In the United States, you can receive any of three kinds of digital video broadcasts. These include:
*Terrestrial digital video, which is broadcast over the airways using the ATSC standard. Your local network affiliates and public television stations send out the signal from their local towers. This makes the signals directional, so some antenna adjustment may be needed to properly receive the broadcast.
*Satellite digital video, which is broadcast via satellite television using a variety of standards, many of which are proprietary. Some satellite companies (like DIRECTV and Dish) also provide terrestrial ATSC tuners to their customers to receive local network broadcasts.
*Cable digital video is broadcast over cable systems that provide digital TV service. HDTV channels are added as they are established, usually in the upper reaches of the numbering system. As with satellite broadcasts, cable providers use a number of standards including OpenCable and DVB-C.
From a Mac point of view, reception options are limited. Elgato’s Eye TV 500 can receive, display, and record both terrestrial and (some) cable signals. U.S. do-it-yourselfers can receive terrestrial ATSC signals and unencoded OpenCable transmissions. (Unfortunately, few cable companies transmit unencrypted HDTV.)
Step 3: Test Your Card After installing the software applications and drivers, it’s time to give the card a spin and start watching HDTV. In the following steps, you’ll learn how to use i Tele to watch and to record HDTV broadcasts.
1. Launch i Tele. As this is your first time running the program, it will not yet know which broadcast channels it can receive.
2. Adjust your antenna, pointing it towards the greatest density of broadcast signals in your area.
3. Open the Inputs window (Window -> Inputs, Command-1). Here’s where you need to hold your breath. If you see your card listed, then everything’s OK. If not, then it’s time to make sure you’ve installed the drivers and maybe to open up your Mac again and see if you’ve installed the board correctly.
4. Select the DVICO Fusion card by clicking on its name in the Inputs window. As you do so, a drawer will open at the bottom of the window, which shows further details (or it will in future releases of i Tele).
5. Click the Scan button in the drawer to begin scanning the airwaves for digital broadcasts.
6. Enter a location after you’ve been prompted. Choose Korea and North America and click Scan.
7. Wait. It takes several minutes for the scanning
process to proceed. The Channels window shows
the progress of the search. Do not be alarmed if
i Tele only finds one or two broadcasts. Remember,
they are directional.
After scanning has finished, the remaining channels listed in the Channels Window (Window ->
*Mplayer is a port of the Linux movie-viewing ap- Channels, Command-2) are what you can watch.
plication. i Tele supports two ways of watching video. The Channel menu is a little tricky, so here’s a quick
You can use an internal viewer (that is to say, within overview before you continue.
the i Tele program itself) or Mplayer as an external
viewer. Download your copy of the OS X MPlayer Channel -> Watch and Channel -> Watch Off: from SourceForge. The current version is 2b8r4, These two menu items turn “watching” (versus
available at mplayerosx.sourceforge.net. recording or anything else) on and off. It’s a little
counterintuitive, but it does work.
References:
Archives