This probably won't win any awards for news of the year.
Its the only device with an ATI Theater 500 chip I've ever come across.
The eyeTV hybrid works fine with
VirtualDub 1.9.11 under both Windows 7x64 (with out of box devices drivers, it auto installs) and on a Mac with OSX 10.6.8 using eyeTV 3.x (I have not checked later versions but should work up to Sierra 10.12 eyeTV 3.x works and it supports it internally.)
It was designed in 2010 to work with eyeTV 3.x and Windows 7 Media center.
eyeTV-Hybrid.jpg
Not that I "Recommend" its use.. I was just curious if any dongle had crossed the streams and supported "both" platforms.
I only used the Microsoft out of box drivers, so my experience is probably colored by that poor choice.. it came with a CDROM device driver disk for both Mac and Windows, previous experience has taught that using the CDROM that comes with the product is usually the better choice.
But I think this is the (only) example of an ATI Theater 500 chip in any product. Its number scheme is "less than" the Theater 550 chip in the Elite PCI card.. which tends to suggest its a non-hardware MPEG2 encoder. The chip numbers with even numbers tended to not support on chip hardware encoding and used the full 25 MBps of the USB 2.0 bus for Uncompressed video.. encoding it on the capture system.
The later "wheat biscuit" or "butter dish" HDTV tuners with the USB connection used the ATI Theater 650 chipset.
It does get hot, but the case is made of aluminum, so you could put it on top of a USB fan to keep it cool.
I really didn't have to do anything fancy with
VirtualDub except use the Video > Source menu option to select S-Video.. it defaulted to the Tuner. The tuner is both "analog and digital" hence the "hybrid" name.
Be aware there were two generations of this, the earlier was only suggested for Mac use only. And there was a DVB-T version for the European market. I tested the North American version.
ATI also shipped a version of their own "Media Center" like software for their "Mac only 650" called ATI TV Portal.. but while I've seen pictures.. and would love to get a copy to play around with.. I've never been able to find it. It would be interesting to see if it backwards supported this dongle.
Comparing this with the Grass Valley ADVC mini is worth while.
Its really nice to have a choice on a Mac system.. but I think the capture application included with the ADVCmini makes is more useful.
On a Mac I've only been able to use eyeTV to capture with the eyeTV Hybrid and it only offers three compressed profiles, even at its highest setting its still in MPEG2 with 4:2:0 and I frames. I'm pretty sure this is a design consideration for the eyeTV 3.x software. The video data probably comes in Uncompressed and they route it through software compression on the OS X operating system.
On Windows the VirtualDub option offers Uncompressed 4:2:2 capture.
OBS Studio.. does work with it.. difficultly.
Playing with this has confirmed an earlier "guess" that capture devices that don't normally work with VIrtualDub can be configured in a "backwards" fashion from within the device driver "filter" control panel. By first selecting Audio and configuring that so you can hear it,
then configuring the Video to source S-Video or Composite or Tuner.
The eyeTV Hybrid works fine with VirtualDub out of the box with video and audio, but you have to select the source from VirtualDub menus.
The eyeTV Hybrid does not work with OBS Studio out of the box because it defaults to the Tuner Input and the audio does not autoswitch in OBS Studio. So you have to get into the "filter" control panel and manually configure the Audio source as "Custom" and the select the Video source totally manually. Since your doing this through the "filter" control panel and not the OBS Studio menus.. it can't save the settings.. and reverts after each OBS Studio "session" and is quite annoying.
However this "teaches" that the same method should work in VirtualDub for many "unsupported" capture devices which VirtualDub can open the "filter" control panel for manual manipulation.
It comes at an oblique angle.. but this is really useful information to know works. It means there may well be an alternative to 'Crossbar Thingy' when VirtualDub doesn't setup the video or sound correctly.