Hi, I have a mini 09 white with EyeTV and two EyeTV Sat boxes. I use it with UK unencrypted Freeview satellite TV.
It is great for our viewing habits. We tend to watch and follow selected TV series but rarely live, instead usually some weeks later. The mini can record from both tuners at the same time, or playback a recording whilst recording another. The bottleneck is three things at the same time (recording two plus watching another, but that it just down to the disk seek time I guess). The only type of problems I've found with it are the possibility of the tuners locking up and thus EyeTV failing to record. This could happen with the old tuner I had, a Miglia TV Max for recording terrestrial analogue -- it could lockup after the Mac waked from sleep. Also had an issue with the current Elgato EyeTV Sat tuners. Every few days, they'd lock up. It was a critical issue because you'd often miss a recording if it had decided to lockup earlier on and I hadn't noticed. As it was a real problem, I tried experimenting and wondered why they'd lockup in the evenings, instead of any other time, even though I wasn't always recording in the evenings. Well in the end figured it might be because the evenings is when I watched the TV, and was using the remote control for the TV. So I tried pointing the TV remote at the EyeTV Sat tuners and mashing the buttons. Discovered that this made them lockup. They have IR receivers and it seems that other remotes could confuse them. So I applied "tin foil" and after that found they remained stable and continuously on, so all my scheduled recordings could proceed week after week. That was a relief. The EyeTV Sats are not cheap. I find them convenient and great for recording lots of stuff easily, so it really suits us. The software is easy, can search the listings for keywords, automatically record matches, etc. The iPhone and iPad app lets me stream to watch recordings and live broadcasts at offsite wifi hotspots, although scrubbing is poor -- and in good quality around the house. Can stream the library to another Mac running EyeTV also on your home network. My iPad in bed is now my second "TV". Caveats about quality: slow horizontal pans in movies break up the picture a bit showing up the frames, which doesn't happen with the TV's own cheap satellite tuner. Whatever settings I try doesn't get rid of that problem. It is not too distracting, but noticeable, and I put up with it because in balance the convenience of the thing is great. EyeTV assumes one library folder on one drive. You can move recordings to other volumes and drag and drop them in to play them, but on the whole you're limited to one disk. As long as you have a rock solid tuner I find the convenience is great. Tap a few buttons on your iPhone whilst on the bus or in the car to schedule a recording whilst you are out. Stefano _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
