I had 1.5 installed. Upgraded to 1.5.1 and a newer beta of 1.8.X, but this is such a random issue I really don't think it's possible to evaluate anything as a solution without the months of stability I had under 10.3 and 1.7.X of EyeTV. Crashing in the middle or at the start makes it really tough to track. Tonight, it survived DH, GA, Family Guy, and American Dad on OTA for both. When it comes to a Lost or DH episode that I don't yet have complete, I'm not going to give it a chance until I'm sure it's stable. Monitored the whole thing today via Timbuktu in B&W.

Okay, after investing in the hardware EyeTV 500 and ConvertX I find myself wishing I had done more research into the software or at least the scheduling options.

First I also had some issues with EyeTV application crashing (v1.8) but after I turned off the CrashReporter it hasn't happened, go figure!

Now I am a Tivo user, Series 1 for over 5 years and a second unit Series 2 for less than a year. My Series 1 unit seems to have died so I was forced to make a choice. I had been working on a MythTV setup, I wanted HD recording. But had too many issues with drivers, configuration, etc. So I decided to go with EyeTV. The HD setup was a breeze and I was able to record via QAM with in an hour of un boxing the hardware.

But I want my season pass option! Or at least what Myth had where I can say (once a day), (every time on this channel), (once a week), etc. I guess it is just me being lazy. Most shows I record do fall on the same time every week, but some shows air many times and I would rather not pick one, but say record "Good Eats" when ever it is on, but at a lower priority because they air them more than once, where the West Wing is only once a week.

So if there is no solution to my problem, then can I tell the EyeTV software to (a) give me your current schedule (b) add/delete this program through an API? I figure I can add (and maybe delete) via AppleScript, but I would rather have something I can use from Cocoa or PHP or Perl. With that I can try and build my own scheduling application (Titan TV isn't a good source because they don't give you their data in a very usable form), but some of the others do (at least at this time).

Anyone else interested in something like this?

John

Anyone else interested in something like this?

What I find most frustrating about TitanTV is how many of the programs are mislabeled. 20% of my recordings turn out to be something other than what TitanTV said they were. I'm not sure where the problem lies: Is it the broadcaster's fault for sending incorrect information? Is it from schedule changes or some glitch in Titan's service that keeps mixing the information up?

I'd prefer access to a programming service that is right more than 80% of the time.

TitanTV is missing at least three of the clear HD channels I can receive. I sent them some e-mail whining about it, but they haven't done anything in weeks.

Fortunately, I can "lie" to the EyeTV software and just label the HD channel with the SD channel's name.

But compared to any DVR, the software for the EyeTV is best characterized by "lame."

Yep, EyeTV is no Replay or TiVo that's for sure and I certainly hope they put some energy into that portion of the program.

But it is also a lot better than not having any HD recording options available at all!

Yes, in fact it is now my prefered method for recording shows (over my comcast DVR, which isn't quite as lame, but it's right up there).

Mainly because I can play back through my Roku HD-1000 using MPlay and its super-handy 30-second and 3-minute forward skip buttons (as well as 10-second and 30-second backspaces).

Not to mention that if I'm not around the big TV, I can always export the .TS out to an MPEG and play it on my laptop, which I certainly wouldn't be able to do quite so easily with the Comcast box.

Probably my most expensive ever DVR (the bigger Mac Mini, 300G external Seagate drive, Elgato EyeTV-500 and Roku HD-1000), but it's sure getting a lot of use lately.

Okay either I am missing something or my EyeTV dual tuner setup just doesn't work.

I have the EyeTV 500 for HD content and the ConvertX PVR for analog cable. My first problem came when I had the same channel name for ABC (1 was the analog the other was the SD signal from QAM). I fixed that issue.

Last night I setup 2 shows to record. The first was an analog channel 6 and it recorded fine. The second was an HD channel via QAM. It was listed fine but what was recorded was an hour more of the analog channel.

From this I am thinking that the EyeTV software doesn't know how to program 2 tuners that have different channels. Given that what can I do? Can I run 2 copies of EyeTV or do I have to moved one of the tuners to a different machine.

Help!

John

Hey all,

I have a few questions about the EyeHome and EyeTV 500

1) From the EyeHome FAQ http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=produ...yehome_faq#faq8

The EyeHome hardware runs at a native 480p (720 by 480) resolution. It can scale this to 720p (1280 by 720) or 1080i (1920 by 1080), and the scaling is high quality.

Does this mean that one could view uncompressed VOBs and "upconvert" them, similar to an upconverting dvd player? Has anyone here done it? What is the quality like?

2) I know that the EyeHome will not accept signals higher than 480p. Can the EyeTV 500 output a 480p signal that the EyeHome could see and then scale to 720 or 1080?

Also, I've seen a few of you recommend against the EyeHome? Can you tell me why?

Thanks!

My experience with the EyeHome has been pretty poor. The user experience was not acceptable in my case and I returned the product.

The 480p upscaling looked like crap on my 96" screen. You just can't make high def pictures look good when you down scale them and then upscale them (photos).

I haven't tried it in conjunction with the EyeTV 500 since I have its output go straight to the projector and have another piece of hardware that down converts the 1024x768 signal into composite which I then modulate for whole house cable. That works really well for me.

From this I am thinking that the EyeTV software doesn't know how to program 2 tuners that have different channels. Given that what can I do? Can I run 2 copies of EyeTV or do I have to moved one of the tuners to a different machine.

You can't run 2 copies. Try it again and look at what the channels being set by Titan or EyeTV are. I can do mixed QAM and OTA without issues on two tuners. Well, some issues, but the crashing is not related to the two tuners as it works fine all days of the week except Sunday and Thursday. :D

You can't run 2 copies. Try it again and look at what the channels being set by Titan or EyeTV are. I can do mixed QAM and OTA without issues on two tuners. Well, some issues, but the crashing is not related to the two tuners as it works fine all days of the week except Sunday and Thursday. :D

I am going to test again tonight. But I manually made sure the channel in the program schedule was correct before it started. Tonight I am going to test with the digital QAM program first then the analog cable program and see what happens.

John

Thursday came, and Thursday went with a third straight Thursday Night EyeTV 1.8 crash with a third version of EyeTV 1.8 or beta.

This time it crapped out with 10 minutes left in CSI after getting OC X 2.

Latest Beta, Plus 1.5.1, didn't solve the issue I guess. Logged in to see Finder up and EyeTV not. Will be sending another log to el Gato today.

Just for the record I am doing QAM (EyeTV 500) and analog cable (ConvertX) using EyeTV 1.8.

Any chance someone else is using HD and SD recording using two tuners?

I did some testing yesterday and the 2 TitanTV programs recorded fine. But my manual programs did not.

What I am seeing is that the scheduled program is trying to use the wrong tuner. An example is that I scheduled a show for analog cable channel 6 at 1:00PM. It looked fine when it was scheduled. I also scheduled a digital program at 2:00PM on channel 217.

What I got was the analog program was 0 seconds. The digital program was a recording of the previous analog channel with no sound. The channel information is the viewer window show channel 217, but that is clearly not correct.

I have exchanged a few emails with Elgato, but haven't gotten to the point where they have acknowledged the problem, but I am hopeful.

John

There is some goofy stuff going on with the channel assignment on my end too. I mentioned earier it was recording a second show on the "Composite In" on a system with two 500s and no possible composite source. At the time or recording, it showed both shows recording on "Composite," when in reality both shows recorded on their correct channels. Yet, in the end EyeTV still says that one of the recordings was actually a composite capture.

Just for the record I am doing QAM (EyeTV 500) and analog cable (ConvertX) using EyeTV 1.8.

Any chance someone else is using HD and SD recording using two tuners?

I did some testing yesterday and the 2 TitanTV programs recorded fine. But my manual programs did not.

What I am seeing is that the scheduled program is trying to use the wrong tuner. An example is that I scheduled a show for analog cable channel 6 at 1:00PM. It looked fine when it was scheduled. I also scheduled a digital program at 2:00PM on channel 217.

What I got was the analog program was 0 seconds. The digital program was a recording of the previous analog channel with no sound. The channel information is the viewer window show channel 217, but that is clearly not correct.

I have exchanged a few emails with Elgato, but haven't gotten to the point where they have acknowledged the problem, but I am hopeful.

John

I've been in contact with Elgato regarding the dual tuner setup, and the short answer seems to be: "we're working on it"

I have an EyeTV 500 and an EyeTV 200 setup on my G4 Powerbook, and inquired as to simultaneous functionality of the units and the EyeTV software...the following is the response I received:

Thank you for contacting Elgato Systems.

You can use multiple EyeTV units on one Mac simultaneously. They can be all of the same model, or different EyeTV products. This is a preliminary feature that may have bugs.

You would set each one up once, and then you could watch two Live TV windows, one from each device.

The only real limitation is that while you can watch and manually record live TV from multiple Live TV windows, automated recording is not perfected. EyeTV will pick the first available unit to record to; there is no way to select which EyeTVs will record.

In the future this feature will be perfected, and then it will be announced. Until then, you can use it experimentally with the latest EyeTV software.

Nick Freeman
Customer Support

Elgato Systems LLC

I run into the same problems with the EyeTV software (running 1.8) not being able to pick the proper tuner for a scheduled recording. I originally made contact with Elgato regarding this issue pre-version 1.8, and was disappointed that this new version didn’t address the dual tuner issue. Unfortunately, I fear that since few people actually have a dual tuner setup, it’s not really a high priority for their software people.

Otherwise, I’ve been very satisfied with Elgato and their support. It’s always great to purchase a product that is continually improved free of charge…
-T

I just got the same email from Nick about dual tuners feature still being developed. I wish I knew that before I spent all this time messing with it.

Do dual EyeTV-500s work ok?

I've got a 500 at home connected to my Mini. Works great.

Guy here in the office (a good friend) bought an EyeTV-500 out of protest over the broadcast flag. Funny thing is that he doesn't have a Mac, nor does he intend on getting one. In fact, he doesn't watch TV.

He said he wouldn't mind a long-term loan of his 500 to me. I'm sort of hesitant to take him up on it, 'cause I'm not sure whether it'll work.

How does a second unit show up in the EyeTV app?

Do dual EyeTV-500s work ok?

I've got a 500 at home connected to my Mini. Works great.

Guy here in the office (a good friend) bought an EyeTV-500 out of protest over the broadcast flag. Funny thing is that he doesn't have a Mac, nor does he intend on getting one. In fact, he doesn't watch TV.

He said he wouldn't mind a long-term loan of his 500 to me. I'm sort of hesitant to take him up on it, 'cause I'm not sure whether it'll work.

How does a second unit show up in the EyeTV app?

Read Machound’s post #233... (sorry new to this otherwise I'd link back to it)

It seems that Dual 500s work and don't have the same problems because the scheduled recordings draw from the same channel list.

Whereas in the 500 and 200 setup, the software just selects the first available tuner…and if the scheduled recording is for say Channel 63, Comedy Central, and the first available tuner is the 500...it tries to tune Channel 63 on the 500 and cannot get a signal…therefore resulting in a 0 second recording.

If he’s a good friend I’d just ask him to loan it to you for a night to test…Setting up a second unit is easy…basically plug it in and it works…I’ve even daisy chained my 200 off my 500 without problems (even though Elgato says you need a power cord if daisy chaining).

As far as how it shows up in the EyeTV app…not sure with the dual 500s, but with my 200/500 setup, the channel list is just appended to include channels from both tuners, in the same way that in the preferences for the 500 you first select what you’re tuning for (i.e. Clear QAM or OTA ATSC), and it then tunes for either or both, and adds all of those channels to the on-screen remote.
-T

I have dual 500's hooked up to my PowerBook via a Firewire hub. They record perfectly under EyeTV 1.7.1, with a single caveat: occasionally the simultaneously recorded shows have the same title and description text even though the shows are different. This problem doesn't happen every time and it doesn't seem to affect the actual recorded files when you open them in VLC or view them on an external media player. But EyeTV 1.7.1 gets confused when you attempt to play either show from within EyeTV software.

This confusion only happened to me three times so far despite fairly extensive recording every day for several weeks. It really isn't that big of a problem for me since I do most of my viewing on my plasma connected to my I-O Data media player.

Simultaneous recording is a thing of beauty. I'd say go ahead and grab your friend's 500 before he changes his mind and gets a Mac.

1.8.1 Final is on the website now.

What’s new in EyeTV 1.8.1?

