First Look: EyeTV 2.5

[ScottW]

Elgato out did themselves with the release of EyeTV 2.5. I don't know where to begin.

First, I thought it was the Wi-Fi access and watching "Ace of Cakes" on my iPhone while sitting in the living room this evening that was the icing on the cake. It worked flawlessly and great picture quality. But, what caught my fancy was the fact I plugged in my second EyeTV Hybrid that is wired to my over the air HD antenna, and it just worked. Before I had to try and insert the right one in a certain order and it was just a pain that I never seemed to get working correctly. For the first time, Picture in Picture worked. The real test, would it still choke and give me USB bandwidth errors if I hooked up both feeds to the my Cable. More on that later.

Watching Shows on My iPhone or iPod Touch (Wi-Fi Method)

I must admit; I am not a big TV person. I don't ride a train or bus to work/school, I don't even leave my house to go to work, so my need for much video content on my iPhone is really pointless, besides I don't really watch that much TV. But, sometimes, even in my home I find the need to expand my horizons to something besides Dora the Explorer and Pinky Dinky Doo that seem to radiate from my one television set in the house. This is where EyeTV 2.5 with a web server streaming your goods to your iPhone for covert episodes of Ace of Cakes, or watching a COPS episode filmed in the 80's. Big hair really wasn't that cool ladies, I hope it never comes back. Using Safari, I just point to the IP address and Port of the EyeTV web server and it shows the videos that have been converted to a format that you can pre-select such as the iPhone, or for your iPod and have already converted them through a very lengthy process that makes that Elgato Turbo fairly tasty right now, cutting the conversion speeds down to a small fraction of just converting it with your Mac hardware. Once I chose the video I wanted to watch, it started streaming and I could move to anywhere in the show I wanted to watch very easily and fluently on the iPhone and start and stop movies just fine. No speed issues, it just worked and was quite amazing. One word of advice, if you install EyeTV 2.5 and wonder why your videos are not appearing on your iPhone, then you like me failed to read the instructions and you need to download and install Eye Connect which they provide a 30-day demo of but when all good things end, your sending love to them in the amount of $49.95. I will also add that you can watch the movies from other computers on your local network, so you can serve your EyeTV recorded content to the family and force your wife to watch her "Death TV Shows" on her MacBook, while you soak in MythBusters on your 36" tube.

Screenshot of both Elgato Hybrids plugged in with picture-in-picture on a 24" 1900x1600 screen. HD in the forground, analog in the PnP.

Works Great with Two Elgato Hybrids

Earlier this year I had a dream of having two feeds coming from my cable provider, one running the weather channel and another running a cable news channel. This way, I can keep up on everything happening in the world and know when the next tornado would strike so I could go chase it. But, my dreams where shattered when apparently I didn't have enough USB Bandwidth to fire up two Elgato Hybrids feed from the analog cable service, but could if I jumped through a few fire burning circus hoops, could get over the air signal (HD or Analog) work, so I could watch Judge Judy and a cable news network of my choice. Needless to say, I decided one feed was enough. With EyeTV 2.5, I was blown away when I plugged in my second EyeTV Hybrid and it just popped up and started showing over the air HD, and then I could do picture-in-picture from both feeds plus record the separate feeds simultaneously. But, the real test could I watch two cable feeds at the same time? The answer is no. But, I will survive since I really don't need dual feeds and having the option to watch a Football game in HD, but not mess up my recording of Modern Marvels just makes it more convenient.

The Fun Still Doesn't End

EyeTV 2.5 includes many other features that are, depending on how you use your EyeTV. For example, you can turn on Timeshift that allows you to record a show you have been watching for awhile, but going back to the beginning of it and hitting the record button renders the full show. When you do record things with the record button, instead of it filing it away as "Live TV" it actually stores it as the programs name which gives you a feature much like your Tivo provides where if you start recording during the show it will fetch the entire show, assuming it wasn't older than 30 minutes. The iPod export button can be defined to a default export quality, depending on your exporting preferences with the option for the iPhone screen size format and the iPod icon changes to an iPhone.

Disappointments

Disappointing is the same bug I've had in previous versions where no matter how you slice and dice EyeTV processes (force quitting) it will not quite and requires a reboot of your machine, which can be a royal pain. For example, as I am doing this review, it locks up on me, I must have overpowered it with my dual inputs and it quit responding, but I had to reboot and setup my session to continue this review.

EyeTV 2.5 from Elgato

[sometime6]

Any idea if v2.5 will support two feeds coming from cable provider if you use one Eye 200(firewire) and one Hybrid (usb)? It was a black day when ElGato dropped Firewire in favor of the poor excuse called USB, I suppose we can thank the rats at Intel for forcing USB on us all!