Elgato to unleash EyeTV 3 with Smart Guides, iTunes-like interface

[AppleInsider]

Elgato on Tuesday will introduce EyeTV 3, a major overhaul to its Mac OS X software for recording, post-processing and export of television programs that will introduce a handful of new features, including a refined interface, smart program guides, and enhanced WiFi access, AppleInsider has learned.

Drawing off feedback from existing EyeTV 2 users, Elgato has revamped nearly every aspect of the software using concepts that will be familiar to users of Apple's iTunes software, people familiar with matter say. Among the enhancements is a completely redesigned programs window that mimics the iTunes interface, placing all key functions in a customizable sidebar and offering a supplemental Cover Flow view for browsing the EyeTV Library.

Like Apple's Smart Folder technology included in Mac OS X, users of EyeTV 3 will be able to save their program guide search criteria to the sidebar as "Smart Guides" that will automatically update whenever new data appears in the program guide.

Smart Guides can further be used to create subscriptions that automatically record the contents of any Smart Guide. This will reportedly make it possible for users to not only record all episodes of a regular series, but also all content that matches a specific search criteria, such as all shows containing the actor Jerry Seinfeld that are broadcast in high-definition.

Similarly, a feature called Smart Playlists will let users create dynamic groupings of all the recordings that match a specific term, such as all movies containing the actor Kevin Spacey. Like Smart Guides, the Smart Playlists will also update automatically as new recordings are added to the EyeTV 3 Library.



According to those people familiar with EyeTV 3, the software will also introduce enhanced Wi-Fi access that will make it possible to watch low-resolution recordings in Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, or on a variety of other smart phones. Users will be able to password protect the Wi-Fi access feature to control who is able to review the recordings.



Another feature expected to make its debut as part of EyeTV 3 is a new iPod assistant modeled after Elgato's popular VHS Assistant. The feature will guide users through the steps needed to capture analog sources like VHS cassettes and camcorder tapes and prepare them for iPod use.



Like iTunes and iPhoto sharing, users will be able to share their library of recordings with other EyeTV 3 users over a local network. Shared libraries will appear in the application's sidebar for instant browsing.



Other features lined up for Tuesday's EyeTV 3 release include a new on-screen menu, saved channel lists, a Script Menu to trigger external AppleScripts, and improvements to the post-processing editor, full text search, and the EyeTV setup assistant.

EyeTV 3, which is designed for use alongside Elgato's line of hardware-based television tuners, supports analog and digital television signals, IPTV signals, as well as analog video signals from cable boxes, satellite receivers and video recorders.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[teonyc]

Hmmm. Let me know when they include a cable-card slot. Until then it is crippleware.

[emig647]

Or let us know when the hardware can sit between the (cable/sat) receiver and output to the tv... and still record..... preferably in HD.

[GQB]

OK, someone clarify this for me...
1) Does EyeTV work with anything other than OTA? i.e. does it work with cable
2) If so, does it work with everything on cable except premium content? (e.g. HBO)

Even talking directly with Elegato folks at Macworld 07 left me confused as to how their product works with cable, which is the only game in town for me.

[Tofino]

who decided that almost 2000k of .png files were necessary to illustrate this article? does your bandwidth grow on trees?

[nagromme]

Great to hear.

I've been extremely happy over the past year with all aspects of my EyeTV Hybrid: the hardware, the software, and the support. I use it for antenna programming as well as for watching/ripping VHS tapes on my iMac. I suspect I'll use it to play Wii games in future.

I don't see myself ever getting cable. HD is free over the air, and there are many Internet TV options now (I use iTunes to watch some cable shows, and ABC.com to watch Lost and Pushing Daisies--both in HD for free). Not all cable shows are on iTunes, but iTunes is VASTLY cheaper than any cable package. So I can wait for the DVDs on those shows I miss.

[nagromme]

Quick answers from ElGato's support site:

Analog cable
http://faq.elgato.com/index.php/faq/more/484/

Digital cable
http://faq.elgato.com/index.php/faq/more/482/

[The Hedon]

GQB, the EyeTV Hybrid works with cable as well as antenna.

