Nihon muke no MAC G5 - TV tuner card?

[tonikoro]

Actually, I have a combined question for any of you fellow FG Mac users.

I have a G5, and I know (by reading someplace on the apple discussions) that there are TV tuner cards for the G5. -But are there any for Terebi housou here in JLand? And any maker type in specific?

Also, anyone have one of these?
-And are they the same size (gaijin muke no karada size) as they are overseas? The reason I'm asking is that every desk chair I see is too small, I want one like I'd get overseas, Big..

[Taro Toporific]

I'd love to get a TV card too but I've got a PowerBook and a new iMac G5 (on order) neither of which have space for an extra card.

Speaking of extra space Tonikoro, I use a LLAOX-purchased fake AERON chair....and I will bet money my ass is better than yours. How much extra gaijin room do you need in chair?

Costco Japan carries fake AERONs too. Ask theflyingpig.com what gaijin office chairs are for sale at Costco Machida. I can post pictures of Costco Japan's office chairs for sale the next time I go to the Machida store (Costco Japan's shipping is nearly free).

"Nice erogometric chair - - Thu Feb 27, 2003"
I have a question... got any good references for ergo equipment in Japan? My wife is starting to get back problems from the chairs in the office (she's very short), so I'd like to get her some replacement equipment.

In one word: AERON

I got "OA chair 54" on sale at LLAOX for 12,000 yen, pseudo-Aeron, SNCNET4BKN. It's 95% of everything a $1000 Aeron is but has fewer arm adjustments, slightly shorter back, but much better gell-foam seat.

I bought it because you reminded me that all FGs deserve better seating.

[Charles]

Aeron comes in different sizes, you can order to fit. I'd like to buy one, but I have never seen a showroom with all the sizes on display so I can try them out and see what fits me. By their size chart, my body size would fit two different chairs, I'm right on the boundary between two chair sizes. I heard Herman-Miller has a new lower cost chair that has most of the features of the Aeron, it goes by some other name that I've forgotten, check around, any place that sells the Aeron, they'd know about it.
Personally, I prefer the Eames Soft Pad Chair, it is a hell of a lot more stylish than the Aeron, and costs about the same. It's a classic, and classics never go out of style.

As for video capture, I presume you want something like a TiVo. I keep hearing good things about the El Gato EyeTV.
http://www.elgato.com
They have different tuners that pick up US and European satellite and terrestrial DBTV, and a few other formats I've never heard of. More than likely, one of them would work in Japan, but I don't know anything about Japanese sat/cable formats. The most important feature, obviously, is the ability to interface over the internet to local program schedules. The product would probably need a fully localized software version for the Japanese market. I don't know if that exists yet.
There is another approach, lower quality but it's a native Japanese product so it uses local Japan TV, cable, and sat schedules. I don't know if they even sell it anymore, but the Pixela Capty TV box sounds like it has what you want. It works much like a TiVo, getting program schedules off the internet, but unlike a TiVo, the video format isn't encrypted, so you can burn programs to VCDs or DVDs. IIRC, it's an external USB device, it really should be Firewire so it can carry higher bandwidth video, USB isn't a fat enough pipe to carry full DV video, it uses a higher compression rate so the image quality is lower than DVD quality, more like VCD quality. Anyway, I recall seeing a page for this device on apple.co.jp website, must have been a couple years ago, but now I can't find it, and I can't seem to find it on the Pixela site either. They've probably got a Mac internal board ready by now. I would have searched Pixela harder, but I'm too lazy to read all the kanji, and hey, you can do some of your own research now that I've pointed you in the right direction.

[tonikoro]

Thanks for the info on the chair.

As an illustrator,
I sit in a chair for a very long part of my day. Well, almost all day.
I did see that Tokyu Hands here in Nagoya sold HM chairs, I should see what they have and for how much. Taro I heard there was a costco in Osaka-kansai area, maybe I should take a look down there. -But sure, if you happen to take a pic or two lemme know.

As for a TV tuner card, I just wondered if there was a way I could watch TV on my machine, rather than buying a TV. I mean, I already have an apple cinema ekishou, and watch DVD's on it. But, it would be cool to see TV. Don't know how I could feed the wowow on to it though.

Anyway, before I really think about getting chair or TVcard,
I'm going to put my hard Yen on a 17" Pbook. (Bling Bling)

Aye ai aye, is it me, or does the Apple store japan seem way higher in price than in the States?

[Charles]

If you just want to watch TV, and you don't need the TiVo-like features of recording and automatic scheduling of recordings, you can just get any old external DV converter and just plug it into any old tuner like in a VCR.
I've done this with my Canopus ADVC-100 hooked into my DirecTV receiver. But there are cheaper DV converters now, just be sure to get a Firewire box not a USB box. With a DV converter, you can do cool things like pipe your DV into iChat, so when you're away from your desk, you iChat to your home CPU and watch the TV remotely. That's what I was fiddling with, I could watch TV on my laptop in bed. I have a RF remote so I could change the channels from anywhere in the house. I recently read that someone came up with a hack so you can remotely change channels on your tuner from your Mac keyboard.

[Cortana]

Here's Herman Miller hq in Japan. Don't know if you're near Tokyo, but they have a website, too. You can probably find a more local source there.

Herman Miller Japan Ltd.
Tokyo Design Center, 5th Floor
5-25-19 Higashi-Gotanda
Shinagawa-ku
Tokyo 141-0022
Japan
Tel + 81 3 3444 7551
Fax + 81 3 3444 7580
Site http://www.hermanmiller.com/japan

[gkanai]

I was just at the Herman Miller Japan office last week trying out the new Mirra chair, which is a bit cheaper than the Aeron (still $1000) but is color-changeable.

It's very close to the JR Gotanda station. I didnt try the cause I like the design of the Mirra more.