The Mac TV

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The Mac TV

The limited edition Mac TV had a bit of an identity crisis. It came in a black LC 520-style case. (It is one of only a few Macs to have ever been black and on that note the only black mac sold in the us.) It came with a cable-ready TV tuner card, and included a CD-ROM drive. Only 10,000 Mac TVs were made before it was discontinued.This was perhaps the oddest Macintosh ever. It was the last desktop with a 68030 processor, the first with a built-in TV tuner, the first black desktop Mac*, and the first Mac to ship with a remote control. The built-in 14" Trinitron monitor displayed 16-bit TV images, but only 8-bit computer graphics. Software allowed it to capture a single frame from the TV as a PICT file.Alas, you can't watch TV and compute at the same time. It was an interesting experiment, marketed exclusively through consumer electronic channels. With a 68040 CPU, the option of watching TV in a small window while computing, and maybe even the ability to capture TV as a QuickTime movie, and this could have been a serious contender. Instead, it is a curious footnote in Apple's history.Despite using a 32 MHz, MacUser notes that Mac TV is about 15% slower than the 25 MHz LC III and LC 520, "because its data bus is smaller." Cleverly designed in some ways, intentionally crippled in others, Mac TV merits the Road Apple rating. The biggest drawbacks are a complete lack of upgrade options (without losing the TV features) and an 8 MB memory ceiling.Perhaps the most rare Mac ever.

i picked up the Mac TV about 4 years ago a a local garage sale for $20. This is one my favorite macs in my collection, and have no plans to ever sell this mac. I have to be honest, i have only actually turned it on about 4 times total in the 4 years or so that i have owned it. I have the orginal keyboard/mouse and cd set that came with it when new.

Front View

even though the rest of the mac is black the caddy loading cd-rom drive is white.always thought that was kinda funny.

Back View

Rear view of the mactv with all of its ports

Side View

Motherboard View

1 ram slot, and a tv tuner card built in