[minderbinder]

So does eyetv record natively to an aTV/iPod compatible format yet? Or does it record to something else and then have to convert afterwards?

[The Hedon]

Originally Posted by minderbinder

So does eyetv record natively to an aTV/iPod compatible format yet? Or does it record to something else and then have to convert afterwards?

You need to covert afterwards.

[ZagMac]

Originally Posted by teonyc

Hmmm. Let me know when they include a cable-card slot. Until then it is crippleware.

HD is mentioned in the article, but I've no idea how that works. Anyone more familiar? I need to supplement my HD DVR Cablebox, but am always spinning round and round on whether I should try to run cable/tv/recording into my iMac, or move to an HD Tivo. Regradless, Comcast is worthless.

My needs are: iTunes compatibility (whether native or using additional conversion doesn't matter much to me-my volume would be relatively low) for iPod and AppleTV use, increased drive (Comcast DVR constantly filling-up) space, and ability to burn DVDs of recordings.

It seems possible to get these needs met via Tivo's current feature set, or EyeTV's. If anyone out there has good advice, I'm all ears.

[The Hedon]

Originally Posted by ZagMac

HD is mentioned in the article, but I've no idea how that works. Anyone more familiar? I need to supplement my HD DVR Cablebox, but am always spinning round and round on whether I should try to run cable/tv/recording into my iMac, or move to an HD Tivo. Regradless, Comcast is worthless.

My needs are: iTunes compatibility (whether native or using additional conversion doesn't matter much to me-my volume would be relatively low) for iPod and AppleTV use, increased drive (Comcast DVR constantly filling-up) space, and ability to burn DVDs of recordings.

It seems possible to get these needs met via Tivo's current feature set, or EyeTV's. If anyone out there has good advice, I'm all ears.

I don't know about anyone else, but my analog stations from my cable company look like garbage on my new iMac when running the EyeTV. The quality isn't even as good as the analog channels on my HDTV running through the digital cable box.

I don't know if his is because the iMac is high def, and analog channels look better on my old regular TV I replaced than on my iMac, or if it's a limitation of the EyeTV Hybrid tuner.

[korexz]

Can someone tell me if V3 will detect commercials? That is really the only feature I care about. The EyeTV product is SOLID.

[sandifop]

LAN support is not new for v3. The last update of v2 allows me to access recompressed .eyetv files from the LAN or internet. It does occasionally get amnesia but it is there.

[teonyc]

It only works on unscrambled cable content. On my system, that leaves public access and maybe a few broadcast networks.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by The Hedon

GQB, the EyeTV Hybrid works with cable as well as antenna.

In a limited fashion. EyeTV won't control a cable/sat box and I don't think there's any way to have a guide. What I end up having to do is program the satellite box to turn on & switch to a certain channel at a certain time, and program EyeTV to record the AUX input at that time. I've heard that there is some third party way to tie the two together better, but I don't know what it is.

[tmedia1]

I use my Elgato Hybrid with TW analogue cable and can record anything. Works great!

[The Hedon]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

In a limited fashion. EyeTV won't control a cable/sat box and I don't think there's any way to have a guide. What I end up having to do is program the satellite box to turn on & switch to a certain channel at a certain time, and program EyeTV to record the AUX input at that time. I've heard that there is some third party way to tie the two together better, but I don't know what it is.

I don't know about using a box. But for the regular cable, it works great. It carries my channels 2-84 just fine. The guide is free, and is from TitanTV, which is integrated in the EyeTV program guide.

[othello]

i want apple to let elgato make use of the usb port on the back of an appletv...

[DotComCTO]

So - to clarify the questions regarding EyeTV (I've had an EyeTV 250 for a year now):

1. You can use OTA or cable.

2. So far as I know, EyeTV cannot control a cable box. Personally, I plug in my cable right into the EyeTV 250. This means that I can only record unscrambled channels. I don't bother with a cable box because I don't feel like shelling out extra bucks for one. I just don't record that much content, and I have 2 TiVo's in my house anyway.