EyeTV 1.8.1 adds support for DivX™-certified capture with the Plextor ConvertX® hardware.

A preference was added to control whether program information should be displayed after a channel change, and for how long it should be displayed (Preferences->Controls).

Ireland and Turkey were added to the list of countries in the Preferences ->Setup pane.

The EyeTV export feature now supports the “high resolution” audio formats in QuickTime 7.

Satelco Easywatch DVB-T card: antenna power can now be turned off in the Signal pane of Device Settings. This can result in better reception in areas with a very strong signal (e.g. within a few hundred yards of the DVB-T transmitter). We recommend that you leave antenna power on in all other situations. Note that there is no need to turn off antenna power if you are connected to a properly installed roof-top antenna/aerial or other passive antenna/aerial.


Bug Fixes in EyeTV 1.8.1

EyeTV Wonder USB 2.0: A problem where the “exhaustive scan” option would not find all channels was resolved.

EyeTV no longer launches on plug-in of certain DV cameras.

EyeTV failed to record when both EyeTV 200 and EyeTV 410 hardware were connected at the same time, and a recording was scheduled on the EyeTV 200’s AV input. This has been resolved.

Fine for now if you are creating a clip, hopefully the Intel addition may lead the QT team to support DD as well.

Has anyone installed 1.8.1?

Very curious to see if the EyeTV 200/410 bug fix does anything to help the Dual Tuner 200/500 problems...

I'll test tonight...(fingers crossed hoping I don't have to tune channels again)

My dual 200/500 eyetv setup works!

I downloaded the new version 1.8.1, and I didn't even have to re-tune!

I scheduled two programs to record at the same time, one from a cable channel via my eyetv 200, and one from an OTA channel via my eyetv 500. Both recorded without a problem.
-T

Recorded Medium and Las Vegas tonight without issues, of course this will take a long time to see if it is stable unless someone has the time and space to throw a slew of multituner recordings at it for a couple weeks.

Did I mention it's really cool to be able to verify the recordings, edit, and see if the station flipped the switch on time via broadband. Yeah, I did, but it's still too cool. :D

Did I mention it's really cool to be able to verify the recordings, edit, and see if the station flipped the switch on time via broadband. Yeah, I did, but it's still too cool. :D
Well, maybe you did, but I can't find it. Please explain.

And as this is my first post on this board, I may just be an idiot. If so, please tell me in private (so as not to embarrass me too much). :D

And as this is my first post on this board, I may just be an idiot.
I'm using Timbuktu Pro as well.

I have been using my EyeTV 500 for a while to record clear QAM cable HDTV. All of a sudden ABC on my system has no sound. The video plays, but absolutley no sound. All of the other networks still work fine. Futhermore, I have another cable company HDTV STB in the house and ABC works fine on that.

Does anyone know what may be causing this?

-Sean

I've periodically had issues with ABC's desperate house wives where the only audio playing was the surround effects for about 5 minutes at the beginning. Very bizarre...

I've periodically had issues with ABC's desperate house wives where the only audio playing was the surround effects for about 5 minutes at the beginning. Very bizarre...
I've come to realize, as much as we think digital TV is just an update to an old idea, this is really the Wild West, filled with stage coaches, prospectors, banditos and sheriffs with six-shooters.

EyeTV 1.8.1 failed to record four of the six shows I scheduled for recording yesterday and today. I'm going back to EyeTV 1.7.1.

Unfortunately, reverting to EyeTV 1.7.1 did not fix the problem. Two of four scheduled programs since last night recorded zero seconds length -- all of them were ED (multicasting) PBS shows. I never had a problem with this issue before upgrading from 1.7.1 to 1.8.1, but I did have a number of ED recordings fail to play on my I-O Data AVLP2 media player previously. All of those recordings played back just fine from EyeTV 1.7.1. A couple of them were fixable with FFmpegX or VLC.

It will be interesting to see what percentage of my recent ED recordings play or fail to play on the AVLP2. In other words, is EyeTV refusing to record shows that are defective in some way?

I'm sorry to report I've joined the club of people getting empty recordings from my EyeTV 500. I miss the days when I could just set my 500 to record and the shows would be waiting for me at the end of the day. Has anybody found a work-around yet?

I am joining that club too. I just upgraded to 10.4. Not ony do I still get no sound on ABC, but I set it to record a 2 hour movie (Into the West) on TNTHD and it stopped the recording at one hour and 13 minutes fore some reason.

That is the first time this has happened to me and I am very dissapointed. I guess it is updating to 10.4 that caused the problem.

-Sean

I'm sorry to report I've joined the club of people getting empty recordings from my EyeTV 500. I miss the days when I could just set my 500 to record and the shows would be waiting for me at the end of the day. Has anybody found a work-around yet?

I've been having problems from the beginning, but, now with 1.8.1 (beta-6+ was when things settled down) things record with no problems. My problem was that I couldn't' record shows back-to-back. The first would record, then it would skip the second, and record the third.
The one fix I found was to re-install the most recent system update, and as long as I wouldn't restart I'd be fine. So for me it was something that was changing on the restart, but, now I'm doing ok so I haven't tried to mess with it.

The one fix I found was to re-install the most recent system update, and as long as I wouldn't restart I'd be fine.
That's kind of an inconvenient work-around. You have to reinstall the entire OS every time you reboot your computer?

As for this possibly being an OS 10.4.x related bug, I'm still running 10.3.8.

This latest downgrade is disappointing because I was having such great results with my two EyeTV 500s previously. The only bug I ever saw with 1.7.1 was that simultaneous recordings from my 500s sometimes had the same title info for both shows. I could easily live with that peculiarity. Now over 50% of my scheduled shows don't record at all. EyeTV 500 used to be a nearly perfect product.

The crashes are completely random aside from occuring usually after 0 seconds or after 2+ hours of recording use or during or start of the third program. Most of mine are after 2+ hours, such as in the middle of the last hour with "Without a Trace" after running the entire prior Fox/CBS Thursday night schedule.

1.7.0 and 10.3 were solid. 10.4.x + 1.8.x are not.

That's kind of an inconvenient work-around. You have to reinstall the entire OS every time you reboot your computer?

As for this possibly being an OS 10.4.x related bug, I'm still running 10.3.8.

Yes, it was rather annoying, but, this was with 10.3.x, I seem to be having the same 'unexpected quits' in 10.4.x. And, since my audio hardware barely works in 10.3.8 I'm running a similar system to you, but, not the same because of our different problems.

So, we're all having the same problems with EyeTV 500 firmware / software. I had two more zero-second 'recordings' last night, both of HDTV content. One ED recording recordeded successfully. I haven't seen the partially recorded show phenomenon... in my case it's all-or-none.

I wonder if or when ElGato will provide a firmware reversion pathway so we can get back to having functional EyeTV 500s again. I was so pleased with its earlier performance. The only reason I "upgraded" my firmware was to test iEye Captain. In retrospect, that was a bad mistake... though I really like iEye Captain. Graham has put in a lot of work on it and it fills a definite need. But my 500s are now mostly broken.

I'm still having trouble tuning my local PBS channels, too, but that may be related to ongoing broadcast tower reconstruction. My LG receiver still has no trouble with any of the PBS channels.

After four more zero-byte recordings today I unplugged my second EyeTV 500. Subsequently I had two successful recordings, one HD and the other ED. Maybe the 1.8.1 software & 1.1.0 firmware gets confused by multiple attached 500's now.

Further calls to my local PBS station today yielded the first fully successful channel scan I've had in over a week. On my third attempt I got all local channels to show up. Hurray! Now I'm disinclined to do more channel scans unless I absolutely have to... it's too risky.

I'll post further updates as my investigation of the zero-second recording issue unfolds.

So, we're all having the same problems with EyeTV 500 firmware / software.

Actually, my stuff is working without any issues. I'm running EyeTV 1.8.1 and the firmware that was installed with 1.8. The Device Settings->Info box says it's 1.1.0 and the hardware version is 0a2501. The Firewire GUID is 000c 6c07 0000 f500. One thing that might be different than most of you is that my box is plugged into an old Orange Micro Firewire hub rather than directly into my dual 2.5Ghz G5. I only have one EyeTV tuner device and I'm running the latest version of Tiger.

Also, while all my stations are coming in fine, I haven't done much recording recently. When I did have a few zero second records a while back, rescanning my channels solved the problem and I haven't had it sense. I think that was back when all the stations started modifying their PID numbers.

Dennnis

I rarely have the 0 Sec, if I do it is for two shows starting the recording at the same time. My problems are almost always (90%) crashes in the middle of the recording one or more programs and usually after a couple of successful recordings that night.

Recorded The Inside and Lost plus part of Conan tonight without issues with a newer EyeTV edition.

I rarely have the 0 Sec, if I do it is for two shows starting the recording at the same time. My problems are almost always (90%) crashes in the middle of the recording one or more programs and usually after a couple of successful recordings that night.

Recorded The Inside and Lost plus part of Conan tonight without issues with a newer EyeTV edition.

I've been having a similar problem, but, so far only with my PBS-HD station. Wednesday night I got Veronica Mars, lost, and it crashed when trying to record "Crater Lake, Mirror of Heaven" on my local PBS station (KQED-HD, in San Francisco). I've had several other crashes both at the start and in the midst of recording (all on the same PBS station). I kept coming home to 'EyeTV has unexpectedly quit...'. Using 10.3.8 and 1.8.1 eyeTV (get the same 'device settings' as Ultimate), so I do suspect it's something to do with the particular channel, but, as a check I then schedule a couple half-hour shows, the endless repeats of "Cringley on HD", "Desert Speaks", "Clifford" and "Jackers", and they always record, so it may even be specific to time (theses are usually early in the morning).

I've definitely had better luck since I unplugged my second EyeTV 500 -- no zero second recordings -- but that may just be a coincidence. I contacted the engineers at my local PBS stations again yesterday and they were just wrapping up their conversion to high power transmission. All digital TV stations across the country are apparently in the process of moving to high power before July 1st. Some stations, like mine, are making the conversion now while others are waiting, maybe hoping for the FCC or Congress to step in and give them an extension at the eleventh hour .

In the case of my local PBS stations, the problem I was having with auto-scanning appears to be related to a box called a "mux" (multiplexer). MPTV fortuitously purchased a second mux box a few weeks ago as a backup unit and they were able to swap that for the flaky mux. All my EyeTV 500 wierdness seems to have gone away.

ADDENDUM: I've had nothing but success recording HD and ED shows on my 500s since the the new mux box was installed at MPTV last week... no more zero-second recordings. Anybody having trouble with their EyeTV 500 might want to consider contacting their TV station or cable provider. That approach worked well for me.

Well I have not been recording much lately, but 1.8.1 seems to be working well for me...

Also, I know there are others here that own the IO Data AVLP2, and I wanted to report a nice feature of the latest firmware - The AVLP2 now seems to be truely UpNP compliant, based on it being recognized by my Elgato Eyeconnect sw. And it seems to work really well so far - no more hunting for files in the archive to make aliases for me...

For those unfamiliar, the AVLP2 is a "networked DVD player" capable of playing HD content over the network from your Mac. And now with Eyeconnect working for it I think it is the best solution for those of us that hate watching TV on our Macs. Just record and edit and all your shows are accessible to your HT...

OK, so this sounds like an ad, but I'm really just an excited consumer...

Z

Hey, Zach,

It's great to hear you've gotten your AVLP2 to work with EyeConnect. Somebody over at the I-O Data Forums yesterday suggested EyeConnect doesn't work work well with AVLP2. I am curious what EyeConnect gives you beyond the alias method I use -- see below. Do you still need to run the AVeL Server as a client for EyeConnect, or does EyeConnect directly serve files to the AVLP2?

I am another excited AVLP2 owner. It's a great companion product to my two EyeTV 500s. I-O Data goes further than any other media player company in officially supporting Mac OS X. They respond to Mac related questions appropriately and with consideration. That, by itself, speaks volumes about their business model. They produce firmware fixes once or even twice per month in response to consumer concerns. I-O Data builds its own hardware and firmware, which is different from other companies that just license the technology. The result is better customer support and speedier fixes. I-O Data is putting lots of effort into polishing the AVLP2 instead of diverting all their energies to the next generation replacement model. That practice stands in stark contrast to other companies selling competing players.

