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Review by Daniel J. Mccormick:

I cannot rate ConvertX for the Mac any higher than 3 stars, because there are problems with the device. To Plextor’s credit, I will say that it is the most affordable PVR for the Mac that compresses video in real-time. The only other Mac-compatible PVR’s (El Gato’s EyeTV200 and Miglia’s Evolution PVR) can cost well over 0. Everything else that’s cheaper either cannot timeshift recordings, doesn’t contain a channel tuner, or cannot convert video to MPEG-2 on the fly.

While ConvertX provides timeshifting, TV tuning & real-time compression, it suffers from unimpressive picture & sound quality. The visuals are compromised by artefacts, even at the highest bitrates. The picture can get blocky in the frames just prior to a change in scenes or shots. (A big no-no.) Also, the picture’s stability is affected momentarily by flash frames, sudden changes from light to dark, and the kind of fast-paced editing you see in film trailers & Hollywood action flicks; the picture seems to jump an inch down the screen and back up again, as if your cable signal was suffering from hiccups.

The PVR records the audio at a noticeably lower volume than in other converters I’ve seen, like ADS’ USB Instant DVD for Mac. With Plextor’s unit, I can max out every volume control on my Mac, and I still cannot hear the audio clearly. This summer, I have a fan operating at the lowest speed in my computer room, and it is a strain to hear the PVR recordings on my Mac. By comparison, the USB Instant DVD produces a fine, loud audio signal, even when my Mac’s volume isn’t all the way up.

With regards to bitrates, you can use it with reliably with USB1.1; while you won’t get a bitrate much better than 4.0Mb/s without USB2.0, that will be sufficient for recording almost 2 hours of DVD-quality footage for a single-layer DVD-R. I do wish that the unit could export the videos into M2V and AIFF formats like Quicktime Pro does. My audio software of choice (Peak Express by Bias) cannot recognize the audio files produced by Plextor’s PVR, which leaves me unable to increase the gain on the sound files without transcoding the audio up into AIFF through a tedious workaround using iTunes. Also, Plextor’s PVR seems to export audio in a compresed MPEG format, rather than in an uncompressed AIFF (again, like USB Instant DVD does, and it does it at USB 1.1 speeds. Why can’t Plextor do the same?!)

I will say that if you desperately need a PVR device that can timeshift, then Plextor’s device is the most economical choice available for the Mac platform. However, if I knew then what I know now, I would have saved my pennies and tried out either the EyeTV200 or Miglia’s Evolution PVR. Buy only if 0 is the most you can spend.

Review by Marina Q. Jackson:

I’ve used a few TV tuner/recorders for the PC (ATI PCI and USB TV Wonder and Pinnacle’s USB TV Tuner) but this one for the Mac is much easier to set up out of the box to program and record events. Nice feature: the tuner powers off when your computer is off (unlike my USB Pinnacle for the PC, which died, I think, because it never turned off) so you don’t need to worry about unplugging it. The EyeTV software seems a little stripped-down compared to my PC ATI software, but everything works and Titan TV recognizes Time Warner Cable in my area, which the ATI’s bundle did not. Overall, I am more than satisfied and highly recommend this product to all!

Review by John A. Suda:

There are a growing number of guidance books being published about Apple’s latest computer operating system OS 10.5, a.k.a. “Leopard.” “Mac OS 10 Leopard: Beyond the Manual” by Scott Meyers and Mike Lee aims for a more sophisticated reader group than most of the others which tend to target casual users and perhaps new “Windows switchers.”

This book is for advanced computer users, especially those familiar with UNIX and Linux who want or need to learn about the hundreds of new and improved features of the MacOS, and even for casual Windows users who are comfortable with command line interaction and prefer full keyboard use of the computer.

Scott Meyers is an editor and Mac OS consultant and Mr. Lee is a technical specialist. The writing is clear and straightforward. Unlike some other Leopard guides, there is no attempt to be literary or stylish – this is a software manual after all for advanced users. They cover all the Leopard basics and assume the reader is not, or only barely, familiar with the Mac OS 10 system. The first four parts(of eight) of the book, counting 17 chapters, describe the basics–the Aqua interface, the Menubar, Views, the Sidebar and Dock, system and user preferences, the file system, maintenance, security, networking, and included Apple applications like Safari (the browser), Mail, iChat, and iCal. An item by item description of the Safari menus takes up a full seven pages. The Mail menu descriptions take up 11 pages. The menu descriptions are contained in a chart which provides alternative common keyboard shortcuts for each of the menu commands. Like UNIX and other operating systems, one can ignore the mouse completely once one knows the key combinations. They also provide an introduction to the iLife suite of applications, like iTunes, iPhoto, and the other consumer-level productivity applications included with the Leopard installation.

The coverage is comprehensive but not deep. The reader will be exposed to most of the operating system but nothing is treated extensively or with depth. Some of the chapters are very short. Presumably, higher end users will figure the deeper stuff out for themselves after being directed to what is available in OS 10. There is no shortage of illustrations, screenshots, charts, tables illuminating in an effective way the text comments and descriptions.

Throughout, the authors provide numerous “Notes” and “Tips” which elaborate on the basic text. These are more explanatory of specific items and features and some are in the nature of practical recommendations and suggestions – for configuring preferences, for example, or utilizing third-party applications instead of Apple’s for certain functions. There is an extensive five-page section on the components of the system-wide and user Libraries in OS 10 with descriptions of all the items contained in them. Throughout the first half of the book – the part focused on the user interface and middleware layers of the OS – the authors provide information on both the menu -mouse navigation and keyboard operation alternatives, the latter for power users and others more comfortable with keyboard use. Differences in desktop and laptop keyboards are detailed as well. There is an an interesting section on calibrating the display and modifying the default Macintosh 1.8 gamma to a Windows-like 2.2 gamma for those users who are not graphics professionals, at least.

