Comments on: GV-MACTV: Watching HDTV On Your Mac

By: Amy Walsh

Amy Walsh — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 23:47:28 +0000

The MacTV will work on any Mac with a built-in display — the notebooks and also the iMac’s.

Copy protection is strict in Japan, but comparable elsewhere when dealing with digital HD television.
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By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:16:19 +0000

I bought this yesterday from Amazon.co.jp and it arrived this morning. I was thinking that it would be a great addition to my media center setup, which uses a Mac Mini hooked up to my Panasonic 51″ PDP.

So I tested it on my MacBook and it worked perfectly. Then I tried to connect it to my Mac Mini. After installing, I started the application and promptly got an error. It seems that you can’t use the digital audio out with this gadget. OK, so I unplugged the digital audio and tried again. I got a second error. Apparently, you also aren’t allowed to use this with an external display.

So, they made this device just for MacBooks? That seems really lame to me.

By: Lars

Lars — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 04:34:02 +0000

Thanks for the very informational review of the GV-MACTV
product. Although it is not exactly what I’m looking for. We live
in Europe but are on famili visit to Japan once a year. We would
like to be able to record the local television shows and watch them
while back in Europe. I’ve searched high and low but not been able
to find any products allowing that while supporting digital
terrestrial tv. The closest I’ve come is the Eyetv 250 Plus, which
I have just ordered from amazon.co.jp at a ridiculous price – more
expensive than the GV-MACTV and only allowing recording of analog
tv. And as we all know, that stops July next year. So if anybody
has found a digital solution for recording japanese tv and watching
it abroad, I am extremely interested to know any details.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:53:56 +0000

Thanks for the great write up, this was exactly what I was looking for. There are some really nice capture cards and programs for HDTV back in the US, but unfortunately don’t work with the HDTV standards in Japan. Right now I’m leaning heavily towards the Pixma model, though I think that one doesn’t allow you to export to H264 either. That’s what I’m really aiming for.

By: yellowtokyo

yellowtokyo — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:38:10 +0000

Hey, thanks for that enlightening post!
I just bought the GV-MACTV on kakaku.com and was fearing that I wouldn’t be able to find any information that wasn’t in japanese.
Thanks to you, I’m not worried anymore!