In setting out to review this software, it first needs to be said that while it will run with a variety of hardware devices: Miglia, Plextor — both of which I own — and, of course, all Elgato devices, I feel that it’s important to research the devices and find the merits of each piece of hardware before making your purchase.

The Plextor ConvertX PVR, and the Miglia TECH Evolution TV, and the more pricey Elgato devices, do all of the encoding/compressing/formatting externally before it reaches your Mac thanks to the hardware’s built-in video compression. The less expensive “stick” types let your Mac do all of this “heavy lifting”, thus your computer takes a rather large hit when it comes to performance. This is really no big deal if you have a faster, newer Mac, but if you are like many folks you may not, and the performance hit will be very noticeable.

So, keeping that in mind, onto the review!