Show notes for this episode:

• Elgato sells the HDHomeRun bundled with its EyeTV software, and the package retails for about $160.
• Don’t have a Mac? Then simply buy the device from Silicon Dust, which will cost you only $130.
• I kept running into issues with EyeTV not recognizing the HDHomeRun as soon as I changed my network configuration. Repeating the guided setup with the EyeTV Setup assistant finally did the trick.

Are you struggling with over-the-air TV reception? Or maybe you’ve found a different solution to this problem? Let us know in the comments, get in touch with us on Twitter (@cordcutters) or on Facebook, or email us at cordcutters @ gigaom.com.

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AirPlay support in EyeTV means that, so long as you have hardware capable of running EyeTV on your computer (like the Elgato EyeTV HD, for instance), you’ll be able to take your home cable or satellite subscription with you wherever you go and view it on the big screen if you also have an Apple TV and a decent internet connection. At a hotel, for instance, you could hook up your Apple TV to the provided in-room television, and using either a 3G connection (if you have a lot of bandwidth) or Wi-Fi, watch live TV from your cable box at home, including all your subscribed channels, complete with the ability to record shows and change channels as you watch.

It’s a great way to get access to TV everywhere without waiting for your cable company to wise up and provide it themselves. I’ve even known people who’ve used similar setups to share cable connections between households, and AirPlay support lowers the hardware requirements for entry (you no longer need an actual computer on the receiving end). Or if a friend you’re visiting doesn’t get the game you want to watch, you could bring along your Apple TV and use your iPhone to watch it live.

Ideally, we’d be able to pay for on-demand access to live and archived content from wherever we are whenever we want. Since that future’s a long way off (if we’ll ever get there), this update to EyeTV provides a very nice best-fit solution in the meantime. Let us know how EyeTV AirPlay performance is working out for you in the comments if you’ve got the app.

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Recently, Elgato released EyeTV for the iPhone (AppStore Link). At a cost of $4.99, its marketing blurb offers the following functionality:

With the EyeTV app, you can watch, record, and enjoy live and recorded TV on your iPhone or iPod touch. At last, you don‘t have to leave all your great TV shows at home; the EyeTV app puts the power of award-winning EyeTV in the palm of your hand.

The EyeTV app accesses EyeTV running on your Mac at home to deliver these great features to your iPhone:

• Watch live TV and change channels anywhere (Wi-Fi connection required)
• Watch your EyeTV recordings
• Browse the comprehensive Program Guide
• Start recordings back home on your Mac immediately or schedule them for later
• View and edit your recording schedules

How Does it Measure Up?

Now that we know the promises, how does the functionality work in practise and does it live up to the hype? To set the picture accurately; my set up is a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 2GB of RAM and two Elgato Digital USB Tuner sticks. This is hooked up to an Airport Express, which extends my existing wireless connection from another room. Between myself and my wife, we have an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 2nd Gen, so I will be testing EyeTV on all three looking for differences.

Setting Up and Preparing

After downloading the EyeTV app from iTunes and installing onto my three iDevices, I had to update EyeTV to version 3.2 on my Mac mini by simply checking for updates. Once updated, switching on iPhone streaming was a simple option in the preferences.

There is also functionality for using Elgato’s servers to allow connecting to your EyeTV device from outside your wireless network called “My EyeTV.” This works in a similar manner to Apple’s “Back To My Mac” functionality of MobileMe and requires UPnP support between your EyeTV host and your router. Because I have an AirPort Express extended network, UPnP didn’t work — but I was able to manually configure a port forwarding rule in my router on port 2170 to make the service work.

Advanced options allow you to require a passcode to connecting a device and the option to automatically convert recordings into a format suitable for streaming at a later time. While Live TV does not need to be prepared, recorded content does.

You can however, also prepare recordings manually, on a case-by-case basis.

After starting the iPhone app and entering my “My EyeTV” details, I get the option of connecting via Wi-Fi (on the bottom) and via “My EyeTV” (on top). When connected to my local wireless, the “My EyeTV” connection did not work (of course you wouldn’t want to do this, but the software doesn’t detect this in any way).

Selecting the local Wi-Fi option connects quickly and presents the app’s main menu.

Watching Live TV

Selecting LiveTV gives a list of channels and what is currently showing.

Clicking on the green icon on the right displays the upcoming programs on that channel.

I can then select the current show to get a summary and an option to “Watch Now.”

