If you’ve got a Mac, you’ve probably heard of Elgato. The company makes ultra-slick Freeview adapters for Apple computers, but soon it’ll be bringing its telly tech to the iPhone too.
We caught up with Lars Felber, Elgato’s Product Marketing Manager, earlier this week. He told us live TV on the iPhone is high on their agenda.
“We’re asked a lot about that,” he said. “We could make a Freeview adapter for iPhone. One that draws power from the battery and has an aerial. But the phone would need to convert the MPEG stream. That’s a lot of work, so it’s far better to stream it.”
Elgato’s solution would work in a similar way to Sling Media’s Slingbox, but instead of needing a new set-top box, you’d simply plug one of the company’s USB TV tuners into your Mac at home, and let it re-compress the signal for iPhone, before streaming it over the web.
It’s still early days, but Elgato’s plan sounds promising. What we do know is live TV is coming to the iPhone one way or another, and as Lars told us, “if [Elgato] do this, it has to be perfect.” From what we’ve heard so far, we’ve no doubt it will be.
TBC | £TBC | Elgato
