Although the Mac's equivalent of Windows Media Center Edition, Front Row, lacks the ability to integrate TV tuners to allow you to watch and record television, we Mac users have for years enjoyed the Rolls Royce of TV software: Elgato's EyeTV. Devices that use this software, however, can be expensive, particularly compared with their Windows counterparts. As such, we were delighted with Equinux's announcement that its brand-new TubeStick - a fat USB stick with accompanying Equinux-authored TheTube software - would be sold for about 40.
Sadly, while the TubeStick system is half as expensive as even the cheapest Elgato model, we were disappointed to find it offers a very basic set of features. As it happens, we'd probably have been delighted with the software if we'd never used EyeTV - it certainly looks very polished, and commendably Mac-like - but it just doesn't do enough compared with its more expensive rival.
The installation process is smooth - despite a glitch in which the welcome message appeared partly in German - and TheTube offers to configure new hardware that it detects. Frustratingly, it insisted the configured device was 'new' on launching the application on a few subsequent occasions, but it did settle down.
Auto-tuning works as expected, but channels are presented in a strange order; they can be re-ordered, but only one at a time in a small window. Neither is there any way to disable channels, so the full gamut of Freeview channels, including various TopUp TV channels, which you can't unlock with this system, is always visible.
The channel list to the right of the main window (which can be hidden) should also show the name of the currently showing programme, but our experience was that it updated sporadically, if at all. Worse, though, are the TubeStick's recording capabilities. There's no electronic programme guide and no way to schedule recordings - EyeTV can do this locally or through a link to an online service that allows you to mark programmes for recording from any computer or web-capable mobile phone. Worst of all, you can't pause or rewind live TV. You can manually push record to save shows to the hard disk, and you can export recordings for iPod, although you can't change the encoding options for this export.
Elsewhere, the level of finish is good, although we did find a few glitches with changing aspect ratios and using keyboard shortcuts.
Our boxed version also included MediaCentral, Equinux's $30 media centre software that can use the TubeStick as a tuner source, although Equinux wouldn't say how long this would continue to be bundled.
Equinux has an otherwise excellent stable of applications and we fully expect it will address many of the concerns we've identified here in this promising bundle in the coming months. It's just that, for the moment, unless your needs are very basic indeed, we'd urge you to spend the extra cash and opt for an EyeTV for DTT.
Needs PowerPC G4 1GHz, G5 or Intel + 512MB Ram + Mac OS X 10.4 or later + Internet connection for activationAuthor: Christopher Phin
TubeStick