EyeTV GT-1U620160701 U6 Pocket-Sized HDTV Tuner Stick for Apple MacBook Series

For this price point, I was hesitant to buy at first because of the mixed reviews and there's not enough details on the product page that I was looking for, specifically for use in iMac. I have a Maverick OS.Now for the actual review of this product, an email from Geniatech was received containing the product key code needed, with links to specific software needed to be downloaded depending on which MacOS you're using. Installation was a breeze. I connected an antenna using the RF adapter that came with it. Scanned 78 OTA channels, and instantly started showing the broadcast. There is a program guide that's also helpful. It works on maximized 5K resolution of iMac! Picture is very clear and there's no lag. Overall I'm so impressed with this product and definitely recommends it for Mac aficionados.

Product CLEARLY says that a software key code will be provided with purchase. When I contacted the seller, their response was it is not included! The "Free Included" software is only 32 BIT! Absolutely useless for an updated Mac.The product is USELESS without the software. DO NOT BUY!

I was upgrading the EyeTV Hybrid running EyeTV 3.6.9 (32-bit) running on MacOS 10.14.6 (Mojave) to the EyeTV U6 running EyeTV 4 (64-bit) on MacOS 10.14.6 so I could then upgrade to MacOS 11 and later. This was the only upgrade path available for EyeTV (November 2021) as the EyeTV Hybrid hardware is no longer supported on the Mac. The EyeTV U6 is a single channel ATSC 1.0 digital over the air receiver. Although Geniatech claims to have other similar devices - even supporting ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV, they are either not supported on the Mac or are vaporware. The current version of EyeTV is 4.0.0 (8526).I installed the new hardware - a simple swap. I installed the new software over the old, which caused an error during initialization, but restarting EyeTV 4 appeared to fix the issue.I then ran the extended channel search and was surprised that a lot of the previously available channels were no longer found. Many of the missing channels are on a mountain with direct line of site at a distance of 20 - 25 miles. I have an outdoor omnidirectional antenna with preamp - which is then split between two devices - so there should have been plenty of signal.With EyeTV 4, in the EyeTV4 Program window, under Devices, under EyeTV U6, is a display that shows the tuner status, which includes both signal strength and signal quality. After a bit of looking at various channels, I noted that most had full signal strength (100%) but lousy signal quality (<35%). Very strange. How could that be?Then it occurred to me that perhaps the signal was too strong - resulting in distortion in the EyeTV U6 - much like the clipping in audio amplifiers when the volume is turned up too high. I remembered that the antenna had two amplification levels - low and high - and it was set to high. So I changed the antenna amplification to the low setting and looked as the signal quality for the same channels. All improved - going from typically below 35% to over 95%. Signal strength remained at 100%. I repeated the experiment to verify the results.Clearly, using high amplification with the EyeTV U6 produced too much signal which resulted in lousy signal quality while using low amplification produced excellent results. Thus, too much signal can be just as bad as too little signal.After setting the antenna amplifier back to low, I reran the channel search and found all of the expected channels. Problem solved.The older EyeTV Hybrid with EyeTV 3 did not have a signal quality display - only a signal strength display - and not a very good one at that. So it is not possible to know how marginal things may have been under the old system - it may have been barely working and I would not have known. The old system did have a problem with the program guide on one of the major channels which the new system does not have.So the new system seems to work at least as well as the old and allowed me to to find and diagnose a previously unknown problem with too much signal.

This model seems rather more sensitive than prior models I've had, in that the over-the-air channels that scanned-in during setup are nearly twice what I'd seen before, and definitely more than my actual TV can spot. The prior model came with a small magnetic-mount antenna, while this one did not. It's built to be used in other countries as well, as indicated by the built-in RF connector type, but comes with an "F" connector adapter which is the standard for TV and video in the US, and comes with a 12" USB cable. Apart from missing that useful antenna, my only criticism would be that it runs quite hot, even when not being used. That was also true of the prior model, so it might be best to disconnect when not in use. I used the "Schedule", it's over the internet tv-guide, to schedule and record a few shows and it worked perfectly. It took about a month to receive, but I understand that China bought the "EyeTV" brand, so it had a way to go to get here.

I purchased an eyeTV U6 tuner to replace the no longer supported Hauppauge tuner. The auto tune feature eyeTV 64 bit with the U6 tuner detects less than half of the channels that the eyeTV 3 with the Hauppauge tuner did. There is no feature to manually add a channel.The eyeTV 64 software is missing features that the eyeTV 3 software had. There isn’t an ability to export the recording to Apple TV. I can’t find the ability to export in the iPad format. I can export to the desktop, however there is no longer a progress bar.One thing is still the same. Exporting is still painfully slow