Like you, I was looking for a way to simplify the process of getting my AVLP2 to recognize EyeTV 500 files. I found a different solution to the problem: Graham Jones' iEye Captain. This companion to ElGato's EyeTV software is now entering final stages of beta testing. Among many other useful features, iEye Captain allows you to export aliases of all EyeTV programs to a destination folder of your choosing. With one step I keep aliases to all my EyeTV 500 shows updated in my Movies folder. The AVLP2 is smart enough to figure out which aliases are active (hard drive with the .ts files is mounted) and it shows stars on the menu next to folders containing active aliases.

This method does not involve running two file servers: EyeConnect --> AVeL Server --> AVLP2. It puts little CPU burden on my PowerBook while serving 1080i content to my Plasma screen. I can be working on my PowerBook upstairs while someone else is watching recordings streamed to our plasma downstairs. I don't notice much slowdown on my PowerBook, but the tick-tick-tick of my hard drive reading 1080i files can be slightly annoying.

There is also an open source AVLP2 server project called wizd, which has now been successfully complied MacOS X using DevTools. I plan on trying wizd out soon. People who use it rave that it's superior to I-O Data's AVeL Server:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=5792952&highlight=Mac#post5792952

These are heady days for Mac-HT! We've now got viable solutions both recording and playback of HD content that work quite well together. Now if we could just get ElGato and I-O Data to cooperate on producing a single box that does it all -- recording and playback -- but that's probably just wishful thinking. The shadow of the broadcast flag monster lurks menacingly.

Quick question for the dual EyeTV-500 users:

First off, I'm still afraid to try, because it sounds like a lot of the people who've been having trouble with truncated recordings on 1.8.1 are those who have two units, but still:

Is there some way to tell the EyeTV software to use a different destination folder for each EyeTV? I don't have any particular reason why I want to do this, other than to load balance the I/O and seek activity on any single drive while records are in process. It just seems like if I'm recording 2 HD programs at the same time I'm playing back 1, all on the same hard drive, that we might start running into some serious seek contention that could cause problems.

Or, am I being overly cautious?

First off, I'm still afraid to try, because it sounds like a lot of the people who've been having trouble with truncated recordings on 1.8.1 are those who have two units
I have not seen truncated recordings except for the one time EyeTV crashed on me a couple of weeks ago. Both of my EyeTV 500s are now back to working 100% under software 1.8.1 after my local TV stations completed their upgrades.

Is there some way to tell the EyeTV software to use a different destination folder for each EyeTV? I don't have any particular reason why I want to do this, other than to load balance the I/O and seek activity on any single drive while records are in process. It just seems like if I'm recording 2 HD programs at the same time I'm playing back 1, all on the same hard drive, that we might start running into some serious seek contention that could cause problems.
I haven't had any problem recording simultaneous shows via my PowerBook and LaCie Big Disk Extreme. I haven't tried recording multiple shows while playing another recording from my cheap FW enclosure, though at some point the HD will become saturated. I haven't seen that happen yet.

There is no current way to tell EyeTV software to record to different drives. To select a different drive for recording you have to change the Preferences, then exit and restart the program. I'd like to see improvement in EyeTV functionality for support of multiple hard drives, as you suggest, but I doubt it's a high priority for ElGato. Most people don't have multiple receivers.

Okay, now that my EyeTV recordings are working I need the ability to record shows similar to the Tivo (tm) Season Pass (tm). The repeat (weekly, daily) doesn't cut it. I would also like the ability to prioritize shows.

I was hoping that iEye Captain was going to help, but it doesn't seem to offer any scheduling enhancements. So if there isn't another solution I guess I will start working on something of my own. I haven't checked to see if the EyeTV SDK offers the ability to schedule shows, or if I can build my own tvpi files. If neither of those are options then I will have to use AppleScript to add/delete/modify the scheduled recordings.

John

I wonder if you could be a little more specific what you actually need that's different. I've never owned a TIVO so the phrase "Season Pass" doesn't mean much to me.

Graham Jones is pretty receptive to good ideas. If there is a significant need that's not being met I expect he would like to hear about it. Granted, he is a bit overwhelmed at the moment with final debugging and feature solidification for iEye Captain. But if you could explain your needs clearly I could pass a message along. He is a skillful programmer. Why duplicate his efforts with yet another EyeTV companion program?

The hideously named "Season Pass" means that the DVR records the program by name, whenever it happens to be on. If they move the show from Monday night at 8 to Tuesday night at 9, the DVR sees the schedule change and records it at the new time (conflicts notwithstanding). A refinement is "Don't record reruns or other episodes I've recorded recently."

This is in huge contrast to what the EyeTV software gives us, namely the ability to find a show by name, but all subsequent recording of it is by time/channel. If you say "record every week" it just keeps on recording the same time/channel on that day every week, regardless of whether the's show's actually on at that time.

I have an EyeTV 500 (which records only HD), but have yet to upgrade to an HD set -- still running an older Sony XBR.

Does the IO Data AVLP2 have the ability to receive the HD recordings from the EyeTV 500, do some sort of down-rez and then output them to the TV in an SD-compatible signal?

I'ld love to watch high-quality SD until the HD set works its way to the top of the list ...

I have an EyeTV 500 (which records only HD), but have yet to upgrade to an HD set -- still running an older Sony XBR.
No, this is not correct. EyeTV 500 records 480i, 720p, 1080i -- whatever size digital TV signal it's tuned to. About half of my EyeTV 500 recordings are standard definition.

Does the IO Data AVLP2 have the ability to receive the HD recordings from the EyeTV 500, do some sort of down-rez and then output them to the TV in an SD-compatible signal?

I'ld love to watch high-quality SD until the HD set works its way to the top of the list ...
Yes, this is exactly how I use my AVLP2. I have a 42 inch Fujitsu ED plasma screen that produces the most amazing picture quality from 1080i source video fed to it by my AVLP2. I definitely notice much better image quality on my ED plasma TV from 1080i content versus 480i multicasted shows. The downsamped 1080i video renders silky-smooth results, whereas the 480i content has more visible -- but still quite acceptable -- digital artifact.

Someday, when I move up to a large format front projection system those extra gigabits will be used to their fullest potential. In the meantime, I have bright and beautiful plasma TV playback that looks great from our typical 10 foot viewing distance.

The hideously named "Season Pass" means that the DVR records the program by name, whenever it happens to be on. If they move the show from Monday night at 8 to Tuesday night at 9, the DVR sees the schedule change and records it at the new time (conflicts notwithstanding). A refinement is "Don't record reruns or other episodes I've recorded recently."
This does sound better than what EyeTV offers. Unfortunately, the limitation here is with TitanTV (the web-based database of TV show schedules) rather than the EyeTV software itself. EyeTV doesn't actually do any of the scheduling. It just records programs at the times and durations specified by Titan TV. There is an option to "Automatically check for schedule changes" in the EyeTV Preferences, but I've never found that option to be of any use. The reason it doesn't work is that TitanTV receives its scheduling information from TV stations over a month in advance of the broadcast date. This information can only be as accurate as what the TV station tells them. Unless the station goes to the extra effort to let Titan know about schedule changes, there's no way for EyeTV to know about the changes.

You might wonder if the encapsulated show information broadcast by the TV stations themselves could be captured by EyeTV 500. I don't know the answer to that question. Clearly, such a method wouldn't work for other members of the EyeTV family, especially those boxes that capture analog TV, so I doubt we'll see this feature added to EyeTV software anytime soon.

JDT, feel free to experiment if you have the programming skills to gather encapsulated show info from ATSC broadcasts. I have no idea how challenging such a project would be.

You might wonder if the encapsulated show information broadcast by the TV stations themselves could be captured by EyeTV 500. I don't know the answer to that question. Clearly, such a method wouldn't work for other members of the EyeTV family, especially those boxes that capture analog TV, so I doubt we'll see this feature added to EyeTV software anytime soon.

JDT, feel free to experiment if you have the programming skills to gather encapsulated show info from ATSC broadcasts. I have no idea how challenging such a project would be.

Well I wasn't thinking that direction.

What I want is the ability to pick programs by name and not time, and to not record duplicates (this is very useful for stuff on TNT, TBS, SCI-FI, FOODTV, etc). Stuff were the same show is shown multiple times each week.

The other issue is what happens when they have a two hour special show (like Inside on FOX next week)? My current record FOX on Wednesday from 9-10pm will miss half the show.

I haven't used TitanTV except to click on the <red dot> and download the "program.tvpi" file. So I don't know if I can do scheduling on the site itself.

I was able to schedule a recording by creating my own "test.tvpi" file yesterday and except for the time zone issue it worked fine.

What I was thinking was building an application that did all the scheduling/keeping track of past shows, etc. I was looking at the xmltv software (Perl based) that is used with MythTV. The biggest issue seems to be getting the TV scheduling information. This does seem to be something that might work well as part of iEye Captain, but I don't know if it is even on his list of future features.

John

The problem with trying to grab the show info from ATSC broadcasts is that you would have to cycle through all the channels every 1/2 an hour to see if the actual show data matches what you want to record. This wouldn't work if you are already watching something or already recording something at that time.

But it might be an interesting idea to have themes of some sort that would do this on a non-busy device...

Ok, I finally have time to play around with the G5 to edit 5 weeks worth of shows. Overall, the playback is leagues better. The problems however remain with 1.8.x and recordings just crashing and the app then never reopening again for the next show...

But, I also have some things like that King Kong Trailer from Las Vegas this past week. Didn't realize it until I went to edit...

What are people doing with the exported program streams? You can't play them in QT or EyeTV, only Videolan works. I would be far more willing to do away with the entire "EyeTV Archive" crap if I could get a handle on what to do with these program streams. Some sort of library with playlists would help. Say a folder with Alias program streams that has a .playlist file you open and have a list of all the files with one click playback.

The problem with trying to grab the show info from ATSC broadcasts is that you would have to cycle through all the channels every 1/2 an hour to see if the actual show data matches what you want to record. This wouldn't work if you are already watching something or already recording something at that time..
All good points. However, my LG set-top box grabs 24 hours of programming data when I hit the Surf button. Programming information wouldn't necessarily have to be updated every 30 minutes. Gathering the data could be done during downtime when the EyeTV 500 isn't actively receiving programs. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to determine whether the 500 is in use.

Overall I'm reasonably satisfied with the current TitanTV scheme. I've seen perhaps 15-20 occasions when TitanTV was completely wrong about show information, meaning I recorded something unexpected. TitanTV was wrong the entire week my local HD PBS station was off the air... I guess nobody bothered to tell them the outage was coming. No real harm done -- it's only television.

All good points. However, my LG set-top box grabs 24 hours of programming data when I hit the Surf button. Programming information wouldn't necessarily have to be updated every 30 minutes. Gathering the data could be done during downtime when the EyeTV 500 isn't actively receiving programs. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to determine whether the 500 is in use.

Overall I'm reasonably satisfied with the current TitanTV scheme. I've seen perhaps 15-20 occasions when TitanTV was completely wrong about show information, meaning I recorded something unexpected. TitanTV was wrong the entire week my local HD PBS station was off the air... I guess nobody bothered to tell them the outage was coming. No real harm done -- it's only television.


So do you schedule recordings from TitanTV each day, each week? What do you do when shows get moved or change length for your recurring shows?

I guess my problem is that I am use to the way Tivo does things.

John

All good points. However, my LG set-top box grabs 24 hours of programming data when I hit the Surf button. Programming information wouldn't necessarily have to be updated every 30 minutes. Gathering the data could be done during downtime when the EyeTV 500 isn't actively receiving programs. I'm not sure if there's an easy way to determine whether the 500 is in use.
Ah, true. My Samsung does the same thing. I should have thought of that!

Looking at the EyeTV AppleScript dictionary, it looks like there is a current channel option and a option on a recording to see if it is busy (though this would return true while it was being exported, compacted etc. so that may be a red herring).

Kevin

No, this is not correct. EyeTV 500 records 480i, 720p, 1080i -- whatever size digital TV signal it's tuned to. About half of my EyeTV 500 recordings are standard definition.Thanks for the correction that the EyeTV 500 is an OTA digital TV recorder, not just an OTA HD recorder. As many months ago I had turned off any stations in the EyeTV channel list that were *not* HD, I had simply forgotten that fact.

Yes, this is exactly how I use my AVLP2Ahh, perhaps time for me to do additional homework and learn more about these units. I read speculation that a "new and improved" model is supposed to appear this fall, but I don't know enough about the subject to decide if the rumor has some basis in fact and if so, if fhe improvements might be worth waiting a few months for.