3. I believe the EyeTV software can record and automatically export to an iPod or iPhone.

4. The current version of the EyeTV software does support WiFi viewing of a recorded program. In addition, if you open port 2170 to the rest of the world, you can access your recordings online, too. Unfortunately, there's no built-in access control, so you'll have to deal with that at the router level (e.g., IP restrictions).

5. No one has asked yet, but this always comes up: what's the difference between the EyeTV 250 and the EyeTV Hybrid. The short answer is that the EyeTV 250 has built-in MPEG encoding hardware whereas the Hybrid relies on the Mac to encode analog broadcasts. It used to be that the Hybrid didn't allow FF/REW/PAUSE of live TV for analog, but I'm not sure if that has been addressed. Personally, that was the deal breaker for me and that's why I went with the EyeTV 250.

The new features look pretty nice, but I'm wondering why there's no remote viewing of live TV. You can already download CyTV to get that feature, so I have no idea why Elgato didn't implement that feature as well. Very odd. Nevertheless, it'll be nice to get a revamp of the software. I'm looking forward to it!



--DotComCTO

[arachide]

Originally Posted by GQB

OK, someone clarify this for me...
1) Does EyeTV work with anything other than OTA? i.e. does it work with cable
2) If so, does it work with everything on cable except premium content? (e.g. HBO)

Even talking directly with Elegato folks at Macworld 07 left me confused as to how their product works with cable, which is the only game in town for me.

I have an EyeTV hybrid and the HDHomerun. The Hybrid will work with analog cable (channels 2-94 on our Astound cable system). The HDHomerun will pick up unencrypted QAM (digital) channels off of cable, as well as ATSC (OTA) digital TV. If you are curious as to which channels you would receive with the HDHomerun, you can plug in your zip code at Silicon Dust's site. What would be nice (and I still don't see it listed) is if Eye TV worked with more than one tuner. I want to be able to record analog cable from the Hybrid and HDTV from the HDHomerun, but EyeTV doesn't support it, at least in 2.5.2.

The new software looks really promising. The addition of subscriptions is HUGE. It was a real PITA to have to go through once a week and set up recordings in Eye TV.

As for cable cards and being able to record HD direct from a STB, I don't really think that is a priority for Elgato (or Apple for that matter). If you want to be able to record encrypted HDTV, buy an HDTivo or rent a box from your cable/satellite company.

[bommai]

The eyeTV hardware and software are great for some people and not so great for others.

Over the past year and half, I have had an eyeTV Hybrid and then a HDHomeRun.

Some of the products work with both analog signals and digital and some just digital.

It works out perfectly for me since I am only interested in over the air digital and clear QAM. I don't care about the multitude of useless channels that cable and satellite systems have. For me, the requirements are simple. Keep it digital (HD if possible), keep it unscrambled. I am mainly interested in local HD shows like House, Prison Break, 24, Moonlight, Heroes, CSI, Shark, Jeopardy, etc. I record these using HDHomeRun in 1080i or 720p based on the network and they are all crystal clear. My daughter watches PBS kids shows and I record and export them to my AppleTV.

I welcome eyeTV 3.0 and look forward to using it.

[bakerzdosen]

Well, I for one am VERY interested in the little tidbit at the end about IPTV signals. If it really does support IPTV signals, and I could just add an Elgato box in place of one of my Amino boxes, I'd be thrilled. Otherwise, I'm stuck waiting for my provider to get around to offering the Aminet530...

[digitalclips]

Originally Posted by Tofino

who decided that almost 2000k of .png files were necessary to illustrate this article? does your bandwidth grow on trees?

If 2000k hurts your connection I'd forget HD movies on iTunes

[minderbinder]

Originally Posted by The Hedon

You need to covert afterwards.

That's a pain and probably a deal breaker for many people. Is there any reason they couldn't design a product that could encode straight into the codec used by those boxes?

