DVR, BitTorrent, iTunes… quite some choices! Your Mac has the potential of becoming another TV for your home. And why not? Now that there’s that 24-inch iMac…
DVR.
This is as simple as getting a DVR for your Mac, such as those from ElGato, and plugging in a video source. The content available on the Mac depends on what you record. And the built-in software makes everything very easy to setup and use.
iTunes.
Also a very simple one… find the desired TV show on the iTunes Store, and download it (for $2 per episode). The real problem is that not all TV shows are yet on iTunes (Family Guy fans will notice it’s not there, for example) and that it takes about a day from the airtime for the content to appear in the store (sometimes even more).
TiVo to go.
With its DRM cracked, some Mac apps for downloading and converting these videos are starting to appear. One of these programs is TiVo Decoder, which takes out an MPEG-2 file out of those — and subsequently, you can convert them to something else using programs like iSquint. This option’s perfect for those who own and love a TiVo DVR. But be sure to check out if your hardware is compatible with TiVo to go. View the Tivo Decoder’s site for a download link and guide.
BitTorrent.
Legality disputes aside, all you need is a good BitTorrent client, such as Transmission, and a good site for downloading the torrents (Isohunt comes to mind). The real problem’s getting up to date with all the torrents manually.
Tape it off the internet.
This site is trying to do social TV downloads — but what’s that? You browse, chat, download, share, and tag the TV shows found within the website. Basically, you interact with more people via this service. But behind all of this, there’s a basic BitTorrent network working. In a few searches performed, the results were rather weak. And if you’re looking for a TV show that aired more than a month ago, good luck in finding one with a decent number of seeders. In the end, you can download the same content with fewer clicks via basic BitTorrent websites… and Safari doesn’t work yet, so stick with Firefox.
Democracy.
Perhaps the most efficient choice, and the one that shows more promise as this open source program continues to advance. It works quite simply: subscribe to a video RSS feed, and it downloads said videos from it. For a guide on how to use it with BitTorrent shows, check out Lifehacker’s guide.
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[tags]Apple,Mac,TV,iTunes[/tags]
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