible with Keyspan’s Digital Media Remote.
Hooking up to the big space
If you’re needing a quick and easy way to hook up a large hard drive to your new digital hub, you’ll be happy to know that WiebeTech has recently put its new Super DesktopGB hard drive on the market.
The external drive is a FireWire/USB 2.0 bus-powered device which uses the lower-cost (and higher-capacity) 3.5-inch ATA drives. According to the company’s press release the drive is expected to find a home with users who might not always have an electrical outlet handy when they need to use a really big hard drive.
“Super DesktopGB provides single cable convenience for many users, eliminating the need for a wall transformer,” said James Wiebe, CEO of WiebeTech. “It also provides superb performance, utilizing an Oxford OXFW911 bridge in conjunction with highest performance 7200RPM drives, with measured transfer rates greater than 30MB/sec. Its excellent performance, combined with bus powering, makes it the best FireWire storage product in the market.”
Just in case your Mac can’t easily handle the power drain from the device, WiebeTech ships a global AC power adapter (complete with a European pin adapter) with every unit.
In other drive news, WiebeTech has also added a 60GB version of its MicroGB pocket drive to its line up. The drive, which accommodates the 2.5-inch form factor mechanisms, is available in 4200RPM and 5400RPM flavors which sell for US$419 and US$479 respectively.
When cool isn’t cool enough
The only thing cooler than running around with a couple thousand tunes in your pocket is having those tunes in a case to protect them from all the bumps and blemishes that come with being a guy or gal on the go.AckNowledge, another one of those crafty Canuck companies, recently released a new version of its iSkin case aimed at all those people buying the new versions of the pocket-sized portable player.
According to the company’s press release, the silicone iSkin provides your iPod with grip-tight protection without sacrificing style or aesthetics of the device. Other features include:
- Molded specifically for the new 10% thinner 10GB iPod
- Has heat ventilation pores to promote heat dissipation (valuable in disk mode)
- Protects while leaving all iPod controls accessible
- Raised rear feet pegs that aid in heat release when placed flat on table top
- Extended upper protection above iPod screen area
- Hand washable
- Very flexible yet durable and long lasting
- Preserves the beauty and form of the iPod
- Side hand strap connector for attaching a hand strap (not included)
- iSkin is also available for original 5GB, 10GB and new 20GB iPods
The US$20 case comes in a wide variety of colors suitable for almost every fashion occasion.
Makin’ the move
PublicSpace.net dropped us a line that it’s put up the Mac OS X Beta 2 version of A Better Finder Rename.
A Better Finder Rename 5.0 Beta 2 for Mac OS X introduces droplet support to the Mac OS X version of the tool. Droplets allow common settings to be saved to drag & drop applications. When the user drags files onto these droplets the files are automatically processed using these settings.
Anybody wanting to try out the work in progress should hop on over to the download site to try out the program.
Sorry about that, chief
Also in our little mailbox this week was a note from Parker Software advising us of an update to its ArcherPro multimedia viewer application. It seems the update was required because the previous version had a bug which wiped out the user’s registration information.
The update is available at Parker’s site.
Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at http://old.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.