Last week I ordered a Miglia TVMini, which allows me to watch and record Digital Terrestrial TV on my iBook, the rather mangled box was delivered yesterday. The main reason for getting it was that I have no way to record digital at the moment (no SCART sockets on the video) and having to be in to watch something was a bit of a pain.

The main device is a Shuffle-sized white box that connects and it powered direct from the USB port, additional gubbins in the box include remote control, mini-aerial, USB extension cable1 and a coax cable adaptor. Installation was a straightforward connect-everything-together and copy the program to the applications folder, at which point the setup guide auto-tunes and get things running. From opening the box to watching BBC1 was a little under five minutes.

good bits

  • When setting up, you also register with tvtv.co.uk, which allows you to set recordings remotely provided you do it more than an hour before the the start of the broadcast.
  • Lots of export options,including .mov, .avi and special ones for PSP and the iPod video.
  • The built-in editor makes chopping adverts easy, and gets 60 minutes of CSI down to 41:30…

Not so good bits

  • Unfortunately the signal in my area is not good enough to get all channels with the mini-aerial without having to move it around all the time. Long dangly cables needed!
  • The default format records at about 1.4Gb/hour. It would be nice to have more control over this, especially if you want something just to drop onto an iPod and don’t need the quality.

Now to find something worth watching…

  1. Also dead handy as my external drive has a 12″ cable. ↑

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