Do you own an iPod video player? Are you sick of paying money to Apple just to watch some television show via iTunes (especially after you’ve already paid a hefty cable bill for your home television service)? Do you ever wish you could upload and watch additional television content that isn’t readily available via iTunes? If you find yourself saying yes to any of these questions, then it might be time to check out the new BroadClip MediaCatcher service. BroadClip bills itself as a legal way to fill your iPod with all of your favorite television shows for free. Yup - no more paying for television shows via iTunes. Interested? Come check out the review!

So what exactly is MediaCatcher?

MediaCatcher is a new PVR application designed to record television shows and make them readily available for portable media players such as the Apple iPod. With MediaCatcher installed on a PC, you simply:

• Schedule the shows you want to record using an online web interface
• Leave your computer on during those show times and watch it automatically record and convert the shows
• Sync the shows to your iPod via iTunes

The beauty of BroadClip’s MediaCatcher software is in it’s singular purpose. The package is specifically designed to help schedule and record television shows for your portable media player devices. The initial implementations focus on the Apple iPod but there will be support for other devices such as mobile phones, and the Microsoft Zune.

System Requirements

I’m sure some of you are curious as to the system requirements for MediaCatcher so I thought I’d publish BroadClip’s requirements here. The MediaCatcher ClipAgent software requires:

• Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or greater
• USB 2.0 port if you purchased a USB TV Tuner (more on that shortly)
• Unused PCI slot if you purchased a PCI based TV Tuner (more on that shortly)
• Apple iPod video
• Apple iTunes

MediaCatcher Bundles

BroadClip’s MediaCatcher software can be purchased on its own or as part of a hardware bundle. On it’s own, you can purchase the MediaCatcher software for $39 on Amazon.com.

If you don’t have a TV tuner, then BroadClip sells two hardware bundles to suit your needs - a Desktop PC Bundle for $99 and a Laptop Bundle for $149.

Remember - you’re not purchasing a subscription service here. You’re simply buying the hardware and the software application because that’s all you need to get things up and running. Of course if you already have the required hardware, then things get even easier!

The Desktop Bundle comes with a BroadClip account, a PCI TV tuner, and cables while the Laptop Bundle comes with a BroadClip account, an external USB tuner, and cables to hook everything up.

For this review, we took a look at the Laptop Bundle which includes an external USB tuner from Hauppauge - specifically the WinTV-PVR USB2 Personal Video Recorder.

Here’s a picture of the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 packaging that came with the Laptop Bundle.

Features of the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 include:

• 125 channel cable ready TV tuner
• USB 2.0 support
• Composite/S-Video and audio inputs to connect VCR, Camcorder, or Satellite Receivers
• Built in hardware MPEG-2 encoder

While the Hauppuage WinTV-PVR-USB2 TV tuner comes with application software and drivers from Hauppauge, you won’t be installing them as part of the BroadClip MediaCatcher setup. BroadClip bundles manuals that clearly indicate that you should NOT install the included software from Hauppauge.

A quick look at the hardware

Here are some pictures of the external TV tuner for your viewing pleasure.

Here’s a shot of the front input connectors:

Here’s a shot of the rear input connectors:

 

Here’s one more shot of the tuner.

 

Setting things up

Although setting up MediaCatcher is fairly painless, it does involve several steps so we felt it was important to go over the process.

1. Set up the hardware

We’ll focus on the external USB TV Tuner installation since that’s what we got from BroadClip. However, keep in mind that BroadClip does also offer a PCI based TV tuner which will involve a bit more work on your part.

Installing the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-USB2 TV tuner was a cinch. Simply remove the TV tuner and it’s pieces from the packaging. You’ll need the external TV tuner, some cables, possibly a splitter, and of course your PC.

The first step is to split the cable line using any splitter which you can purchase from Radio Shack. Here’s the splitter that I used for our review.

As the name implies, the splitter takes a single cable line and splits it into two separate lines. You only need to do this if you plan on routing the second line to your cable box or television set or DVR etc. If you don’t need a second line, then you don’t need the splitter.

Now that we have a free cable line, we connect the cable connection to the external Hauppuage USB TV tuner as shown here.

 

Connect the power and watch things glow!

 

At this point, you’d normally connect the TV tuner to the PC via the USB connection. However, we’re not installing the Hauppuage software drivers or applications so don’t connect the tuner as of yet.

2. Setting up an account and software

At this point in the setup process, we’re going to head on over to the BroadClip website. The first important step is register an account with BroadClip. If you’ve already done so, then you can skip this step. Since I was a first time user, I went ahead and registered with BroadClip here.

The BroadClip registration process is simple - pick a user name, password and set up your computer configuration with BroadClip. BroadClip just needs to know what zip code you’re in and which TV service provider you’re using. This helps set up the guide information that you’ll be using later on.

Once the registration was done, I clicked on the “Setup my Software button” and was directed to another webpage. On the new page, I was told to download and execute a setup application. Once the setup proceeded, I got the following screenshot:

Make sure Windows Firewall unblocks the setup program! 

The next step was to log in with the account that I had just created with BroadClip.

The setup program asks you if you want to sync the recorded television shows automatically with iTunes or wait for your command to do so. I chose the automatic sync route.

It’s at this point in the software install where I finally get a chance to install the drivers for the Hauppauge USB TV tuner.  I chose the proper tuner and watched the program download the necessary setup components.