So do you schedule recordings from TitanTV each day, each week? What do you do when shows get moved or change length for your recurring shows?
I usually look through TitanTV for 3-4 days at a time, adding the shows I am interested in for the upcoming week. I've never seen a situation where the show's length wasn't set correctly by TitanTV, but even if that did happen you could simply change the duration for the scheduled show. You can search for all occurences of a show in the next two weeks in Titan's search window. I've found the search feature to be quite useful.

Ahh, perhaps time for me to do additional homework and learn more about these units. I read speculation that a "new and improved" model is supposed to appear this fall, but I don't know enough about the subject to decide if the rumor has some basis in fact and if so, if fhe improvements might be worth waiting a few months for.
A version of the AVLP2 is about to be released under the JVC label, called the AVeL LinkPlayer "Kuro-Obi" - JVC ProHD SRDVD-100U. Most of us aren't that excited about it because the price is $150 more than the AVLP2 and it looks little different. The main advantage of this JVC player is its DVI/HDCP port which the LP2 lacks. As such, the JVC will officially offer DVD upscaling -- versus the unofficial upscaling we've been enjoying from the LP2. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the JVC unit is it confirms I-O Data's ongoing committment to this product line for many months to come. The JVC player will also have revisions to the logic board that are supposed to yield cleaner HD video. That claim is believable; the long AVLP2 thread in these forums discusses an end-user soldering modification to the logic board that improves HD image sharpness by removing a couple capacitors. The thought about why those capacitors were added in the first place may have to do with passing RF emissions testing for the U.S. electronics market, but that's just speculation. I haven't noticed any problem with image sharpness on my Fujitsu plasma screen.

There's also a Linkplayer3 under development for release sometime within the next year but no specific shipment date is announced. The LP3 will support H.264 decoding in silicon. The LP3's downside is that it definitely won't upscale DVDs, according to official statements by I-O Data. That capability is being blocked in the next generation Sigma chip under pressure from our friends at the M.P.A.A.

I usually look through TitanTV for 3-4 days at a time, adding the shows I am interested in for the upcoming week. I've never seen a situation where the show's length wasn't set correctly by TitanTV,

Leno and Conan are major offenders at TitanTV's end. They start/end at :37, yet Titan is almost always :35 so you miss the music act. Pretty much anything on ABC primetime is going to be screwed up if you do back to back shows or if you schedule only the second HD Show. They'll end at 9:01 and start the next at 9:01:30, but Titan lists start as 9:02 or the end of the other at 9:01.

Has anyone had success watching HDTV via EyeTV 500 in full screen mode on a 30" Apple Cinema HD Display? I have a PowerMac G5 dual 2.7 Ghz with the standard ATI Radeon 9650 card. When I go full screen the picture gets soft, blurry, and jerky and I usually lose audio sync to the video. The video lags. I am wondering if upgrading to the more powerful ATI X850 XT card would do the trick. Are there just too many pixels on the 30" display for the 9650 card to handle?
Thanks very much for any help given.
Martin

As far as I know, the issue is that it's trying to do the MPEG decode/scale via a software algorithm that doesn't really make use of the graphics card's engine, which is pretty much why there are such restrictions on playback hardware.

Seems like if a dual 2.7GHz G5 won't do it, there are some serious problems...

I think the X850/800 will help for H.264 and overall quality of the displayed playback.I'm not impressed with the 9650 either. The 9650 supports the 30", but it is a 3 year old chip in reality. However, I wouldn't describe the playback on my Dual 2.3 as "jerky" on the 20" or my 96" projection screen, that was the case with the G4. It sounds like something is chewing up RAM and CPU. Do you have Virex installed? Try setting processor performance in Energy Savings Pref to "Highest" instead of automatic.

Some of the Audio sync issues come directly from the source. Some of my stations are in sync, others simply are not and you'll find out who's more out of sync when you do frame by frame edits.

Ladd,
Not sure but this may be related to your "rumors" of a new "player" (generic and not just to I-O unit). There is a new chip announced that will add better capabilities and full H.264 and VC-1 decoding in addition to better HD display to the next round of Media Players due out in the fall.

The press release is at:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/news/press_releases/050418.htm

Several manufacturers have announced new products based on the new chipset.

I'm holding out to get one of these new units to then work with eyeconnect and my 500 for an all-around home solution.
Adam

Adam, for what it's worth check out the end of MikeMav's post from 6-13-2005 (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=5753545&&#post5753545), in which he discusses his conversation with Jack Akita about the JVC unit and the as-yet unannounced AVLP3: "The new [JVC] version still did not have 6ch analog outputs. It DOES NOT have H.264. Jack said he has still yet to see that chipset from Sigma."

While Sigma misses its shipping dates for the EM8622L, I-O Data's Linkplayer2 and soon-to-be-released JVC units appear to have plenty of life left in them. Meanwhile, some users are reporting good results from EyeConnect and the AVLP2. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=5816715&&#post5816715)

Thanks to all of you who replied regarding my EyeTV 500 problems and to anyone else who offers advice. And Joseph, I had forgotten about changing the Energy Savings Pref. I'll see if that helps. I'm still going back and forth with ElGato tech support. Nick there has been great. I'll let y'all know what happens.
thanks Again,
Martin

They really need to bring back the old firmware so we can run 1.7.x again. I just had it crash for the second time on tonight's schedule, both after about 1h 20m of recording.

It has crashed every Thursday since sometime in May. Ugh. If it was the way it was in Panther, I would have purhcased a third unit already.

Take courage -- ElGato is making definite progress. Beta software seems to have reduced my crashing problems very significantly. While it's too soon to say all the problems are resolved, I have little doubt they'll get this sorted out soon.

Keep sending in your crash logs.

I'm at b7 and it crashed 3 times tonight now. Now that I've had the chance to do more scheduling because I'm not away, it has only gotten worse.

Give b8 a try. At least with OS 10.3.8 it seems to be stable.

I have a dual 200/500 setup over here, and have tried both 1.8.1 and 1.8.2b8 . I can set it to do proper recording, when I'm at my Mac and using the EyeTV application directly. But when I try to program recordings via TitanTV, either on the machine or remotely, EyeTV displays the bad old behavior of only going to the first tuner it sees.

Anyone know of a workaround to this bug / unimplemented feature? One of the reasons I really like the EyeTV system is that I travel a fair amount, and in theory can make it record what I want from any web browser in the world. (Next step: making that recording available from anywhere in the world....but I disgress.....)

Thanks for any help you can give,

Exponent

Give b8 a try. At least with OS 10.3.8 it seems to be stable.

I've had no problems with 1.8.1 on 10.3.8, it's Tiger that has problems. Anyone running 1.8.x on Tiger that can get recordings without crashing? Ok, I get a total freeze up, so anyone getting it somewhat functional?

I have a dual 200/500 setup over here, and have tried both 1.8.1 and 1.8.2b8 . I can set it to do proper recording, when I'm at my Mac and using the EyeTV application directly. But when I try to program recordings via TitanTV, either on the machine or remotely, EyeTV displays the bad old behavior of only going to the first tuner it sees.

Anyone know of a workaround to this bug / unimplemented feature? One of the reasons I really like the EyeTV system is that I travel a fair amount, and in theory can make it record what I want from any web browser in the world. (Next step: making that recording available from anywhere in the world....but I disgress.....)

Thanks for any help you can give,

Exponent

If you can get shell access to your home machine they you can do the following:
1. Download the program.tvpi file from TitanTV
2. Copy that file from you local machine to your home machine with EyeTV
3. From the command line type "open program.tvpi" and EyeTV will read the file and schedule the program

John

I've had no problems with 1.8.1 on 10.3.8, it's Tiger that has problems. Anyone running 1.8.x on Tiger that can get recordings without crashing? Ok, I get a total freeze up, so anyone getting it somewhat functional?

I was having good luck with 1.8 on Tiger, but I have to say I wasn't recording that much stuff, because it is summer. I haven't tried 1.8.1 yet.

It did crash during a show and that does bother me. Are people restarting the EyeTV application by hand? Does anyone have a way to restart if the application crashes.

EyeTV should restart automatically after a crash or it is going to be un-usable in the long run.

John

The crashes I saw were all in the recording thread, not the main EyeTV program. I could continue working in EyeTV despite the process crash without restarting the EyeTV itself. I don't know if this is what others are seeing. Again, I've not had any problems since I updated to 1.8.2b8, except the self inflicted problem of running out of disk space.

Does anyone have a way to restart if the application crashes.

% man launchd

I don't know if this is what others are seeing. Again, I've not had any problems since I updated to 1.8.2b8, except the self inflicted problem of running out of disk space.

The scheduler is now screwed in b8 as well as b7. It will pop up on app openings occasionally now or on .tvpi actions saying two programs conflict even though the "Device Settings" acknowledges there are two tuners attached. Usually have to cancel one, open both live windows, and then reschedule.

Let's just say neither

10.4.2 nor b8 solves the issue. Another crash 1.5 hours in on the ASG on Fox and 25 min in on Big Brother.

I'm still not seeing crashes with b8 and 10.3.8. Just to eliminate confounding factors, have you tried setting up a new account with no other software installed except EyeTV? That would eliminate third party software conflicts -- for instance APE or other haxies. Then there's the possibility that the TV station has a problem with its multiplexer. Are you getting crashes from multiple broadcasters operating off different towers? (I learned from my earlier difficulties that competing TV stations may actually share broadcast hardware.)

Otherwise I wonder if there is something different with how EyeTV runs on your dual G5 versus my PowerBook G4? Is anyone having EyeTV crashes on a G4 or single G5 system?

I've tried all this stuff far too often including all Energy Saver settings, every version of 10.4, QAM & OTA, QAM & QAM, OTA & OTA, and every possible firewire hookup using the PCI card, native bus, and two FW powered hubs. I've also tried my PB as well with the same issues. Anything >3h on one tuner under any circumstance will trigger crash. Anything around 1.5 hours using two is triggering a crash. They say the only way to go back to the firmware that works with 1.7.x is to do a hardware swap. It's just so frustrating that the only thing preventing me from using 1.7 is that the app doesn't respect stop times with the current firmware.

Both their Wakein.app process and the EyeTV.app have been crashing at various times. These are literally the only things crashing on this machine. Once I have edited up the DH and Lost episodes and moved them to their drives I'm going to just schedule stuff all day on the 400GB drive and send them more crashlogs.

Let's just say neither

10.4.2 nor b8 solves the issue. Another crash 1.5 hours in on the ASG on Fox and 25 min in on Big Brother.

Ok, this is really annoying. What are the differences between us. As noted before, I have been unable to record with eyeTV with 10.4-10.4.1, but, just did the 10.4.2 update, restarted, repaired permissions, and now I've been able to record two shows back-to-back with no problems, I'll see if things record tonight.

I've tried all this stuff far too often including all Energy Saver settings, every version of 10.4, QAM & OTA, QAM & QAM, OTA & OTA, and every possible firewire hookup using the PCI card, native bus, and two FW powered hubs. I've also tried my PB as well with the same issues. Anything >3h on one tuner under any circumstance will trigger crash. Anything around 1.5 hours using two is triggering a crash. They say the only way to go back to the firmware that works with 1.7.x is to do a hardware swap. It's just so frustrating that the only thing preventing me from using 1.7 is that the app doesn't respect stop times with the current firmware.

Both their Wakein.app process and the EyeTV.app have been crashing at various times. These are literally the only things crashing on this machine. Once I have edited up the DH and Lost episodes and moved them to their drives I'm going to just schedule stuff all day on the 400GB drive and send them more crashlogs.

Well, I can't do that since I haven't been able to find any crash logs. I can find my system logs that stop right as eyeTV is trying to wake things up, but, eyeTV doesn't show a crash. Though you can see that I'm now up and running with 10.4.2. (PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25GHz, 2 GB RAM, recording to 400 GB SATA drive).

Are you using two tuners? The issues go away for the most part with one.

Are you using two tuners? The issues go away for the most part with one.

Only using one tuner, so, two tuners must just increase the likelihood of problems. I was annoyed that eyeTV was largely useless with Tiger. (Granted I tend to say in 10.3.8 because of my audio hardware).

