[russellb]

Ok I had a quick look and did not spot another thread on this, sorry for starting a new thread if it's already somewhere else.

OK my experience with Apple TV and EyeTV

First: Apple TV is way better in person than just reading the specs ... fantastic device...

Now the downside

For Apple TV to be successfull it has to allow you to watch all your recorded TV shows... it's simply thats what most people do a lot of in their lounge room. Movies are great, Itunes TV shows fine, music fine but it'a ll about TV

Now I have used EyeTV on my mac to record and watch all my TV for ages now .. another great program that keeps getting better. Prior to Apple TV I used EyeHome ... which for those of you not familiar is basically Apple TV but a few years to early (different feature set) Eye Home streamed all your movie, music content from your mac to your TV .. but it only streamed which worked flawlessly BUT would not play any protected itunes content.

So EyeTV recorded all my TV shows and saved them unchanged in their original Mpeg form 100% lossles and to play back in the lounge room it was streamed in it's original form lossless. All worked perfectly.

Now enter Apple TV

It's great to watch my Itunes content BUT I want my TV shows and this is where Apple TV falls down horribly .. in my opinion.

I have to tell EyeTV to export the TV shows from their "as broadcast" Mpeg format to Apple TV format .. and as an example that takes hours and hours per show.

I had 2 shows exporting as of 9pm last night (it only does one at a time and that maxes out the CPU's on my current model Imac Cor Duo) and as of 7am this morning one finished and the other is 90% finished.

YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING that is just not acceptable to the average person .. waiting 10 hours for 2 TV shows to show up in Apple TV .. ok so the first one showed up prob 4-5 hours I guess , I was asleep so no idea of exact time.

NOW there is an easy fix .. why the hell did Apple not just take a leaf from Elgato's EyeHome box ... Why not let Apple TV play the native format that digtal TV is broadcast in and the native format that EyeTV saves them in ... then our TV shows would show up in Apple TV straight away no delay.

Is it just me or is this one of the major oversights by Apple !!!!!!!!

another little niggling problem I have: Stream or Sync I used EyeHome for years streaming all mu content ... WHAT do we need a hard for on Apple TV ... I know I want access to ALL my Itunes content ALL the time NOT just the top 10 movies or last 5 movies or those not yet watched.

Geee what happens when I watch a recorded TV show and with the setting of only show those not watched my wife cant come in later that day and watch the same show ??

For me I have to set Apple TV to stream content as to sync to the HD and choose only part of my content to show up IS A BIG OVERSIGHT by Apple

Now sounds like I am bashing Apple TV a bit but I really do LOVE the product it is just frustrating that Apple seem to have fallen a bit short on how they chose to release a great product THAT COULD have been A FANTASTIC MUST HAVE product. Currently in it's current form it's a nice product that falls a bit short.

Also for streaming movie previews etc it's fine if you have ADSL 2 or cable etc but for those of us wth only slow ADSL 1 it takes 1-3 min to buffer the movie, now thats fine BUT here is a BIG oversight .. the product has a Hard Drive yet if I watch a movie preview and wait 2-3 min , then come back a few min later choose the same movie I have to wait 2-3 min for the download again ... WHY DOES IT NOT SAVE RECENT movie previews to the HD ????

OK thats my 5 cents worth on Apple TV great product that could have been , and I hope will be , a fantastic product when they get their act together and fix it

[JLL]

Originally Posted by russellb 

another little niggling problem I have: Stream or Sync I used EyeHome for years streaming all mu content ... WHAT do we need a hard for on Apple TV ... I know I want access to ALL my Itunes content ALL the time NOT just the top 10 movies or last 5 movies or those not yet watched.

Geee what happens when I watch a recorded TV show and with the setting of only show those not watched my wife cant come in later that day and watch the same show ??

For me I have to set Apple TV to stream content as to sync to the HD and choose only part of my content to show up IS A BIG OVERSIGHT by Apple

You complain that the AppleTV has a harddrive because you don't need it?

If you set it to stream it works like you want it to, doesn't it?

Syncing is for those who don't want to turn on their computer to listen to music or watch something.

[russellb]

No I didnt complain .. just that the whole point of the Apple TV is to access all your content , the hard drive method seems very inefficient and akward.

Yes streaming works fine.

I think , and it's only my prediciton, that what Apple really wants is to have the hard drive there so when they get their movie hire / rent a movie going the movie will go to the hard drive and then be erased etc ..... seems the only logical way the big movie companies will ever let Apple sell NEW release movies.

Another starnge thing and I read someone else mention it. The movie previews were very very slow ehen I first hooked it up .. 2-3min buffering per preview.

Today every movie is instant (or at least only a 5-6 seconds delay) There is now ay it can download that quick so it does make me wonder if Apple TV does download the previews in the background ready to play.

[midwinter]

El Gato's mpeg-4 converter is very, very slow. I use VisualHub now. Much faster. Just export the EyeTV content as program stream and then convert it to mpeg-4 via VisualHub.

[russellb]

Originally Posted by midwinter 

El Gato's mpeg-4 converter is very, very slow. I use VisualHub now. Much faster. Just export the EyeTV content as program stream and then convert it to mpeg-4 via VisualHub.