A separate installer will also run to allow you to install the BroadClip Agent Software. The BroadClip Agent handles the task of recording and coverting shows into MPEG4 format. It also syncs the videos with Apple iTunes.

Another installer will then run to install the BroadClip Update Service which communicates with BroadClip to get the latest guide information and recording schedules.

After this installer finished with it’s deed, we finally got our chance to install the drivers for the TV tuner. I plugged in the Hauppauge tuner as directed by the setup wizard …

and watched the software wizard install the drivers.

The setup process finally finished which meant I needed to reboot the system. Once I booted into the system, the only proof of the setup was the little BroadClip agent showing it’s head within the Windows task bar.

 

Usage

Once MediaCatcher is up and running, the overall task of recording television shows is straightforward and easy ` to perform.

The beauty of MediaCatcher is the web based user interface which makes it’s easy for searching and scheduling television shows to record. Remember - this isn’t about creating a home theater PC experience. It’s about creating a tool that will easily record television shows for your portable media player - in this case the Apple iPod.

To record these shows for your iPod, you simply log into the BroadClip website and search for the shows you like. BroadClip provides a simple search interface which allows you to look up by Title, Keyword, Actor, or Channel.

If you like browsing guides, BroadClip’s got that too.

Again - the best thing about this? It’s all done using a web interface. This implies you can search and schedule television shows to record from any location that has an Internet connection. The only thing you need to make sure is that your PC is running when the show needs to be recorded!

When you find a show or series you want to record, you simply inform BroadClip that you’d like to “clip” the show. “Clipping” is the act of recording a television show, while “Clips” are the recordings themselves. As with traditional DVR applications, you can either “clip” a single episode of a show, or you can “clip” the entire series.

Once you’ve selected a show to clip, you’re pretty much all set! It’s as simple as that folks. The MediaCatcher Agent running on your home PC will then record the show when it airs and automatically convert the recorded show into the MPEG-4 format necessary for the Apple iPod. Once the conversion is finished, the show will then be synced with iTunes (which is why you’ll notice that iTunes is always running in the background on the PC).

Using the web based interface, you can review what clips you have on tap simply by clicking on the “CLips on Order” button.

MediaCatcher adds a nice little feature to the recorded television shows during the conversion process. It’ll tag the recorded shows to make it easier for you to search for them on your iPod. It’s a simple yet wonderful feature from an ease of use perspective.

Once your television shows are synced with iTunes, simply connect your iPod to your PC and then treat the show as you would any other video file within iTunes. You can simply drag the file right to your iPod on the left hand pane. Since the video file is already in the proper MPEG4 format, the video is just copied over to the iPod - MediaCatcher already did the hard work of converting the file to the proper settings.

   

Now if you’re curious as to whether MediaCatcher works with Zune - it sure does. You can take the MP4 file made for the iPod and add it to the Zune software application. When you sync the video file to the Zune, the MP4 file will be converted by the Zune software to the proper WMV file format.

Now I know I’ve made everything sound peachy keen with MediaCatcher - in reality, there are still some issues.

MediaCatcher is still a fairly new software application - which means there are still bugs to be worked out. At one point, the MediaCatcher Agent kept opening up browser windows to BroadClip’s website - over and over again - each time creating a new window. That got pretty annoying after the 20th window popped up! Granted this happened only once but it’s still worth noting.

MediaCatcher requires iTunes to be running simulatenously if automatic synchronization is enabled. It’d be nice if iTunes wasn’t needed to run in order for videos to be synchronized.

Finally, while the setup process was fairly painless, it is still fairly complex for the average user. The more complex the installer, the higher the likelihood that something could fail. Case in point - BroadClip makes a point in telling you not to install the Hauppauge driver and software.. but I bet you there’ll be some users out there who will go ahead and accidentally install the software anyhow. But that’s what happens when you have to deal with third party hardware. So with that said, BroadClip should be commended with creating a package that does seem to install fairly painlessly - assuming you follow their instructions to the T. 

Here’s a video clip of the iPod playing back various shows recorded by MediaCatcher.

 

Summary

BroadClip’s MediaCatcher provides a great alternative to purchasing television content from iTunes. The concept is simple enough. Use a PC based TV tuner and capture/record the television shows you want to see on your iPod right in the comfort of your home. You only need to  purchase the tuner and software application - no need to spend money at iTunes. The user interface is web based, easy to use and you can be up and running within 15 minutes after getting the hardware and software.

There are some minor issues of course. The installation process is a bit hokey, the recorded television shows are not very well organized (everything sits in one folder), and iTunes is always running if you plan on automatically syncing the videos.

However, MediaCatcher is a great first step at automatically recording TV shows specifically for the iPod - although honestly - it doesn’t stop there. MediaCatcher paves the way for creating video files for multiple portable device platforms including mobile phones and the Microsoft Zune.

Now of course - if Microsoft makes the Zune more compatible with Windows Media Center (and I imagine that they will eventually make this happen since it clearly works in the portable media center world) then things will be different for MediaCatcher.  However for the iPod world, MediaCatcher is an awesome product for those of you sick of paying for episodes of Lost.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Easy to use
• Automatic recording and conversion
• Good video and audio quality

Cons:

• Installation somewhat complex
• iTunes always runs

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