TVSquad

The Apple iPhone looks like the coolest damn thing since...well, the last thing Apple introduced. But did you know there were mobile/cell phones before it? It's true! I looked it up on Wikipedia.

After the jump is a TV commercial for the Centel, a mobile phone from 1989 (the company was bought by Sprint in the early 90s). Sure, the phone is the size of a two liter bottle of Pepsi, but it's still pretty cool. Notice that there isn't one word of dialogue in the commercial, which is rather remarkable, considering the ad is for something you communicate with. If they made the commercial now, there would be lots of talking and texting and rap music in the background.

Hauppauge has announced that its TV tuner products are now compatible with Macintosh computers running Elgato's EyeTV software.

I've been using Hauppauge tuners in my PC for years now, and I have to say their WinTV PVR-150 standard definition tuner and their hybrid WinTV HVR-1600 SD/HD tuner are workhorses. While those are both PCI tuners, it looks like it will be Hauppauge's newer USB sticks that will work with Macs.

The WinTV Nova-T, Nova-TD, HVR-900 and HVR-950 sticks are all supported. While the number of TV tuners for Macs has risen in the past few years, it's nice to see Hauppauge give some love toward the Apple crowd.

So with all this talk about the AppleTV, it's easy to forget that a Mac Mini isn't much larger and doesn't cost much more. And it's a complete computer. So sure, you could spend your time hacking the AppleTV to add support for extra video codecs, Joost, and external hard drives. Or, as Ars Technica points out, you could just make your Mac Mini into your Home Theater PC.

Ars takes a look at various software that can handle video, movies, music, and photos. All Macs ship with Front Row these days, but it has limited file support out of the box. So the article also explores Xhub, Media Central, iTheater, Center Stage, and MythTV as alternatives.

It's important to keep in mind that most of these solutions do not include PVR functionality out of the box. That's partly because the Mac Mini doesn't come with a TV tuner. You can pick up an external tuner and slap on some EyeTV software, but it might not integrate perfectly with your HTPC software of choice.

It looks like there's some bad blood between Elgato and Miglia. The software company behind the popular EyeTV Mac-based PVR software said Monday that Miglia would no longer be authorized to bundle EyeTV with Miglia TV tuner devices.

No reason has been given for the announcement, but Miglia said it would put out a press release Tuesday.

This is bad news for Mac users, but it also seems like a bad idea for Elgato. Miglia is one of the largest companies producing TV tuners for the Mac, and without a TV tuner, customers have no real use for PVR software. It's possible that Elgato is preparing to announce a partnership with another company, or even to launch its own brand of tuners.

Elgato says customers who have already purchased Miglia tuners with EyeTV software will continue to receive support.

PBS tech guru Robert Cringely is going around spreading rumors about an upcoming Apple upgrade. Here's the deal (best taken with two asprin and a grain of salt): Apple will add a chip that handles video decoding and encoding to all of its computers this year.

The chip will be capable of proessing H.264 videos, meaning you can watch all of those videos downloaded from the iTunes store without putting any real strain on your CPU at all. The bigger story will be the chip's encoding power. Because with great power comes... great capability of recording television programs.

It'll cost Apple about $50 per device to add the new chip. But the chip could pay for itself in no time flat by ensuring that every Apple computer sold, from the Mac Mini to the high end Mac Pro will be able to handle all sorts of multimedia and video functions. And in a world where computers are increasingly used to consume, create, and upload videos to YouTube, that's a killer app.