Thanks I will have to try that ... pitty though as using the EyeTV setting makes it fully automatic

[midwinter]

Originally Posted by russellb 

Thanks I will have to try that ... pitty though as using the EyeTV setting makes it fully automatic

I agree, but VisualHub really is that much faster. I used to use the wonderful (and free) ffmpegx, but VisualHub is very simple and does everything you might need.

[GORDYmac]

I have G4 933, and I am impressed how quickly the MP4 export works in EyeTV. A one hour show takes about 40 minutes. Not bad for a 4 year old Mac. I'm looking forward to their H.264 USB encoder.

AFA Visual hub, no deal, you lose all of your metadata. That's the coolest part of the whole thing.

[midwinter]

On my G4/1Ghz (upgraded Digital Audio PM), a one-hour mp4 takes about an hour and a half, if not more like two hours. H.264? Fuggitaboutit.

[russellb]

mmm strange, on my 1.83g intel core duo the CPU's are maxed out when exporting from EYETV to the default Apple TV export setting for full quaility export and easily takes 1.5 - 2 hrs per TV show ... a little over 1 hr per show prob 70min of recording.

Yes looking very much forward to Elgato's USB hardware H264 real time convertor ..

I find it hard to understand how a G4 machine could possibly be faster than a new Intel Core Duo machine with 1.5 gig memory at exporting to H264 ??

[Moderator]

Originally Posted by russellb 

another little niggling problem I have...

That type of hateful racist language is not welcome here sir. Moderators, throw this man out please before I sick Al Sharpton on his a$$, shiiiiiit.

[gradient]

Originally Posted by Moderator 

That type of hateful racist language is not welcome here sir. Moderators, throw this man out please before I sick Al Sharpton on his a$$, shiiiiiit.

wtf? I suppose I can guess what you read into what he said but when I read it, it didn't even occur to me that it was racsist. I looked it up and .....

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/niggling

so....... be nice to the guy already.

[cms]

Originally Posted by Moderator 

That type of hateful racist language is not welcome here sir. Moderators, throw this man out please before I sick Al Sharpton on his a$$, shiiiiiit.

I am assuming this is supposed to be amusing. If it is not, then you, sir, are the individual who deserves to be thrown out on his a$$. Not for "hateful racist language" but for downright ignorance and stupidity. Oh, did I forget to mention illiteracy, too?

[macmad]

Originally Posted by Moderator 

That type of hateful racist language is not welcome here sir. Moderators, throw this man out please before I sick Al Sharpton on his a$$, shiiiiiit.

Why don't you look-up any big words you don't understand before jumping to embarrassing conclusions?

[Timetheus]

Is your software up to date? It almost sounds like your encoder is running in Rossetta (i.e. not Intel Native). Otherwise the Intel version of the encoder just sucks. MPEG-4 Encoding never takes that long for me - although those are exports from iMovie DV files to High-Setting MPEG-4 Files.

I'm on a CoreDuo MBP 1.83, for the record.

Hell, even exporting to MPEG-4 From Adobe LiveMotion in Rosetta (yes I know how out of datet he software is, but I can't afford anything new...) isn't that slow, although those are generally less than a minute long (it takes about 5 minutes to export a minute in LiveMotion).

I'm aware that none of these scenarios are identical to yours, but still.

[MaxHedrm]

Originally Posted by russellb 

I find it hard to understand how a G4 machine could possibly be faster than a new Intel Core Duo machine with 1.5 gig memory at exporting to H264 ??

Simple ... make sure you have EyeTV 2.1. It's a Universal Binary.

Elgato Systems FAQ

[heywire]

What about Miglia's TVMax? It has a hardware Mpeg4 encoder, and they list AppleTV compatibility... With hardware encoding, there should be no need for transcoding/converting... it's a little pricey at $249, but I was able to find it for ~$180...

I'm eyeballing a Mac Mini, Miglia TVMax, and an AppleTV. Anyone out there have this combination?

[Parky]

I have an iMac Core 2 Duo 2.16Ghz, running 10.4.9 and EyeTV 2.4 installed.

Converting a TV show in EyeTV via the new Apple TV setting that Elgato have included takes ages, at least twice as long as the TV show being converted. The conversion they are using is to H264 not MP4 format.

It's not very useable at the moment as you have to wait hours to see the shows after they have been recorded and the iMac processors are running at max for hours also making the machine less than useful.

I have decided to use the iPod setting for some shows as it is much quicker, the quality is not as good though.

Ian

[C.J. Moof]

The OP probably does have the Intel native version. I have the EyeTV 500- the HD receiver. I love the ability to now just automatically export an AppleTV version of my recordings, but it also takes 4-5X realtime for the AppleTV encodes on a 17" Core Duo iMac.

I too wish the AppleTV would play broadcast HD streams.... with 5.1 output, of course.

[bafreer]

I have been converting my Elgato Hybrid recordings to AppleTV format since the recent upgrade of eyetv.

However, in the past few days, every Eyetv recording that I convert to AppleTV format stalls about 3/4 of the way through the conversion. No error messages are generated, and the eyetv display shows the conversion is running, but hours later the converted file is the same size. I thought at first that it was related to a particular recording, but I have tried three different recordings over the past couple of days and the stall happens each time.

Anyone else with this problem? Any ideas?

I am running a Core Duo imac, and redownloaded the eyetv software yesterday and still have the problem.

[russellb]

I have had one bad TV recording do something similar. other than that all have been fine.