When a Turbo.264 HD is plugged into your Mac, that information shows up on the iPhone app as the stream is being buffered. This time, Wi-Fi streaming was crisp, continuous, and smooth, and streaming over 3G worked very well, although the image quality wasn't up to the level that I saw over the Wi-Fi connection. For video work that I do, I already had this piece of equipment, so I plugged it into another of the USB ports on my iMac and tried the tests again. I was able to find documentation from Elgato that stated that for better 3G streaming, it would help to have another piece of Elgato hardware attached - the Turbo.264 HD H.264 encoder / accelerator. That's not exactly what was advertised, so I looked into the details a bit more. When I went to 3G, however, I was able to stream only about 30-60 seconds of video before the streaming would stop. I say fairly constant, since even over Wi-Fi the stream would occasionally pause. I found that the Wi-FI streaming worked pretty well I was able to get a fairly constant view of any live or recorded video using the iPhone app. How did the streaming work? It depended on whether I was using Wi-Fi or 3G.
EyeTV Live3G still requires that you have the EyeTV Hybrid and software installed and running on your Mac, and it does not provide the capability of checking the onscreen channel guide or setting recordings. That way, you can test the quality of streaming without spending the $4.99 on the app. I tapped on the Live TV button in the iPhone app, hit one of the channel buttons, and within about 30-40 seconds I was able to view the stream.Įlgato recommends "trying" the iPhone app over a 3G connection via a free Web app called EyeTV Live3G. I had 5 bars of 3G signal (a miracle in downtown Denver) and was able to connect to my machine within seconds.
I was at a local professional society banquet last night, and sneaked out while some awards were being handed out. The 3G connection actually works quite well. It's a good idea to test the 3G connection to your Mac at least once before you try it on the road. To remotely connect to your EyeTV Hybrid, you need to make sure that the EyeTV application is running on your Mac, and that your Mac has not gone to sleep.
All you have to do is set up a "My EyeTV" account with Elgato, and then enter the same email address and password into the appropriate spaces on the iPhone app. If you're away from your home Wi-Fi network, you can use a 3G connection to do the same thing. If you're on the same network as the Mac running the EyeTV application, the iPhone app recognizes the Mac via Bonjour, and with a single tap you're able to watch live streaming TV, view recordings that you've made using the Mac application, check your recording schedules, and scroll through the channel guide.
To stream EyeTV content to your iPhone, you download and install the free EyeTV app.
It occurred to me that Apple ought to consider building in a digital TV tuner into the iMac and add software similar to Eye TV 3.0 as a replacement for the Apple TV.
I was impressed with the clarity of the images on my 27" iMac, and in full screen mode the iMac looked more like an HDTV than a computer. The latter cable can be used as a way of attaching a camcorder or old VCR to your Mac in order to digitize older videos. There's additional hardware supplied with the EyeTV Hybrid as well - an infrared remote control complete with batteries, a USB extension cable, and a small cable for input of standard definition input from other video sources. The EyeTV software displays three primary screens the actual TV show, a small "remote control" that shows up on the screen, and a main window that is used to display a program guide (one year's free subscription to TV Guide's program data is included with the EyeTV), set up recordings, and create playlists. That's not particularly surprising to me, since I only watch about 6 of the 600+ channels on cable.
In the Denver area, there ended up being 32 digital TV channels that I could pull in with the antenna, and only about 6 of those seemed to be worth watching. Since I didn't want to incur the expense of running cable up to my office for a review, I purchased an inexpensive digital TV antenna and connected it to the EyeTV. You install the included software on your Mac, plug the EyeTV Hybrid into an available USB 2.0 port, connect cable TV or a digital TV antenna, and then let the EyeTV setup software do its magic. Elgato makes setting up the EyeTV Hybrid a cinch.