Well it seems I spoiled my good luck by writing I was having no trouble. Since last night I had a 1 hour 1080i recording consume 15GB of HD space before running out of room to record. The file wouldn't play back at all. I also had another zero-second recording crash in thread 2. I emailed my crash log to Nick this morning.

I think I'll try going back down to one EyeTV 500 attached and see if that helps. Previously I was doing ok with both of my 500's connected.

Well it seems I spoiled my good luck by writing I was having no trouble. Since last night I had a 1 hour 1080i recording consume 15GB of HD space before running out of room to record. The file wouldn't play back at all. I also had another zero-second recording crash in thread 2. I emailed my crash log to Nick this morning.

I haven't had one that wouldn't play, but I've had some issues with it saying a 2 hr + show is 2 minutes long or 30seconds yet plays for the entire length until the point where it crashed.

Crashed with one tuner attached tonight on Big Brother 20 minutes in. :(

I removed one of my 500's three days ago. I've had only one crash 10 minutes into a recording since then.

Nick Freeman wrote, "Using multiple units is an unannounced, preliminary alpha-level feature, that does have bugs. Thus, we'll do our best to resolve this when we can, but this feature isn't even official yet."

I suspect there's more than one issue going on here. But all my crashes, whether dual-500 or single-500, are either KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS or KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE in thread 2 of EyeTV.

The thread changes for me but these are the exceptions I get.

EyeTV and Wakein (EyeTV Application Support App:

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)

Codes:
KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS
KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE

Can you post the backtrace for the thread that is crashing as well as which OS build you are running on?

These are from the past two days on 10.4.1 and .2. Don't know how to post the backtrace?

The backtrace is the code path leading up to the crash (or stack). This is in the crash report.

~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/EyeTV.crash.log

The backtrace for each thread is under the portion that says what kind of Exception.

So you'd look for the thread that crashed (like "Thread 0 Crashed:") and copy the stuff below that until the next thread, or the table with all the register values.

This will show exactly what crashed and where, and you can sometimes infer whether its Mac OS X or EyeTV...

Like this?

PID: 1955
Thread: 4

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x16e56000

...

Thread 4 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012ca20 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014d5e8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061c68 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ed390 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

...
Thread 4 crashed with PPC Thread State 64:
srr0: 0x000000000012ca20 srr1: 0x100000000200d030 vrsave: 0x0000000000000000
cr: 0x48000444 xer: 0x0000000020000000 lr: 0x000000000012ca30 ctr: 0x0000000090001570
r0: 0x0000000000000001 r1: 0x00000000f0407c70 r2: 0x00000000019be200 r3: 0x0000000016e56000
r4: 0x00000000019be224 r5: 0x00000000018e2a00 r6: 0x0000000000000000 r7: 0x0000000000000020
r8: 0x0000000000000030 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x0000000000000000 r11: 0x00000000003fb908
r12: 0x0000000090001570 r13: 0x0000000000000000 r14: 0x0000000000000000 r15: 0x0000000000000000
r16: 0x0000000000000000 r17: 0x0000000000000000 r18: 0x0000000000000000 r19: 0x0000000000000000
r20: 0x0000000000000000 r21: 0x0000000000000000 r22: 0x0000000000000000 r23: 0x00000000019be220
r24: 0x00000000018e2a00 r25: 0x0000000000000000 r26: 0x0000000000000000 r27: 0x0000000000000000
r28: 0x00000000f0407ccc r29: 0x000000000000012c r30: 0x00000000018e2b20 r31: 0x0000000000000019


Version: 1.8.2b8 (1.8.2b8)

PID: 2382
Thread: 5

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x189ec000

...
Thread 5 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012ca20 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014d5e8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061c68 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ed390 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

...
Thread 5 crashed with PPC Thread State 64:
srr0: 0x000000000012ca20 srr1: 0x100000000200d030 vrsave: 0x0000000000000000
cr: 0x48000444 xer: 0x0000000020000000 lr: 0x000000000012ca30 ctr: 0x0000000090001570
r0: 0x0000000000000001 r1: 0x00000000f0396c70 r2: 0x0000000001981c00 r3: 0x00000000189ec000
r4: 0x0000000001981c14 r5: 0x0000000001900a00 r6: 0x0000000000000000 r7: 0x0000000000000020
r8: 0x0000000000000030 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x0000000000000000 r11: 0x00000000003fb908
r12: 0x0000000090001570 r13: 0x0000000000000000 r14: 0x0000000000000000 r15: 0x0000000000000000
r16: 0x0000000000000000 r17: 0x0000000000000000 r18: 0x0000000000000000 r19: 0x0000000000000000
r20: 0x0000000000000000 r21: 0x0000000000000000 r22: 0x0000000000000000 r23: 0x0000000001981c10
r24: 0x0000000001900a00 r25: 0x0000000000000000 r26: 0x0000000000000000 r27: 0x0000000000000000
r28: 0x00000000f0396ccc r29: 0x00000000000001b0 r30: 0x0000000001900ba4 r31: 0x0000000000000024

Version: 1.8.2b8 (1.8.2b8)

PID: 2401
Thread: 4

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x17dcd000

Thread 4 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012ca20 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014d5e8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061c68 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ed390 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

...

Thread 4 crashed with PPC Thread State 64:
srr0: 0x000000000012ca20 srr1: 0x100000000200f030 vrsave: 0x0000000000000000
cr: 0x48000224 xer: 0x0000000020000000 lr: 0x000000000012ca30 ctr: 0x0000000090001570
r0: 0x0000000000000001 r1: 0x00000000f0386c70 r2: 0x00000000019bc400 r3: 0x0000000017dcd000
r4: 0x00000000019bc414 r5: 0x0000000001902c00 r6: 0x0000000000000000 r7: 0x0000000000000020
r8: 0x0000000000000030 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x0000000000000000 r11: 0x00000000003fb908
r12: 0x0000000090001570 r13: 0x0000000000000000 r14: 0x0000000000000000 r15: 0x0000000000000000
r16: 0x0000000000000000 r17: 0x0000000000000000 r18: 0x0000000000000000 r19: 0x0000000000000000
r20: 0x0000000000000000 r21: 0x0000000000000000 r22: 0x0000000000000000 r23: 0x00000000019bc410
r24: 0x0000000001902c00 r25: 0x0000000000000000 r26: 0x0000000000000000 r27: 0x0000000000000000
r28: 0x00000000f0386ccc r29: 0x000000000000018c r30: 0x0000000001902d80 r31: 0x0000000000000021


Version: 1.8.2b8 (1.8.2b8)

PID: 2445
Thread: 5

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x16ab6000

...

Thread 5 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012ca20 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014d5e8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061c68 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ed390 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

...

Thread 5 crashed with PPC Thread State 64:
srr0: 0x000000000012ca20 srr1: 0x100000000200f030 vrsave: 0x0000000000000000
cr: 0x48000444 xer: 0x0000000020000000 lr: 0x000000000012ca30 ctr: 0x0000000090001570
r0: 0x0000000000000001 r1: 0x00000000f0396c70 r2: 0x00000000019a9200 r3: 0x0000000016ab6000
r4: 0x00000000019a9224 r5: 0x00000000018ffc00 r6: 0x0000000000000000 r7: 0x0000000000000020
r8: 0x0000000000000030 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x0000000000000000 r11: 0x00000000003fb908
r12: 0x0000000090001570 r13: 0x0000000000000000 r14: 0x0000000000000000 r15: 0x0000000000000000
r16: 0x0000000000000000 r17: 0x0000000000000000 r18: 0x0000000000000000 r19: 0x0000000000000000
r20: 0x0000000000000000 r21: 0x0000000000000000 r22: 0x0000000000000000 r23: 0x00000000019a9220
r24: 0x00000000018ffc00 r25: 0x0000000000000000 r26: 0x0000000000000000 r27: 0x0000000000000000
r28: 0x00000000f0396ccc r29: 0x00000000000001b0 r30: 0x00000000018ffda4 r31: 0x0000000000000024

Yep, that's perfect.

Those crashes are all happening in the exact same place:

TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576

and are strictly in the EyeTV source code. They should be able to track that crash down. If you haven't already, you should send them your crash log along with the version of EyeTV that crashed.

They've got it all including multiple ASP reports.

And it goes down again...

Date/Time: 2005-07-16 19:25:18.849 -0500
OS Version: 10.4.2 (Build 8C46)
Report Version: 3

Command: EyeTV
Path: /Applications/ AV Apps/Media Players/EyeTV 1.8.1/EyeTV 1.8.2b8.app/Contents/MacOS/EyeTV
Parent: WindowServer [60]
Version: 1.8.2b8 (1.8.2b8)
PID: 362
Thread: 3

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x15ff4000

Thread 3 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012ca20 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014d5e8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061c68 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ed390 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

I haven't had another crash since I removed my second 500 last week. ElGato emailed me two debugging tools, Bus Reset Handler and FireCracker. Bus Reset Handler typically shows 8-15 bus resets per day. Several of those occur while I am playing back video to my LinkPlayer2. I haven't noticed any other pattern. FireCracker generates the following report for my EyeTV 500:

(0xf0000400) 0x04044440 ROM Header (General), info_len = 0x4 quadlets, crc_len = 0x4 quadlets, crc = 0x4440
Bus Information Block:
(0xf0000404) 0x31333934 "1394"
(0xf0000408) 0xe0649212 IRMC, CMC, ISC, CycClkAcc = 0x64, MaxRec = 0x09 (1024 bytes)
(0xf000040c) 0x000c6c07 NodeVendorID = 0x000c6c (Elgato), ChipIDHi = 0x07
(0xf0000410) 0x0009a100 ChipIDLo = 0x0009a100
Root Directory:
(0xf0000414) 0x00088e1f Directory header, length = 0x8 quadlets, crc = 0x8e1f
(0xf0000418) 0x03000c6c Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x03 (Module Vendor ID), Data = 0x000c6c (Elgato)
(0xf000041c) 0x8100000c Key type = 2 (Leaf), Key = 0x01 (Text), Rel. Offset = 0x00000c (0xf000044c)
(0xf000044c) 0x00068253 Leaf header, length = 0x6 quadlets, crc = 0x8253
(0xf0000450) 00000000 00000000 456c6761 746f2053 ........Elgato S
(0xf0000460) 79737465 6d730000 ystems..
(0xf0000420) 0x17000007 Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x17 (Model ID), Data = 0x000007
(0xf0000424) 0x81000011 Key type = 2 (Leaf), Key = 0x01 (Text), Rel. Offset = 0x000011 (0xf0000468)
(0xf0000468) 0x000562c8 Leaf header, length = 0x5 quadlets, crc = 0x62c8
(0xf000046c) 00000000 00000000 45796554 56203530 ........EyeTV 50
(0xf000047c) 30000000 0...
(0xf0000428) 0x0c0083c0 Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x0c (Node Capabilities), Data = 0x0083c0 (DRQ, LST, FIX, 64Bit, SPT)
(0xf000042c) 0xd1000003 Key type = 3 (Dir), Key = 0x11 (Unit Dir), Rel. Offset = 0x000003 (0xf0000438)
Unit Directory:
(0xf0000438) 0x00047977 Directory header, length = 0x4 quadlets, crc = 0x7977
(0xf000043c) 0x1200a02d Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x12 (Unit Spec ID), Data = 0x00a02d (1394 TA)
(0xf0000440) 0x13010001 Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x13 (Unit SW Version), Data = 0x010001 (AV/C)
(0xf0000444) 0x17000007 Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x17 (Model ID), Data = 0x000007
(0xf0000448) 0x81000008 Key type = 2 (Leaf), Key = 0x01 (Text), Rel. Offset = 0x000008 (0xf0000468)
(0xf0000468) 0x000562c8 Leaf header, length = 0x5 quadlets, crc = 0x62c8
(0xf000046c) 00000000 00000000 45796554 56203530 ........EyeTV 50
(0xf000047c) 30000000 0...
(0xf0000430) 0x04000001 Key type = 0 (Imm), Key = 0x04 (Module HW Version), Data = 0x000001
(0xf0000434) 0x81000013 Key type = 2 (Leaf), Key = 0x01 (Text), Rel. Offset = 0x000013 (0xf0000480)
(0xf0000480) 0x00036c45 Leaf header, length = 0x3 quadlets, crc = 0x6c45
(0xf0000484) 00000000 00000000 52657631 ........Rev1

I'm not sure what any of this means. My next test will be to swap EyeTV 500s and see if that makes any difference in the frequency of crashes. Then if all is well I will plug both 500s back in together and see what happens.

