Elgato EyeTV - Thoughts?

[paulbeers]

I just ordered the HDHomerun / EyeTV combo. I've been using Sage since 2003, but with the google announcement I've been trying to decide if I should stay or if I should go. Here's what's driving me to EyeTV:

1. We are a very Apple oriented family. iPad's, iPhone, AppleTV's, MBP's, and a Mac Mini Server (and this is after I've actually sold some of my Excess Apple Stuff).
2. EyeTV works with HDHomeruns and HDPVR's which I already have and would only need to add another HDHomerun (to make up for the loss of my Avermedia Dual HD Tuner).
3. EyeTV will convert and stream live video to iPad's which (in theory) should be able to be streamed to the AppleTV's via Airplay. This means our iPad's could become virtually a big remote for the whole thing which would be much more convenient than using a "normal" remote on a tv screen.
4. Our Mac Mini Server is virtually unused right now, so it makes a perfect media recorder and HOPEFULLY I can use my old sage server as nothing more than a file server for storing my movies (which I will probably convert to H.264 if I make this jump).

So the real question, anyone actually used EyeTV for scheduling recordings and what not?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

This means our iPad's could become virtually a big remote for the whole thing which would be much more convenient than using a "normal" remote on a tv screen.

You can also do that with either the Mobile Web Interface or TiSageTV...

[bhyman1]

Isn't TiSage $30?

[bhyman1]

Paul, AFAIK EyeTV only supports one tuning device per computer?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by bhyman1

Paul, AFAIK EyeTV only supports one tuning device per computer?

Supposedly that is no longer a limitation. In fact they have even added Picture-in-Picture of live feeds. However, there are some notes in the knowledge base that this may or may not work well if you have various lineups so I guess we will see!

[bhyman1]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Supposedly that is no longer a limitation. In fact they have even added Picture-in-Picture of live feeds. However, there are some notes in the knowledge base that this may or may not work well if you have various lineups so I guess we will see!

Thats good to know. I might mess around with it since I have a copy on my MacBook Pro and my now spare SageTV hardware.

[paulbeers]

I can say, so far I'm able to stream from two different HDHomeruns, but not sure how it will work when I try to add an HDPVR. Probably at that point it will fail. It feels sorta half baked I will admit compared to Sage. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it though yet.

[reidfo]

Looks interesting. Anyone know if Apple TV can be used as an extender? I've looked through the forums and while it looks like you can use Airplay to stream EyeTV -> iOS device -> ATV I haven't seen anything that looks like a real front end running on ATV.

[bhyman1]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

I can say, so far I'm able to stream from two different HDHomeruns, but not sure how it will work when I try to add an HDPVR. Probably at that point it will fail. It feels sorta half baked I will admit compared to Sage. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it though yet.

I'd say the channel changing support for set top boxes is a big hinderance.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by reidfo

Looks interesting. Anyone know if Apple TV can be used as an extender? I've looked through the forums and while it looks like you can use Airplay to stream EyeTV -> iOS device -> ATV I haven't seen anything that looks like a real front end running on ATV.

No it can't be used as a traditional extender. That would require Apple to allow Apps to be added to Apple TV's which they haven't done. Instead the idea is to use an ipod Touch/iPhone/iPad as the "extender" and just send the video to the Apple TV. While I haven't had a lot of time to totally get into the whole EyeTV world, actually using an iPad for navigating the guide, selecting recordings, etc is actually realllyyyy nice.