This process then takes about 20 seconds of processing and streaming before I get picture and sound, which is smooth and crisp and just as one would expect.

Tapping on the screen brings up the controls which allow pausing, rewinding 30 seconds (and jumping back to the live stream), a volume control and resizing between widescreen (just like in the iPod app).

Pressing the ‘gear’ icon displayed in the top right of the channel listing presents a bandwidth/quality settings screen to enable you to tweak the size of the stream. This worked well and allows you to find the right setting for your moment. The lowest setting is about equal to the early days of You Tube while the highest setting is flawless.

Watching Recordings

Pressing the recordings menu gives you a sub menu to narrow down searching for an existing recording.

Selecting an option (such as Library) gives a list of individual recordings.

While there is no way to search directly for a recording, you can sort the list by a number of means.

Unlike live TV, when watching a recording you get full track scrubbing navigation, not just ‘back 30 seconds.’

The quality of recordings is not configurable like LiveTV is, it depends on the quality options you selected for ‘preparing recordings’ on your Mac. Cellular quality is very low and like You Tube, but if you’re on wireless (or on a jailbroken phone with 3G Un-Restrictor) you get full quality.

Schedules

Schedules let you see what upcoming recordings you have scheduled.

All you can do here is browse and remove an item from the schedule.

Guide

The Guide gives you access to the full electronic TV guide available in your Mac’s EyeTV software, this is exactly the same as when browsing the guide for Live TV, except instead of an option to “Watch Now,” the button is “Record,” which will add the show to your recording schedule.

The Verdict

There is no noticeable speed differences with performance between the iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2nd Gen or the iPhone 3GS. The bottleneck here is available bandwidth and the speed of the host computer. Generally, the functionality works as advertised, however there are some limitations to be aware of, and some version 1.0 bugs that need to be squashed.

• Live streaming does not work on 3G, requires Wi-Fi — thanks AT&T, for affecting my functionality in Australia. However, on a jailbroken phone, I was able to successfully use 3G Unrestrictor to fool EyeTV into thinking it was on Wi-Fi, thus allowing it to work. This worked at a much higher quality than I expected and was also very smooth. Well worth the $2.99 it costs for 3G Unrestrictor.
• Streaming only supports one device at a time. Connecting with my iPhone and watching a live TV stream, then connecting with my iPod touch works, but when actually selecting a channel to view on the iPod touch, it drops the stream for the iPhone. This is probably fair enough as one stream is pretty CPU intensive as it is.
• When both recording a show and streaming live TV, I had two instances of the host application crash, requiring a full EyeTV restart to allow connections again.
• When testing across the Internet while on my work’s wireless, or on 3G, I found my iPhone’s EyeTV app constantly crashing whenever it tried to connect. This seemed to be an issue with the EyeConnect helper software on my Mac mini, which needed to be restarted by turning EyeTV sharing off and on again in my Mac mini.
• When stopping a live or recorded stream, the CPU usage on the host computer often stays high for 5-10 minutes. It looks like its continuing to stream data out and didn’t get the ‘stop’ message from the iPhone. This does seem to eventually time out and really isn’t a big problem unless the CPU usage causes you a problem.
• It would be a nice option to be able to ‘prepare’ a recording for the iPhone remotely.

Once Elgato gets a software update out for both ends of the solution (iPhone and OS X) to fix the crash bugs and bring stability to the software, this will be absolutely great. Until then, it’s a bit of hit and miss, it may work fine or it may need someone to be at your computer to restart software before it works, which defeats the purpose. Elgato is working hard on its forums to replicate user’s issues and make this stable, so its a bright future ahead.

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For those who missed the reason why the app was pulled in the first place, El Gato had “accidentally left in” a feature whereby if you click the warning window that tells you Wi-Fi is required for live TV playback, instead of the “OK” button in the window, the dialog would close and streaming would occur over 3G anyway.

El Gato revealed that it had already resubmitted a fixed version when the problem was discovered, and that version has today been approved by Apple and is available for download. This time around, clicking the dialog box has no effect.

Whether it was an Easter egg, meant to pass undetected through Apple’s censors (which seems unlikely, given how easy it was to activate), or whether it was just an accident, the incident reveals that despite AT&T’s recent announcement that voice calls would now be allowed over 3G, that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all with all types of content.

