Hi guys, as you may or may not know my PC has died and i have been looking to upgrade, i was naturally thinking of getting a new PC but..i have been also been looking into the possibility of getting an Imac 24" but i do have a few question, can you get TV tuner cards for these things?

i cant seem to find anything of the Apple site and i would need something i could hook up ti my foxtel box as i watch foxtel on my PC. also have any of you guys gone from PC to Mac? what do you think is worth the extra money?

after all for what it costs for an imac i could get a pritty damn good gaming machine which is all i would really use it for anyway well that and watching TV.

seriously, if you say that all you really use it for is playing games and watching tv, why (and this is an honest question) would you possibly consider a mac? i mean what advantages will a mac give you over a pc in this particular scenario?

i'm not a mac hater, but for games, you're better off with a pc

well if your running bootcamp/XP on it then it doesnt really matter if its a mac or a PC cause it will have the exact same functionality.

I'm bootcamping one of my iMac's at work and it works fine with XP SP2. Best of both worlds really. You might be able to get a USB card for the TV, im not sure.

yeah there are a heap of USB tv tuners that work on osx, just make sure before u get one.

macs for tv and gaming - yeah its a bit of a hard one, can get a s***hot gaming machine for the same price. Plus with a PC u can upgrade later. If you can bite the bullet and get the iMac (really the only problem is the videocard (which is still pretty damn good for gaming atm on the 24 iMac) and also lose the upgradability of cpu/vidcard, then yeah go for it, osx is worth the price of the computer, especially considering the state of vista.

more info:

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/508315.html

There is something called an EyeTV Hybrid which does both DTV-T and video input. Component or worse I think.
If you input a games console there will be a slight delay, 50ms? as it digitizes the signal to the iMac.

24" looks like a good machine.

If you have the money for an iMac, and don't need abnormally high power like for developing high-def video or 3d environments, then an iMac is probably the best computer you can get.
If you need the power get the Mac Pro, if you need portability get the Mac Book.

I'm not a mac user, but it's only really the $$ stopping me from getting one of those systems now. Still works out cheaper to buy your own monitor+box, the money would really be for the aesthetic of the mac, and omg have you ever looked inside a mac pro tower? It's not really the sort of computer you'd ever even need to open, but everything is better laid out, the hard drives slot in sideways up the top, it's all so god damn clever.



last edited by Idol at 11:06:10 03/Feb/07

seriously, if you say that all you really use it for is playing games and watching tv, why (and this is an honest question) would you possibly consider a mac? i mean what advantages will a mac give you over a pc in this particular scenario?

yeah i agree with you there, other things i would use it for really is to capture video and re-encode it. apart from that i dont really think ill be using it for much else.. the reason i was looking at a Mac is because im sick of all the crap related to wintoss like anti-virus, firewall, patches..

i just want something that works.. but yeah the price/DX10 support is really making me think twice cause as mentioned before i could get a s*** hot gaming machine for that price..

last edited by TufNuT at 12:36:47 03/Feb/07

I'm a mac switcher (windows -> *nix -> OSX)...and I'll never buy another PC as long as I live (if that's saying something).

I really lost interest in games several years ago (still get the occasional cravings) and bought my 20" imac for recording work.

It's fast, stable as a rock (BSD under the bonnet), has the prettiest UI & looks slick. I use a windows laptop for work everyday and coming home to my mac is like a breath of fresh air.

fresh air from goatse.cx

I have a 20" iMac which I use for this purpose. The Elegato EyeTV Hybrid would be your best bet, though it is only Composite. Component devices exist, but they're not cheap.

For TV, I use iTele with a FusionHDTV USB box thingy. Unfortunately there's no remote support or FrontRow integration, and it's quite unstable. There's no scheduling for recording like Elegato's software has, and I haven't found a decent workflow for recording stuff and encoding it to XVid.

Unfortunately under booted using Boot Camp for some reason I can't install DirectX 9.0c on XP, which means I've been pretty much unable to use it for any games except WoW. Unfortunate, since Supreme Commander is out on Feb 20 - looks like I'm going to have to upgrade my Athlon, which rarely gets switched on.

fresh air from goatse.cx

hehehehe