The last half of the book is about UNIX, or more specifically for the MacOS, “Darwin” which is Apple’s flavor of UNIX. Starting first with the “shell” the authors walk the reader through starting up the command line functions, describe the elemental UNIX commands, note navigation issues, root access, and the like. Later chapters cover scripting Darwin, using the included scripting languages of Perl, Python, PHP, and Ruby, and how to install additional advanced software like Fink and Macports.

Chapters 20 and 21 cover networking, remote monitoring, and firewalls. Chapter 22 deals with the included Web server software, Apache, as well as SQLite and PHP. There is a chapter devoted to Apple’ s own scripting applications, Automator and AppleScript. The final chapter covers the developer tools, also included with OS X. There are references to the various “kits” which developers can use to create their own applications and there are many kits included in OS X – for audio, video, graphics, PDF handling, animation, and more.

The appendices include guidance on installations and a list of what’s new in Leopard (versus earlier versions of OS 10.) An extensive index of 43 pages rounds out the book.

This book is solidly produced and written and should bring advanced users up to speed with Leopard and to point the way for them to explore the depths of it themselves.

Review by M. Ordung:

When I did the first cut at this review I found myself saying “there’s 3 pages on this, then there’s 8 pages on that, then there’s….”. It looked like I hadn’t actually read anything beyond the table of contents, when in fact I had read virtually every page of a LARGE computer reference for the first time in as many years as I can remember – including 30+ spent in IT.) “Mac OS X Leopard Beyond the Manual” is one of those encyclopedic tomes that tries to touch on virtually everything about a given subject area without going into anything too deeply. It’s targeted at intermediate/professional computer users though, not beginners.

I was coming back to the Apple desktop platform after a decade plus hiatus – since the days of MAC OS 8. Like many people, I don’t buy nearly as many computer books as I used to given all the online resources available; but I’m old fashioned enough to feel the need to have a couple good ones around in each major area of interest. Browsing the table of contents of Leopard BTM made me think it would provide the security blanket I wanted as a ‘new’ user/administrator and that it would give me an intro to OS X architecture and development. So here are some impressions of what I found most useful; your mileage may vary.

The first two parts of the book cover using and administering Leopard. They do a pretty good job of of introducing the Aqua interface and giving an overview of how the file systems are laid out. You’re sure to resolve a few of your quandaries and find some unexpected features. Here, for example, I found out about ‘fast user switching’ which I knew that Leopard, being UNIX, must have but hadn’t figured out yet. Also that voice recognition is built-in. (I’m looking forward to testing it with the included chess program.) The section on networked printers was good background. (But what finally got mine working was just doing the same steps over and over til it `took’.) The chapter on backup was rather perfunctory. In a book of almost 600 pages this would seem to warrant a little more than 8? The chapter that covers Spotlight, Expose, Spaces and Dashboard in a dozen pages is typical of too much of the book. And half of these pages are screen shots – that’s also pretty typical of the whole book – so you can figure the coverage of each topic is rather lean.

The next two sections cover all the major Leopard applications which, perhaps surprisingly, was the least important area to me.

I’m a confirmed Firefox user and I didn’t really see anything while dipping into the Safari pages to convert me to Apple’s browser. Similarly, I have no intention of using Leopard’s Mail, Address book or iCal programs – Google covers all these for me across Mac, Windows and Linux desktops. However, I found the iChat chapter surprisingly interesting. I should have known, but didn’t, that it supports the built-in iSight camera in my iMac. (I’m really sick of all these iWords.) And that it is Gtalk/AIM compatible. iTunes on the Mac is pretty much like iTunes on Windows. A few pages on Apple’s .Mac online service didn’t convince me to plunk down so that I can store my photos in an Apple enclave rather than via Flickr or Picasa Web. The iLife 08 ‘digital lifestyle’ apps are covered quickly. My wife probably got more in the first 3 minutes of actually using iPhoto than in the 3 pages here. Coverage of the more powerful iWork 08 applications – similar to MS Office – is even shorter as Leopard includes them only as trials. (My wife liked the Pages word processor enough to shell out the extra bucks for iWork.)

Up next is an intro to Darwin, Apple’s UNIX variant underlying OS X. The first chapter was a little disappointing for this former sysadmin as it was pretty much like any UNIX primer you’ve ever read. The following one was better but uneven – the authors go into shell scripting in some detail but then have a section covering “Advanced Scripting with Perl, Python and Ruby” in under 4 pages?!?

The networking chapters are decent but contain more .Mac propaganda. The authors are very much true believers whereas I simply want my Mac to play well in an existing Windows/Linux environment. Apache is bundled in Mac OS X and a lot of good pointers to other sources of information of interest to new web designers are included.

The most compelling portion of the book to me was the 100+ pages on application development under Leopard. I haven’t earned a paycheck as a full-time developer since about the time Gerald Ford was president and there’s the presumption that you already have a clue about how objects work, but I feel like I got the lay of the land and could start poking around in Automator or the Xcode IDE now. The authors seem to be passionate about programming and it’s a bit infectious.

Overall, I found “Mac OS X Leopard Beyond the Manual” to be fairly good from a using perspective, a little weak from an administrative orientation, pretty strong as an introduction to current Mac development tools. At the Amazon price, I’d say its a superior value if your Mac interests are anything like mine. (Full disclosure – I got my copy free through a user group with the intent of a review.)