[gumbygo]

I'm a former user of EyeTV 2.5. I quit using it for two reasons:

1. Enabling "optical digital out" to get 5.1 audio causes EyeTV to randomly crash my Mac. I get the black/grey screen of death and have to reboot. Many other users apparently have the same problem, so we're stuck using 2-channel audio.

2. When I connect my Mac Mini (Core Duo) up to my HDTV and watch TV with EyeTV, the motion has a lot of judder/jitter compared to using the HDTV's built-in tuner. I think it has something to do with EyeTV having to de-interlace the video in software instead of hardware. The motion gets better at lower resolutions, or in windowed mode, but full screen mode looks crappy. I think any software-based TV is going to have that limitation. It's better to de-interlace using a dedicated hardware de-interlacer. We really need computers with hardware decoders and de-interlacers built into the video hardware.

These new features in EyeTV 3 look awesome, but until it can run on a sub $1000 Mac and match the playback performance of a normal TV, I'm not interested.

[deepkid]

I've had my Miglia TV HD Mini for a couple of years now and am currently running Eye TV 2.5.2 on my powermac g5 1.6 Ghz 1.25 GB ram 10.4.11 and am quite happy with its performance.

I used to run this on my powerbook g4 1.33 ghz, 1.25gb ram but experienced the stuttering issues mentioned above also. The g5 certainly makes a big difference as there's rarely any stuttering or other issues. People who've seen it perform on the g5 are amazed. I use an Acer 22" widescreen flat panel (not hd but ok resolution) and am one of the few in Chicago fortunate to pick up cbs hd (gorgeous prime time!).

It's great having the option to watch OTA DTV on the go but even better to run several apps on the g5 at once and have tv too.

I didn't want to commit to a dedicated hdtv tv set yet and really don't see a need to. Consider how flexible this setup is. I can switch panels whenever I want. And I have a powermac that was collecting dust for a while but now it gives me dtv and lets me work on a nice monitor at the same time.

I can't wait to see how Eye Tv 3 performs.


still shots of eyetv on my acer:

http://tinyurl.com/2j7xep

http://tinyurl.com/32zqnr

here's the acer i snatched for $199 at tiger direct:

http://tinyurl.com/ypcgta


OH! I forgot to add that since those pics above, I now use my regular old rabbit ears for OTA in a horizontal positon. Strangely it works best. I pull them forward or push them back to pick up any stubborn channels, like CBS.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by gumbygo

I'm a former user of EyeTV 2.5. I quit using it for two reasons:

1. Enabling "optical digital out" to get 5.1 audio causes EyeTV to randomly crash my Mac. I get the black/grey screen of death and have to reboot. Many other users apparently have the same problem, so we're stuck using 2-channel audio.

2. When I connect my Mac Mini (Core Duo) up to my HDTV and watch TV with EyeTV, the motion has a lot of judder/jitter compared to using the HDTV's built-in tuner. I think it has something to do with EyeTV having to de-interlace the video in software instead of hardware. The motion gets better at lower resolutions, or in windowed mode, but full screen mode looks crappy. I think any software-based TV is going to have that limitation. It's better to de-interlace using a dedicated hardware de-interlacer. We really need computers with hardware decoders and de-interlacers built into the video hardware.

What deinterlacer settings did you try?

Hardware deinterlacer chips do exist, but video card chips do it about as well as software. The way OS X operates, I don't know if it's available. It wasn't available in the past.

These new features in EyeTV 3 look awesome, but until it can run on a sub $1000 Mac and match the playback performance of a normal TV, I'm not interested.

A Mac mini Core Duo should do it though. I know HD worked fine on a CD MacBook Pro when I had it. It works fine on an original PowerMac G5, and that's over four years old now.

[Gee4orce]

Originally Posted by othello

i want apple to let elgato make use of the usb port on the back of an appletv...

Oh yes ! And integrate EyeTV as a module in the AppleTV 'backrow' interface

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by othello

i want apple to let elgato make use of the usb port on the back of an appletv...

...or at least let us know what the hell it is for already!

