Interesting change recently as ElGato's North American website: They dropped the rebranded Dual Digital/ATSC HomeRunHD ethernet networked based OEM tuner made by SiliconDust from their current products page. ElGato's US-North American site now lists only the EyeTV Hybrid and the 250+ models.

For a time, El Gato repackaged and sold the SiliconDust HDHR-US HDHomeRun Networked Digital TV Tuner. They added support for the unique, Dual ATSC and QAM digital device in later versions of EyeTV 2 - and continue support in the updated EyeTV 3. So perhaps ElGato is simply focusing on profitably selling EyeTV3 software at full $79.95 retail to HomeRun purchasers. Bundled or not -- It's a winning combination allowing multiple Macs to view and record TV - or to watch one station while recording another.

In a way the unbundling doesn't matter since ElGato is ultimately a World-Class software company with an award-winning TV application. What hardware it runs on is somewhat secondary. And the HomeRun is readily available elsewhere - and enjoys wide support on both the Mac and Windows PC platforms:

The HDHomeRun works with the following Software:
Windows Media Center:
MCE 2005 32-bit
MCE 2005 64-bit
Vista MCE 32-bit
Vista MCE 64-bit
SageTV - HTPC software for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Home Server, Mac & Linux
SnapStream BeyondTV - DVR for Windows
Elgato EyeTV - DVR for Mac
MythTV - DVR for Linux
MediaPortal - DVR for Windows
GB-PVR - DVR for Windows
VLC - Multi-platform media viewer
TSReader - MPEG-2 transport stream analysis

Tags: Apple , SiliconDust, HDHomeRun, Mac, Dual Mac Tuner, Gadgets, Technology, Ethernet TV Tuner