Just saw that EyeTV 1.8.2 (non beta) is out.

Hope I don't go too far off topic, but I'm trying to figure out how to save a recording from the 500 as a small resolution .avi, preferably within the EyeTV program if possible, to save steps. When going to Export in EyeTV and choosing the format of DivX AVI - I don't seem to be able to change the resolution of the output (I would like a width of 624). Will Divx Pro enable me to work with that option? Is anyone here doing this within the EyeTV program? Maybe there is another way to go about it, like getting a mpeg2 stream out and working with various other programs to get the job done. I would really like to have it a one step process to save time, which is why I'm considering paying for divx pro but I'd like to know it will work before spending $20.

Not making much progress. Now onto my first 2 Kernel Panics in 10.4.2 tonight under separate accounts with the "final" 1.8.2. :(

I remain completely crash-free after two more days of moderate recording using my second EyeTV 500 by itself. I just installed 1.8.2 "final", so no news to report about it yet. If all is stable through today I'll try going back to my dual-500 setup tomorrow and see if that brings back the crashes. I'm still running OS 10.3.8.

Joseph, I am curious if you are logged in under both accounts via fast user switching? I wonder how two copies of EyeTV software would interact running under multiple accounts.

... I am curious if you are logged in under both accounts via fast user switching? I wonder how two copies of EyeTV software would interact running under multiple accounts.

I can address that question. The answer is not particularly well. If you don't make any changes from the default configuration you should just get a message that another user has EyeTV launched and the application refuses to launch. This is with just one El Gato hardware unit connected so maybe there is different behavior if more than one is connected. I also tried changing the location of the archive so that different users shared the same location. Although this might be a good idea in general it was not something that the EyeTV software handled properly.

I wrote some software that allowed different users to access each others EyeTV archives in order to play recorded programs. It works but requires the archives to be in publicly visible locations which is not how things are configured by default. My software doesn't try to do anything with EyeTV hardware, just the archives.

Yeah, the priveleges don't work unless you make them, but I"m not using fast switching either. Just use separate archives and move is what I've been doing. The other user had been more successful with the original 1.8.1 than the current account, but both got a kerenel panic. The clean account had it while recording Empire, the more used account had a kerenel panic on attempting to start recording Leno last night.

I was all set to buy 1 or 2 more tuners for 3-4 a few months ago, now I can't even run 1 properly. 1.7.x was completely stable for scheduling and recording. Didn't ever think it would crash on me and left it going on it's own. Now I have to babysit everything I really want on the DVR. :(

In my attempt to build a better EyeTV scheduling application I found an issue that could cause some trouble.

I have xmltv guide data working on the Mac and I have played with the Perl modules Mac::EyeTV and Mac::Glue EyeTv. It looks like I can do everything from Perl via this Applescript interface. I still have the option of reading the files (.eyetvp and eyetvr) and creating the file (*.tvpi).

My setup includes two tuners analog (ConvertX) and digital (EyeTV 500). When I scan for analog channels I get all my cables channels and they match the correct channel numbers.

But when I scan using Clear QAM I get lots of channels but they seems to start at channel number 200 and don't match the same channel number as the guide information or the cable set top box.

So my question is why? How can I fix this? Why 200? I know I can go in an label every channel, which is fine, but why can't I also change the channel number to match the correct one.

If I go in an rescan I get different numbers sometimes. If I disable a channel (because it was encrypted or had no signal) then the channel number change to only include the enabled ones.

Anyone else seen this?

John

Can you assign by name instead of channel with your XML solution, such as "XXXX-DT." That's how TitanTV/EyeTV QAM scheduling normally works.

Can you assign by name instead of channel with your XML solution, such as "XXXX-DT." That's how TitanTV/EyeTV QAM scheduling normally works.

Well the XMLTV data has many versions of the channel name, so if I can keep the mapping correct that will be fine.

The Mac::EyeTV doesn't support record by channel name, but I think the Applescript glue might. I think it would also be possible to get the channel listings from EyeTV (which includes the channel number to channel name mappings that the user setup) and then just use the channel number.

So the key here is to setup all the channel names to match one of the channel names from the XMLTV channel data.

John

But when I scan using Clear QAM I get lots of channels but they seems to start at channel number 200 and don't match the same channel number as the guide information or the cable set top box.

So my question is why? How can I fix this? Why 200? I know I can go in an label every channel, which is fine, but why can't I also change the channel number to match the correct one.

If I go in an rescan I get different numbers sometimes. If I disable a channel (because it was encrypted or had no signal) then the channel number change to only include the enabled ones.

Anyone else seen this?

John

My Clear QAM starts at 100, so I think it depends on your cable provider. Some of channels have been labeled, but, the rest is a crap-shoot. So, I usually have to physically scan through to see what's there. But, once you figure out the callsigns you can schedule with EyeTV no problem. Also if you go to the support page it shows how to set-up an Applescript to name the channels, so you just have to run the script after a re-scan.

If I have 1 unit attached: QAM @100
If I have 2 units attached: QAM @200

Twelve days now and counting without a single crash. I've been recording fairly heavily with both of my 500's connected including simultaneous recordings.

Is it too early to say this crashing issue is resolved?

So it's safe to install 1.8.2?

OK, I don't think I've ever noticed this until 1.8.2 - when viewing a 720P broadcast, the entire OS GUI slows to a crawl. Everything: scrolling, app menus, etc. Even hiding/showing the EyeTV controller. The CPU usage isn't noticeably different . . .

No problem with 1080i or 480i. Has anyone else noticed this?

BTW - dual 2.7 G5 with 4G of memory, so I have plenty of overhead. :D

Twelve days now and counting without a single crash. I've been recording fairly heavily with both of my 500's connected including simultaneous recordings.

Is it too early to say this crashing issue is resolved?

Which edition? I've had marginally better success with 1.8.1 on a completely clean account. (2 crashes) Need to get back to them on equipment swap and purchasing PSUs for the boxes.

Well, it is too soon to call the crashes a thing of the past. I had another zero-second recording crash with 1.8.2 last evening followed by two successful recordings. Prior to that I had 34 successful recordings since my last crash. I emailed the details to ElGato. One crash out of 35 attempts isn't terrible but I'd prefer to see 100% success.

Scruffy, I can't say I've ever seen the behavior you report but I haven't done any 720p recording since I started using 1.8.2. Let us know if the slowdown is reproducible.

Newer version, newer firmware, same ole story.

Crashed after 2h 14 minutes. Have yet to have a successful Thursday since 1.8 arrived.

Date/Time: 2005-07-28 21:12:58.823 -0500
OS Version: 10.4.2 (Build 8C46)
Report Version: 3

Command: EyeTV
Path: /Applications/EyeTV 1.8.edit.app/Contents/MacOS/EyeTV
Parent: WindowServer [4512]

Version: 1.8.edit (1.8.edit)

PID: 4557
Thread: 13

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x185f1000


Thread 13 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

and again it goes down

Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

and for the second time tonight

Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

Couple more crashes with 2 attached. But here is another with just 1 unit attached.

Thread 3 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

10 minutes later it went down again...

Thread 3 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96


20 minutes later... #3
Thread 3 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

Same damn error. Is nobody else seeing this???????

I had another crash last week with my dual-500 setup and a couple of "garbage data" recordings. These garbage recordings are usually bigger than expected, i.e. 15 GB for a 1 hour show, and they play as all-black from EyeTV software. Playing them from my LinkPlayer2 is equally ineffective. Playing them in VLC yields some visible picture with huge amounts of digital garbling. VLC inevitably crashes within a few seconds of starting the playback.

Has anybody else seen this issue? I've had about 10-12 of these "garbage data" recordings since I got my EyeTV 500's. I can't be sure it isn't a multiplexing problem on the transmission side rather than an EyeTV problem, but I'm not sure why it would be so widely intermittent.

I reported my dual-500 crash to ElGato last week. They're still investigating. Since then I unplugged my second 500 and I haven't seen a single crash yet.

I've gotten "garbage" recordings of a sort.

Normally, I can play anything the EyeTV records back through my Roku HD-1000. Every once in a while, I get a recording that's all black/no sound from the Roku, but seems to be ok to the down-rev EyeTV software.

I've been assuming it's a multiplexing problem and/or bug on the Roku side, but who knows?

Yes, I get all black / no sound playback on my LinkPlayer2 with about 40% of my 480i EyeTV 500 recordings. I-O Data is working on the issue. I wonder if that's a decoder firmware issue that's present across-the-board with all these media players? I am able to salvage most of my "black screen, no sound" 480i files by running them through VLC alone (70%) or ProjectX + VLC (20%). The remaining 10% of my troublesome 480i files don't play on my LinkPlayer no matter what I do. I don't think it's an EyeTV problem at all since some Windows users report similar problems with their MPEG2-TS content.

But that's not the "garbage recording" issue I was talking about. These files always take up more than the expected amount of HD space and they don't play in EyeTV. When I attempt to play the garbage file in EyeTV there's a lengthy pause while the window opens and my CPU sits at 100% usage. My mouse even refuses to move on the screen for several seconds. Then the playback window opens with just black and I regain control... most of the time. Occasionally I have to force-quit EyeTV 1.8.2. I've seen the behavior with earlier EyeTV versions since 1.8.1_beta but I don't recall seeing it with 1.7.1. (I never used 1.8.0.)

If nobody else has seen this, then it's probably a multiplexing issue with my local station.

I have the latest rev of s/w. Machine is dual 2.7 w/6GBs of RAM.

Rob, welcome to the HT-Mac forums.

Could you provide more details, for instance whether the crashes occur at times other than during recording, do the crashes occur in the middle of a recording or at the beginning (zero second crashes). Perhaps a crash log header like what JosephS posted would help too. What's your Hardware & OS configuration?

I haven't had any more crashes or garbage recordings since I unplugged my second EyeTV 500, but I haven't been recording heavily either. There's not much worth watching on TV at this time of summer.

and again
Thread 3 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

One more time:

Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

Third time tonight:

Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

4th time:
Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

#5:

Thread 7 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d7e0 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014e3a8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00062428 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000ee1f0 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

I don't recall ever having a crash in Thread 7. I wonder if it's more susceptible to problems on a dual-G5 than on my G4 PowerBook. I haven't had a single crash since I went back to a mono-500 setup on 7-31-2005.

On another topic... ANNOUNCEMENT: The public beta of iEye Captain (http://www.vidcan.com/Software/Downloads.html) is available. As a beta tester I urge anyone using EyeTV to check it out! Graham Jones has been working on iEye Captain for many months and it's getting really close to final release. Graham is a phenomenal Mac developer and he deserves all the support we can give him. This program has saved me many hours of drudgery organizing my EyeTV library for playback. Check out the early bird special $10 discount for registering before August 20.

#5:Thread 7 Crashed:

Joseph S, I have had repeated crashes and kernel panics with the last two releases of EyeTV and my 500(s). Using 1.8.0 works fine though.

Now, a question for you Joseph. I have seen a thread on here where you mention success with recording and two devices. My question is whether or not this included completely unattended scheduled recording. I'm talking specifically about the following type of situation: I have three EyeTV devices, two 500's and a 200. Usually, only one 500 and 200 are plugged in at the same time, so that's all I'm concerned about. I have weekly recordings scheduled on both the 500 and 200's channel lists.

Now, whenever I leave both devices plugged in, and scheduled recording is to start, the EyeTV software starts the recording using the wrong tuner. ie., if a recording is scheduled for the 500, the software will initiate the 200's channel list and tuner, and try to record from there. Of course, it is not receiving the correct signal, and thus nothing is recorded. The exact same thing happens in reverse if there is a show scheduled that is supposed to use the 200's tuner.

So, I am unable to do true unattended recording with both devices plugged in. Ideally, because I travel a lot, I would just have my mac automatically turn on at a set time, the programs would then start recording, and then the mac would shut down at a set time. But, to ensure proper recording, I have to unplug whatever device will not be set for recording that day in order to be successfull. This is a big issue when I leave for a week and want to record programs in both analog and digital from the same mac, as I usually have to sacrifice the 500's recording because they are fewer.

Joseph, have you been able to get a similar setup working? If so, any tips for me? Thanks a lot in advance.

Up until 1.7.2 everything was stable as a rock with multiple tuners.

Since 1.8, Tiger, new firmware. I've had the above error and a few others over and over again with single or multiple tuners attached. It doesn't matter if I'm not using the machine or using the machine. The error will occur.

