How To Get HDTV over Comcast into the Mac.
Objective: To get HDTV on my Mac.
Hurdles: Over The Air reception in Ann Arbor is bad, so cable is needed. Not to disrupt my roommate's cable (internet and television).
Ingredients: EyeTV Box, Coaxial Cable, Two-Way Cable Splitter, Comcast Digital Television subscription with $5.00/month HDTV add-on.
So, this is where I was having problems. When I came back to University this year, I tried putting back the set up I had last year which enabled me to get HDTV over Comcast. Much to my dismay, I was not getting all the channels. (One important note: the cable has to come from the wall, and not the cable box). I soon discovered that I was getting a signal that was coming from a four way splitter that was coming from a two way splitter.
Some background first, a cable splitter works by diverting the signal into two directions, and thereby each signal loses strength. In a two-way splitter, typically -3db. In a four splitter, -7db. I was losing 10db of signal, enough to not let me watch my HDTV.
As soon as I fixed the problem (The cable comes from the wall, goes through a two-way splitter. One of the lines comes directly to me, the other goes to the rest of the house for internet, television, and everyone else who may want TV in their room) I was able to Auto-Tune the EyeTV software, and get my channels. The one thing I had to do next was figure out which channel was which, assign them, and then update the schedule.
Now everything works perfectly!
One More Thing After talking about this, I found out that the EyeTV 500 doesn't exist anymore, but the TVMini HD works well.