Late last year TiVo announce that there was finally an official way for Mac users to transfer TiVo recordings from the set top box to their computer. But the software wasn't provided by TiVo, it came from Roxio. And while it's nice that Roxio Toast offered CD and DVD burning utilities in addition to TiVoToGo, the $100 price tag was less than appealing.

Since then, the price has come down a bit. But $80 is still more than three times what PC users have to pay for TiVoToGo. Now it looks like a cheaper option is available. Roxio Popcorn 3 is a stripped down version of Toast, but the new version (which is not yet available on Roxio's web site), includes TiVoToGo, something that Roxio first hinted at back in January.

$50 is still a bit much, when you can still download the unofficial TiVoDecode Manager for free. But we're not in the habit of complaining about price cuts.

Elgato has released the latest in its line of TV tuners for Mac. The EyeTV 250 Plus is a USB 2.0 HDTV tuner, although you can also use the $200 box as a standard def tuner should the need arise.

There was a time when Elgato and Miglia were pretty much the only game in town for Mac users looking to add TV tuners and PVR functionality to their computers. But a few months back, Hauppauge announced that its popular PC TV tuners were now Mac compatible. So should we read anything into the fact that Elgato is calling this new tuner the EyeTV 250? After all, one of the most popular Hauppauge cards is the WinTV PVR-250.

Name recognition issues aside, the EyeTV 250 Plus looks like a pretty good deal. For your money, you get the TV tuner, Elgato's PVR software, and Roxio Toast 8 Basic for burning CDs and DVDs.

[via Macworld]

SageTV has designed a version of SageTV 6.2 for OS X. SageTV was already pretty much the leader in making cross-platform PVR software, with PC and Linux versions of its powerful media center software.

The company had added place-shifting software for Mac users with the release of SageTV 6.0 late last year. But users still needed a PC running SageTV in order to record television programs.

SageTV 6.2 for Mac will set you back about $80, which is the same price as the Windows version -- and probably not coincidentally about the same price as Elgato's EyeTV personal video recording software for Mac.

[via NewTeeVee]

After spending several weeks in beta, SlingPlayer for Mac OS X turns 1.0 today, with hundreds of bug fixes and a redesigned GUI based on user input..

Probably the biggest updates include support for remote control of several new Apple products, including Front Row, AppleTV, and the iPod in a Universal Dock or an iPod Hi-Fi.

SlingPlayer for Mac supports PowerPC and Intel processors running Mac OS X 10.3.9 and later.

If you visit Sling Media's download page for this free download (Slingbox not included), you're still directed to download link for the beta version of SlingPlayer for Mac OS X. But version 1.0 should be available for download later today.

Are you a Mac-loving, TiVo-loving person who only opens Google Reader to look for TiVo related blogs? Well now you don't even need to go that far.

Alex over at TiVoBlog has created a nifty little OS X dashboard widget using Yahoo Pipes and Apple's dashcode. The widget shows you TiVo-related content from a number of website, including TV Squad, TiVoBlog, ZatzNotFunny, TiVoLovers, Zeigen.com, and DavisFreeberg.com.

Sure, you could bookmark each site individually or add them to your RSS reader, but this is the sort of widget that I think is really useful. I tend to read hundreds of RSS feeds every day, and it would be impossible to add each one my desktop. By grouping a bunch of the best sites on a given topic together, you can condense the number widgets you need. Just add another for local and national news and you're all set (assuming you're only interested in news and TiVo information).

Eglato has released EyeTV 2.4, the latest version of their personal video recorder software for OS X. Version 2.4 adds support for exporting recordings to AppleTV with one click.

The update also includes support for satellite TV listings using TitantTV, Spanish and Italian language versions, and a progress bar that shows electronic program guide updates.

There's also support for spotlight search, letting you search for programs by using titles or descriptions.

EyeTV 2.4 is a free update for 2.x users.

[via Macworld]

The AppleTV is turning out to be the little box that could. It could be an internet TV platform, it could be a full fledged computer, and it could even be a video game console.

In the short time since the AppleTV began shipping, we've seen hackers:

• Run the internet TV program Joost
• Add a larger hard drive
• Extract the AppleTV OS as a disc image

But that was just the beginning.

It's no secret that the AppleTV runs a modified version of OS X. And that means that intrepid hackers might be able to get the OS to run on non-AppleTV boxes or add functionality to the existing hardware. But the first step is getting the operating system off of the hard drive to take a look at it.

Well, it looks like we can cross that one off the list. While it's no longer hosted on his web site for obvious reasons, one fine fellow managed to extract a disc image of the AppleTV OS. He reports that it's now available on various BitTorrent sites.

The disc image is about 200MB, and right now it only works with the AppleTV hardware.

[via Engadget]

Unfortunately, the post title is not referring to episodes of the construction paper cartoon coming to the iTunes Music Store, which I still think that's a little ways out. Instead, this article explains the migration of the animation studio to new Apple Xserve arrays.

GEEK ALERT! "J.J. Franzen, technology supervisor at South Park Studios in Los Angeles, said the show was simply running out of storage space on its digital linear tape (DLT) library and direct-attached disk storage from Ciprico Inc., in Plymouth, Minn. So in May, a new linear tape open (LTO)-2 tape library from Exabyte Corp. in Boulder, Colo. and three Xserve RAID disk arrays from Apple Computer Inc. were installed."