If you haven't run the firmware update you can still run 1.7.x in 10.3 and it will stop at the end. If you have updated it the recordings will start, but not stop.

I'm doing a hardware swap to see if it helps.

I agree with Joseph. I had no crashes with 1.7.1 whatsoever. Last night I had another "zero-second recording" crash with 1.8.2 at the start of a scheduled 1080i show. Here's the relevant part of my crash log:

Thread 2 Crashed:
0 <<00000000>> 0x00000000 0 + 0
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014dfd8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 0xc8
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061ee8 EyeTVThread::Run() + 0x58
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000edd50 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 0xb0
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x900246e8 _pthread_body + 0x28

This crash occurred with only a single EyeTV 500 attached to my PowerBook G4 running 10.3.8. My second EyeTV 500 remains unplugged until these crashes are resolved... though clearly it's not simply a multiple receivers issue we're dealing with here.

ElGato seems to be making gradual progress in reducing the frequency of crashes since early this summer. Still, they have a ways to go to get back to the stability of 1.7.x. I would be tempted to take Nick up on his offer to swap out one of my 500s for another with earlier firmware but I've grown fond of iEye Captain (http://www.vidcan.com/Software/Downloads.html) which requires EyeTV 1.8.1 or later. An occasional missed recording is the price I am willing to pay for the convenience of having automatic alias creation for my media server.

Here's some correspondence between myself and elgato. Does anyone with any experience in this area care to add to the discussion? Is there such a thing as an A/B switch for DVI cables so that I could easily go back and forth between my computer monitor and hdtv? Can anyone further explain what is meant by 'native resolution'?


Msg sent to elgato:
i've enjoyed watching eye tv 500 hdtv content with my g5 and 23 inch monitor. I'm interested in purchasing a 'real' hdtv for the household that will be near the computer. Is it possible to send the programming from my eyetv500/g5 configuration to this non-computer monitor? would i swap cables from the back of the g5 and if so what sort of inputs should i be looking for when shopping amongst the hundreds of different hdtv models?

Response from elgato:
You'll have to output video from your Mac to your new HDTV.
Most have a DVI connector, so the new HDTV would replace your current monitor. It would act just like a normal Mac monitor, at least when it came to the connection supplying video from your Mac.
Be aware that HDTVs aren't standardized when it comes to resolution. 1920 by 1080 would be highest resolution for HDTV (1080i or 1080p, which does not yet exist). In an idea world, you'd find a TV with that resolution, and then all video could be scaled to fit, and 1080i and 720p would look great.
The other way of going about it would be to find a TV that's 720p or less in its native resoltuion. 720p would look nice, but 1080i would be scaled down.
So, don't just pay attetion to the size in inches, make sure that you're getting the highest native resolution possible (at least, the highest that your budget can handle).
There are many HDTV buying guides on line; just make sure that your choice has DVI input (among all of the others) so you can hook your Mac to it.

Here's some correspondence between myself and elgato. Does anyone with any experience in this area care to add to the discussion? Is there such a thing as an A/B switch for DVI cables so that I could easily go back and forth between my computer monitor and hdtv? Can anyone further explain what is meant by 'native resolution'?

There are switchers (http://www.gefen.com/kvm/cav-digitalswitchers.jsp) but I'm not sure that's what you want. Do you want to use the HDTV as a monitor for you G5? You could run a switcher backwards, but, not all can do that. They're used to switch one monitor/HDTV between two signals, say a Mac and an HDTV tuner. You could use a splitter (http://www.gefen.com/kvm/cav-da.jsp) but I'm not sure if you can mirror since there are no HDTVs with the same resolution of the 23" display, and the 23" display can't take any HD resolutions. But, your monitor card has two DVI ports. You could get a long cable and just use the HDTV as a second monitor.

As for native resolution, it means the real pixel elements of the display, usually used to describe 'fixed pixel' displays (e.g. LCD, Plasma, DLP). Look at the tech specs of Apple's displays (http://www.apple.com/displays/specs.htm)--they use "optimum resolution", but, that means that there's an exact pixel count for the display, and that's the best resolution to use--you use the whole display, and it looks clear (try some other resolutions to see the effect). So for displays you can afford, look for the 'native/best/optimum/resolution', and get the most/highest you can afford.

To get your Mac to display on an HDTV check for SwitchRes in the threads, though Tiger seems to recognize many displays.

Response from elgato:
Most have a DVI connector, so the new HDTV would replace your current monitor. It would act just like a normal Mac monitor, at least when it came to the connection supplying video from your Mac.

Every G5 shipped has had a video card capable of driving two DVI monitors. In most cases, you need an ADC to DVI adapter, which is relatively inexpensive. So, the HDTV could be added as a second monitor rather than replacing your 23-inch monitor. I have a Syntax Olevia 32-inch HDTV and the Dell 24-inch widescreen monitor in a very similar setup. In addition, I have a Radeon 9200 video card running a third Samsung 17-inch LCD monitor.

I did have to purchase DisplayConfigX to do 1368x768 on the Syntax Olevia TV. I have also used 720p, which most HD models these days support, and 1080i, which is supported by DisplayConfigX. 1080i was too blurry, but 720p was usable. It's just that 1366x768 is the sweet spot for my HDTV and 1368x768 was as close as I could get. I'm very happy with the setup and HD looks awesome.

Dennis

I had another EyeTV 1.8.2 crash this morning while attempting to record a 480i PBS show, "Paniolo O Hawaii," from 1:00 to 1:59 AM. The previous 480i show on the same station, "Benjamin Franklin," appears to have recorded correctly from 12:00 to 00:59 AM. This crash occurred using a single EyeTV 500 attached to my PowerBook. This was actually my other 500, after I swapped my two EyeTV 500's on 8-20-2005. Here is the relevant information from my crash log:

Version: 1.8.2 (1.8.2)
PID: 958
Thread: 2
Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0x3c2f2a21

Thread 2 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d414 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 0x244
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014dfd8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 0xc8
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061ee8 EyeTVThread::Run() + 0x58
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000edd50 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 0xb0
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x900246e8 _pthread_body + 0x28

I believe this pretty much eliminates ElGato's theory that the crashes are dual-500 related. EyeTV 1.8.x and/or its firmware 1.1.0 is buggy. I hope Joseph's hardware exchange solves his problem. The rest of us will just have to wait for a software solution.

I agree. ElGato is great about replacing defective units and sending out replacement product. I really do like them for that, and the EyeTV500 is a fun product. But ever since 1.8.1, stability has been a major issue. I do get repeated system freezes with 1.8.1 and 1.8.2. Its much less so with 1.8.0, but if I am using one of my external FW800 drives (on a separate bus) at the same time as 1.8.0, then it crashes quite frequently.

... if I am using one of my external FW800 drives (on a separate bus) at the same time as 1.8.0, then it crashes quite frequently.
That's an interesting observation! All my recent recording has been directed to my LaCie Big Disk Extreme via FW-800. I wonder if moving my LaCie over to the FW-400 bus or switching to one of my FW-400 HD enclosures would reduce crashing frequency? I wonder if recording via USB-2 bus would reduce crashing?

Have you actually seen a decrease in crashes with your destination drive on the same bus as the EyeTV 500?

Have you been sending crash logs to ElGato? They seem to think the crashing problem is limited to myself and one other user.

That's interesting.

I have a dual-interface drive on USB 2.0 that I use for my recordings. Why USB and not firewire? Well, it's the last place where I tried it, and at the time, I was kinda worried about bus contention on FW.

So far, I have had absolutely no crashes.

Might we be suggesting that if I moved the drive over to the FW bus, I might join the Crash Club? Not something I'd want to do...

I'm getting similar crashes a couple of times a week now. I'm running EyeTV on a 2nd PCI Firewire 400 card along with two 8 Bay firewire enclosure towers. (Though the EyeTV is on a separate controller)

I think I've only sent them in one crash log a while back, perhaps I should just start sending them each time it happens, that way they'll get a feel for how often it happens. You know, squeaky wheel getting the grease and all that...

Kevin

I plugged my single attached EyeTV 500 into my single attached FW hard drive last night to keep everything on the same bus. The first two recordings went smoothly but it will be a while before I get a sense of whether that's the answer to my crashing problem. I have 8-9 more shows scheduled for this week, mostly 480i stuff. I haven't noticed any different frequency of crashing with 1080i versus 480i content so far.

Send all your crashlogs please.

The first 36 hours of having my 500 plugged directly to my HD went fairly smoothly with no reported crashes, however the third and fourth scheduled shows failed to record (as opposed to my previous zero-second recordings with a crash log.) I'll reboot and try again but if this is an indication of what's ahead it might mean going back to the drawing board.

The exchange units I just received have firmware 1.1.0 (incompatible with 1.7 scheduling stop times). Nothing like a Thursday schedule to test them out. Haven't had a successful Thursday night since 1.8 arrived in May.

2 new units. 2 PSUs. Same result with 1.8.2.

Thread 4 Crashed:
0 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0012d410 TSDemux::AddPackets(void*, long, int) + 576
1 com.elgato.eyetv 0x0014dfd8 TSCaptureDeviceThread::RunExceptionSafe() + 200
2 com.elgato.eyetv 0x00061ee8 EyeTVThread::Run() + 88
3 com.elgato.eyetv 0x000edd50 LXThread::ThreadWrapper(LXThread*) + 176
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x9002c3d4 _pthread_body + 96

:(

It later crashed using only one tuner with the exact same error. The problem can't be solved it seems without going back to Panther and the 1.7.x compatible firmware.

Joseph, that's too bad about the replacement unit having the same firmware as the one you sent in. By any chance, have you tried doing what Toots reported is working for him -- using an external USB2 hard drive? It would be interesting to see if recording to USB2 fixed your problem next Thursday.

I received an email from Nick informing me the crash logs we have been so diligent about submitting really don't tell ElGato anything useful. All the logs say is that the same crash is happening each time... though, in my case it's always Thread 2 that crashes, not Thread 4. Nick wrote that the narrative information we provide is much more useful, such as what hardware & software is active, how the hardware is connected (same bus, different bus), what background processes or other CPU activity is ongoing, and so-forth. Apparently ElGato has trouble reproducing the crashes on their own units and that does not bode well for a solution anytime soon.

The problem is the crash occurs no matter how they are connected, no matter where I record to and no matter if I am 100 miles from the computer or using it. This isn't a conflict, it's a bug.

I'm not arguing with you that we're dealing with a bug. The question is what's the source of that bug. We're trying to help ElGato narrow the search by testing different hardware scenarios. So far we have one report of a user not having any crashes when he records to a USB drive so that's the logical thing for us to try next.

I'd like to reach consensus about what circumstances cause us to be more affected by this bug than other EyeTV 500 users. I'm not sure what else we can do except help ElGato understand this bug better. They're clearly having trouble identifying it in-house.

Alternatively we can bitch and whine for a firmware downgrade path, but that really doesn't solve the problem of why these things keep crashing.

Alternatively we can bitch and whine for a firmware downgrade path, but that really doesn't solve the problem of why these things keep crashing.

I know, but the new seasons are starting real soon. Nothing has been solved this entire summer. 1.7.x in Panther is stable, the only thing preventing us from still using it is firmware 1.1.0 and beyond.

Same story this week. Yet, another botched Thursday night. :(

You know, I've read the complaints about this product, but I rarely have any problems. Yes, I'm only using one, and yes, I have a high-end G5. Still, it's been running fantastic for the past several weeks (except for one time when the system locked up).

PowerMac Dual 2.7 GHz G5
512 MB memory and 2 200GB Serial-ATA HD
Mac OS X v10.4.2, EyeTV v1.8.2, EyeTV 500

For troubleshooting purposes, if there's something you'd like me to try (trying to duplicate your experience), just let me know.

Carl

Yes, I can't say that I have had any real major problems with timed recordings and one tuner, but with two or three, there are major issues.

I have also had major problems when using an external FW800 drive while recording to an internal disk with just one EyeTV 500 device. Hard to call them kernal panics exactly, but my system completely locks up, and the power button on the G4 has to be held down to force a shut down. If I don't have the FW800 drive on or in use while recording off a EyeTV 500, then all is good.

another crash. Second of the night. Same ole error message.

