Formac Studio TVR - owner impressions/thoughts?

wyntirwyntir
Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014


I saw one of these at the Apple Store in Chicago and I immediately lusted after it. My family has a TiVo back home, which I found to be incredibly amazingly mindbendingly useful, and having one hooked up to my Mac would just be great. I read Macworld's review of the TVR, but I didn't find it very helpful.



I'm especially interested to know if it's possible to edit out the commercials from recorded shows and export them via Quicktime to various formats. All that I've heard is that you can burn to SVCD or DVD, but that's not very useful for me (I have a 160GB HD, it's a lot handier just to export to MP4 than to have to keep a bunch of CDs unscratched and organized).



So, owners, if there are any out there, how is it? Are there any features it lacks which you feel are significant? Any gripes? Any comments in general? (EyeTV owners, feel free to chime in about the pros and cons of that as well.)

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    wyntirwyntir Posts: 88member
    Bump in the vain hope that I might get a response. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
  • Reply 2 of 4
    k_munick_munic Posts: 357member
    i have it, the only way, to import analog video into my Cube.

    yes, vtr functionality is awesome, except, i can't use the program functionality you have over there in the states (i have to program by hand, not with a digital tv guide)

    quality is very good, the recording format is .dv. you can import these files into your favorite editing prg, except iMovie, therefore you have to cut the big file into smaller (2Gb) chunks, otherwise imovie can't handle it.



    so, even with qt pro you can edit it (de-commercialisition) and of course you can export in any format you prefer.



    it is not a fortune, i bought mine used at ebay, even there it is with 300EURO a BIG toy for the boy ;-)



    my advice: BUY IT!



    btw: working PLUS watching tv in a very small screnn... hihihi ;-)
  • Reply 3 of 4
    blue2kdaveblue2kdave Posts: 652member
    I have two Formac Studios, and for the most part they do their job really well. I have had some issues when using them with other apps like Broadcaster. It also seems to have some issues with when an iSight is also connected to your mac. Support from Formac is iffy too. I do not use the Tivo like functions, but rather use them for capturing video clips.



    All that being said, I have been able to work out all of my problems, and the software has greatly improved. It is easy to set up channels, and most importantly, you can save your clips at native resolution, as opposed to some of the other solutions. Using Quicktime Pro, it is easy to do quick edits like eliminating commercials.



    Summary, although not perfect, still a very good solution.
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