Miglia TVMini 2 review

Miglia has extended its TVMini range with this digital receiver complemented by Equinux's The Tube software for watching and recording TV on your Mac.

Narrower than its predecessors to avoid blocking adjacent USB ports, the TVMini 2 also uses a full-size RF connector rather than an adaptor as in the 2005 model - which is one less thing to carry or misplace.

The Tube 1.5.3 is bundled with a prompt to download version 2, with which we tested the device. Its new features include TubeTalk, a chatroom feature for discussing programmes with others - an interesting addition for observational TV such as documentaries and reality TV. The licence is sensibly generous, allowing use on up to five Macs. The location feature adds to this by saving tuned channel sets rather than retuning every time that you change location.

We tested on a 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 and a 2GHz MacBook with Core 2 Duo; both were fitted with 2GB Ram. As ever a roof aerial gave us good reception of Freeview channels and plenty of programmes from which to choose; the bundled portable aerial was less successful.

What looked like a reception problem on the G4 turned out to be a decoding issue. Despite being the exact minimum CPU requirement, the G4 just couldn't keep pace. Picture and sound quality was terrible across all channels. We had already disabled the deinterlacing and aperture features as they're only recommended for G5s and Intel Macs.

Disabling Timeshift improved things while The Tube was left to its own devices. But adding load - whether moving the mouse or using other applications - exhibited the odd decoding issue once more. It's far from ideal that G4 users should need to compromise on such a key feature anyway.

The MacBook fared much better even with those features enabled, The Tube taking between 40% and 50% of the CPU. Glitches occasionally interrupted viewing, though less intrusively than the G4, and applying simple filters in Photoshop didn't adversely affect it.

TVMini 2 copes better on modern Macs but we strongly recommend investigating alternatives for ageing Macs. The hardware's physical profile is good for notebook users in particular, especially if you want to use an external mouse with a MacBook.

While it's not that expensive among Mac TV tuners, the TVMini 2's performance is still disappointing for the price.