I still think this needs looking into by a regulatory body. Data is data, and if wireless customers are paying not-insignificant fees in order to be able to use data on their cell phones, they should have the right to choose the nature of that traffic. My plan covers 6GB per month. Who’s to say I don’t want to use five of that on streaming video? I can see cutting me off once I exceed my limit, since I might then be causing undue strain on your network, but if you’ve assigned me 6GB, let me use that however I see fit.

At least Apple is being relatively understanding about the whole thing. It could easily have barred EyeTV from the app store for an extended period, or altogether, in order to punish what could easily be seen an a purposeful attempt to side-step App Store requirements. Instead, it acted quickly when a fix was issued and reintroduced in the app with very little delay following its removal. I think this especially points to the fact that AT&T is really still the one to blame in cases like this.

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For those who don’t know, the EyeTV app accesses content from an EyeTV, the company’s television recording device, attached to a Mac, and sends it to an iPhone. As the pictured warning from the app clearly states, a Wi-Fi connection is required. However, tapping the warning text instead of the “OK” button enables streaming over a cellular connection.

Unfortunately, that’s a violation of AT&T’s terms of service in the U.S. and Apple’s policy everywhere else. Just last month, another video streaming app, SlingPlayer, was released in Europe, still shackled to Wi-Fi only. Sad, but those are the rules, which makes you wonder why El Gato broke them. According to Julio Ojeda-Zapata of Your Tech Blog, El Gato says “test code” was “accidentally left in the EyeTV app.” El Gato has already resubmitted a version of the EyeTV app without the offending code.

Personally, I applaud El Gato for its user-friendly sloppiness. The real error here is allowing telecommunication companies to regulate content on any network.

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It is, however, possible to connect a gaming console by way of an EyeTV Hybrid, which has the necessary S-Video or Composite inputs. HD gameplay isn’t possible at this time, but there could well be products in the future which accept HDMI or Component inputs. This guide gives you an overview of this process and should get you up and running with your Xbox (or any other recent games console).

Getting the hardware together

There are a few different cables and gadgets required, some of which you might already have, some of which you’ll need to fork out for.

• EyeTV Hybrid (be sure to buy the correct edition, PAL for Europe and NTSC for the USA)
• EyeTV breakout cable (comes with the EyeTV)
• S-Video Xbox/PS3 cable (composite doesn’t offer the required quality for an HD screen)
• Composite to Headphone Jack Adapter

Setting up EyeTV Hybrid

The first step is to install the software which comes bundled with the EyeTV. Once this is all set up, simply connect the cables together.

• The EyeTV plugs into your Mac’s USB port
• The breakout cable plugs into the side of your EyeTV Hybrid
• The S-Video cable runs into that breakout cable, from your Xbox 360
• The Composite audio adaptor goes from your Xbox into the Line-In port on your Mac

All done? It’s time to start configuring some software. Turn on your Xbox and open up the EyeTV software.

The Software Side of Things

From the ‘Controls’ menu bar, select ‘S-Video Input’ to point the EyeTV to your Xbox. If all has gone to plan, you should see the dashboard screen appear. Everything should be functioning correctly, and the video should feel fairly snappy. Don’t fire up a game just yet though, there are a couple more things to set up.

The next step is to go into EyeTV preferences and ensure that your ‘Display’ settings match those shown on the following screenshot. This will help to sure a smooth picture and the correct type of scan.

The final hurdle you’ll currently be facing is a lack of any sound coming into your Mac. OS X doesn’t pass audio through by default (any audio coming into your line-in won’t automatically be broadcast to your speakers or headphones). This requires a free utility called LineIn. It will take the audio from your Xbox and ensure you can hear it loud and clear. The settings should be as follows:

Troubleshooting

Once you’ve done the above, you’ll hopefully have a very playable setup. There are a couple of problems you may encounter on the way, which this section should be useful for.

Recording doesn’t work – it’s really laggy – The built in recording function in EyeTV unfortunately can’t keep up with the Xbox input. The only way to achieve this is to use a piece of screen casting software such as iShowU. After tweaking with various settings it can perform fairly well.

My favorite game doesn’t work – Some games published on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii might not work on the Hybrid (for reasons unbeknown to me, but stated by Elgato). All the recent games I have tried worked correctly.

Is my console supported? – Almost certainly. The list provided by Elgato covers the Dreamcast, Gamecube, N64, Playstation 1/2/3, Saturn, Wii and Xbox/Xbox360.

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