[elroth]

If this software uses Cover Flow, does that mean Elgato is paying a royalty to Apple, or is there some other compensation? Apple owns the Cover Flow technology, since it bought the company that developed it.

[pairof9s]

I done gone and pissed myself!!

EyeTV 3.0 looks that awesome!.

/

[korexz]

Originally Posted by teckstud

...or at least let us know what the hell it is for already!

It's for hacking silly.

No, really. Do a few google searches. You can do a lot with the ATV. I am waiting for the next gen so I can scoop some up on the cheap.

[djames42]

Originally Posted by korexz

Can someone tell me if V3 will detect commercials? That is really the only feature I care about. The EyeTV product is SOLID.

I agree. The only reason I still have a PC in the house is because BeyondTV does such a bang up job. It detects commercials. It can be remotely programmed via WAP. It showsqueezes down to DivX and iPod formats. It slices, it dices, it... oh wait, wrong product.

It does, however, make one good excuse for keeping a Windows box around (although now that MythTV does commercial detection, I could switch to Mythbunto and use mencode to convert videos for the iPod or my Archos).

[TKN]

If they come out with a Front Row style interface that can match Tivo and CableCard, then they will have my business.

It sucks that Tivo Series 3 doesn't have TivoToGo, that is the only reason I haven't picked up a DVR, the TWC DVR is just complete crap.

[arachide]

Originally Posted by TKN

It sucks that Tivo Series 3 doesn't have TivoToGo, that is the only reason I haven't picked up a DVR, the TWC DVR is just complete crap.

From Tivo's FAQ:
Are TiVoToGo and Multi-Room Viewing available on TiVo HD?

Yes. TiVoToGo and Multi-Room Viewing are available on any TiVo HD DVR with a network connection and software version 9.1 or later.

I have been fighting the temptation to give up on Elgato and buy another Tivo. Hopefully they will have Eye TV 3 up and running in their booth at MacWorld so I can see it firsthand.

[GeekLawyer]

Originally Posted by deepkid

I've had my Miglia TV HD Mini for a couple of years now and am currently running Eye TV 2.5.2...

Do you think that we Miglia users will be left out in the cold with EyeTV 3? I mean, Elgato and Miglia are on bad terms now and Miglia's license for new Elgato software was yanked last year. Or have they made up?

Or am I just confused...?

[gumbygo]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

What deinterlacer settings did you try?

Hardware deinterlacer chips do exist, but video card chips do it about as well as software. The way OS X operates, I don't know if it's available. It wasn't available in the past.

A Mac mini Core Duo should do it though. I know HD worked fine on a CD MacBook Pro when I had it. It works fine on an original PowerMac G5, and that's over four years old now.

I tried all the deinterlace settings. Full de-interlace drops frames, no deinterlacing looks like crap. Motion Adaptive seems to give the best tradeoff, but I'm pretty sure that a hardware de-interlacer would be equivalent to "full de-interlacing."

I actually ran EyeTV for quite a while at 1366x768 resolution and it was satisfactory, but the motion still looked worse than my native HDTV tuner. I upgraded to a 1080p TV set. After setting the Mac Mini to 1920x1080, the motion got even worse at full-screen. I just don't think there is enough CPU horsepower to decompress MPEG2 and de-interlace it at 1080i. It "works" and I admit that 80% of people wouldn't notice, but when I do an A-to-B comparison with the TV's own tuner, the TV wins hands down.

I'm not touching the whole "HD DVR on a PC" thing until they figure out how to do all the video processing in hardware (probably the video card).

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by korexz

It's for hacking silly.

No, really. Do a few google searches. You can do a lot with the ATV. I am waiting for the next gen so I can scoop some up on the cheap.

But seriously -what is the official reason for that USB port from Apple? They have never said- does that make any sense I ask you? Release a product with a physical feature and never say what it's for??

[nvidia2008]

Originally Posted by Tofino

who decided that almost 2000k of .png files were necessary to illustrate this article? does your bandwidth grow on trees?

yes. all my bandwidth right now is unlimited for us$30 a month.
only thing is max speeds are like 512kbps to 1mbit max.