Well, I had other problems with my eyeTV 500 and my DDR Dual G4, but, since I'm in the process of moving, I've been using my Powerbook G4. And, so far no problems. I'm even taxing my processer leaving many programs running including Camino, and some Java apps that hog the processor (though I do have 1 GB RAM). Originally I recorded to my internal hard drive, but, now I've been using a Wiebetech ComboDock, with FW800 to FW400 cables, to both my TiBook and the eyeTV 500, with out a hitch. And, since I was having lots of trouble with my G4 now without they eyeTV, I wonder if it's something else were seeing. RAM, processor, hard drives, corrupted hard drive, etc?

Who knows. I know the "Updating" of corrupt .eyetvi files didn't work at all on my G4s but works great on the Dual G5.

I've had anywhere from 512 to 3.5GB Memory. Oodles of connection arrangements. Recording to boot SATA, other int SATA, and FW2 externals. 10.4 and up with all sorts of combos. Ran First Aid and Diskwarrior on all of them. Run on minimal configs and my standard boot config. I still get the same error. The only thing that seems to be a factor is Thursday or high recording time nights. Is it the back to back 1080i stuff from CBS with 720p on Fox? Is it that the boxes are heating up too much on the 1080i content? If I do NBC 8-10 on Mondays it usually is fine. Sunday's of just ABC is usually fine. Combine Fox with ABC on Sunday and the problem happens, just not as much as 1080i CBS and 720p Fox on Thursday. Wed of just Lost is usually fine. Same with Boston Legal on Tues, but if I do Big Brother followed by something else it seems to be an issue. It worked so well under 1.7.x that this is puzzling. Doesn't seem like it's a hardware issue because the same hardware worked fine in older editions/firmwares.

I had it doing 6h long MLB playoff games last year without a single glitch. The back to back massive SuperBowl Pregame and Superbowl and ABC later that night.

Something changed from 1.7 to 1.8 and firmware update. The problem is 1.7 doesn't work right with the current firmware. I'd love to be in the situation where I could do my necessary stuff in 1.7 and old firmware, but be able to test on other time periods with the latest stuff to see if the problem gets solved.

I've often wondered if there's something in the data stream that's making our 500's choke. I get an equal proportion of crashes with 480i content as 1080i shows, which would seem to exclude the hypothesis that crashes occur from data overload. All my crashes occur from the same PBS multiplexer / transmitter, which coincidentally was updated at the same time I "upgraded" to EyeTV 1.8.1. Perhaps the earlier firmware & software had a more robust data recovery algorithm than the present firmware & software.

Whatever the case, I haven't had a single crash since I put my EyeTV 500 on the same Firewire bus as my hard drive. My present arrangement that seems to be working is:

EyeTV 500 <---FW400---> LaCie Big Disk Extreme <---FW800---> PowerBook G4.

If this setup continues to work for another 10-14 days I may try swapping one of my FW400 enclosures for the Big Disk Extreme and see how that goes. I need to clear out some HD space before doing so.

Rightly or wrongly, I have the sense that we're making some progress with this issue... albeit at a snail's pace.

Ok, different problem. Anyone have their list of recordings disappear? I have many hard drives with an "EyeTV Archive" on them, and before I could just specify one in the 'Storage' prefs. But, now when I do it I only get my recent recordings. There are plenty of folders/recordings in the directory, but, I don't see them in the list in the eyeTV program. Is there a way to rebuild?

I too have just begun having my EyeTV recordings disappear when I quit EyeTV 1.8.2 and put my computer to sleep. Upon awakening, if I launch EyeTV before my external drive fully spins up I get an empty folder. Quitting and relaunching EyeTV brings back all my recordings.

I don't believe it's a matter of rebuilding. The program 'rebuilds' its recorded shows list in RAM every time I quit and relaunch it... at least that's how it works for me.

I'm not sure if this is a new issue with the software being too hasty and not waiting for the drive to spin up or if it has something to do with the way I recently daisy-chained my EyeTV to my drive. I expect it's the latter issue since I really never saw such behavior with 1.8.2 when I had my hardware on separate Firewire busses.

Ok, I haven't tried it yet but was looking for input.

I have two units that have 1.1.0 and the next EyeTV update will install firmware 1.1.1.

In the old 1.7 update I have the "1.0.2.hex" QAM enabled firmware file in the package contents of the app. The current beta has "1.1.1.hex" firmware file in the package contents. I was thinking of renaming "1.0.2.hex" to "1.1.1.hex" and seeing if it will update/downgrade the firmare to 1.0.2. Ideally, it would change to 1.0.2 and identify as being 1.0.2. However, it may update to 1.0.2 but identify it as 1.1.1 or it may not update anything.

Should I go for it? New TV seasons start third week of this month. It's desperation time. :) 1.0.2 would allow 1.7 to work in Panther fine.

Joseph, that's an interesting idea. How strong is your stomach?

I'm saddened to report I had another Thread 2 crash at the start of a 480i recording last night while a single 500 was hooked up to the backside of my LaCie drive (as described above). No other Firewire hardware was attached. That eliminates the "single bad cable" hypothesis. It would also seem to lessen the likelihood of the separate Firewire bus hypothesis. My next test will be to remove my LaCie drive and connect everything via Firewire 400, as in:

PowerBook G4 <---FW400---> EyeTV 500 <---FW400---> MacAlly HD.

I just picked up two Western Digital 120GB drives for $35 each, after rebates, at BestBuy to test this arrangement. If I still continue to get crashes I think that removes the multi-bus hypothesis completely.

I may be interested in joining you soon in a search for ways to downgrade firmware. That will be an admission of defeat and lack of confidence in ElGato's ability to solve this crashing problem. Unfortunately, Graham Jones' iEye Captain will no longer work for us following a downgrade since it requires the newer EyeTV software.

Ask Graham for a version of EyeTV that works without the 1.8.1 requirement. He provided one for me to use with 1.8.0, albeit with a few caveats that I couldn't delete from the Captain, nor use the multiple archives feature directly. It is called the "CS" build. I asked if he would build it because as I have explained here, I have had many less system locks using 1.8.0 than 1.8.1 or .2.

Thanks for the tip. We're looking for ways to downgrade to EyeTV 1.7.1 and firmware 1.0.2.

To my knowledge Graham never compiled a version of iEye Captain for EyeTV 1.7.1, though I could be wrong about that. I hate to pester Graham for special builds since he's gotten rather quiet lately.

Joseph, do you know anything about the 1.1.1 firmware? Is that just the minor update they've been working on to fix mulicasting (subchannel) support?

While a lurker on this thread, I too have had crash at the end of a 2:10 timed recording (at 12:09pm when is was to complete at 12:10pm). Not the first time unfortunately.
I'm using EyeTV500 with a 2ghz Dual G5, Tiger, And LaCie Bigger Disk (500G) by firewire. Software is 1.8.2 with Firmware 1.1.0

Let me know if there are any other parameters, info or crash logs that might help.

We have a winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The 1.0.2.hex is actually firmware 1.0.3 and it identifies itself as 1.0.3 in EyeTV 1.7!!!!! When I plugged the box back in the 1.8.2 app launched was wanting to up it to 1.1.0.

I'm not one to tinker more than is absolutely needed, but you have to wonder if you can fool around a bit more say even if you are already at 1.1.1 by naming the 1.0.2.hex files as 1.1.2 and force a fake upgrade/downgrade. This would really help for testing purposes. Hope they can give us a firmware app to just do this without messing around much.

Update: I tried 1.0.4.hex with the 1.0.2.hex file in 1.7. It seems something else triggers the update other than just the name of the .hex file. So you can go back from 1.1.0 to 1.0.3 and then to 1.1.1, but you can't go from 1.1.1 and back to 1.0.3. :(

I'll probably update on this later. Need to offload stuff and setup a new Panther install on the alternate HD.

First test:
Las Vegas and Prison Break simultaneous Recordings
then
Medium (Rec) and the Football live to the end.

No crashes.

So what did you do exactly? In layman terms please? :)

Congratulations, Joseph! That's got to feel good.

I'm working on a small unix program to export EyeTV show titles as symbolic links. It was written by a Mac programmer who posted it at I-O Data Forums. With his permission I'm adding a couple of features to add more flexibility to title exporting. Unlike iEye Captain this small program does not require EyeTV software to be running. It just opens the archives and generates symlinks. Works fast & works great! I'll post a pointer here when I'm done making changes.

Boy, I'd sure like a copy!

Any chance that someone can teach me how to write some AppleScript to fire that bugger every time a new show starts recording?

Boy, I'd sure like a copy!

Any chance that someone can teach me how to write some AppleScript to fire that bugger every time a new show starts recording?

That's an interesting idea. If EyeTV generates an Apple Event it could potentially launch a script that runs iTV_LinkMaker. That would take the pain out of keeping updated video links. Unfortunately I am not sure how EyeTV's daemon reports a new recording event. Anyone know that?

I was wondering if there was some sort of general directory "file being created" event that an AppleScript could be attached to, but I assume that this'd mean that we'd have to attach the script to all the subdirectories in the EyeTV archive.

Every time I start launching into this, I just get lost.

You could write some code that watched a folder and was notified when the contents changed (i.e. kqueues) but that isn't going to allow you to swap that file out from under EyeTV.

If all you wanted to do was to copy the file when it was completed to a new location and then delete the original and create a symlink, you could do this.

If you want to try and under the nose of EyeTV redirect it to another location, I doubt that is possible.

No, I'd be happy to symlink it from some centralized location. Never wanted to swap the file out from under EyeTV.

No need to rip it out of the EyeTV archive, just link to it from a repository, using a meaningful name. Right now, I'm running someone's shell script via cron every hour. It creates hard links to the programs in a central directory, using semi-meaningful names. Trouble is that if it fires off just before the recording starts (both happening on the hour), that means having to wait an hour before the link shows up in the magic place.

Wouldn't a simple folder action to the main EyeTV Archive work? I'll give it a try later when I get home.

Well, it's working tonight on a Fox, ABC, CBS combo multi record.

:D I just ordered a third unit to downgrade to this firmware too for triple tuner recording just in time for the upcoming Thursday nights of hell. I really need 4 tuners for Thursdays, some might want 5 if they like NBC too. :D

Here's what I did.
1) Had 2 EyeTVs with 1.1.0 firmware
2) Took EyeTV 1.7 Update and Control-Clicked on it, chose "Show Package Contents", navigated to the firmware folder and copied out the 1.0.2.hex file
3) Renamed 1.0.2.hex to "1.1.1.hex"
4) Took EyeTV 1.8.3 beta application and control-clicked on it, chose "Show Package Contents", made a dupe of the real "1.1.1.HEX" file and then replaced the real one in the "Firmware folder" with the firmware flie created in step 3 above.
5) Ran the EyeTV 1.8.3 beta application with modified firmware file and let it "update" the firmware.
6) Quit the app.
7) Zipped the app to an archive file
8) Trashed all EyeTV apps other than 1.7.x
9) Ran EyeTV 1.7.1 and saw that firmware was reported as 1.0.3.
10) Installed Panther on my G5 and am running 1.7.1 and 2 units without issues.

Will continue to edit my Recordings in Tiger without the devices attached under 1.8.2 application. However, 1.7 and Panther is the only stable solution for me right now.

DO NOT TRY TO UPDATE YOUR FIRMWARE IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

IT IS VERY EASY TO CONFUSE THE REAL FROM MODIFIED APP/FIRMWARE FILE NAMES AND YOU MAY END UP WITH 1.1.1 FIRMWARE FROM WHICH YOU CAN'T DOWNGRADE

Where'd you get the 1.8.3 beta? I just got the 500 a couple weeks ago. Not recording much yet, but I've tried to record Prison Break a couple times, and EyeTV keeps crashing about halfway through the show. What it records looks great, but 38 minutes of show doesn't do me any good.

Stats:
MDD G4 (last v.) single 1.25Ghz, 768MB/80GB/120GB/200GB internal drives, recording to 200GB drive (not startup disk)
10.3.9 with all updates run

Once, when EyeTV had quit, it restarted and recorded a later show. That one came through fine. Strange. Trying to record some throw-away shows now, see if I can get an hour-long show at all. Then test the different stations, I guess. Ready to try the firmware downgrade if it really works better. I've got an awfully simple setup. Disappointed to have problems with basic scheduled recordings like this..

Disappointed to have problems with basic scheduled recordings like this.
Yes, we all feel the same way. I'm fortunate that my crashes are relatively infrequent, but with Joseph's warning about the 1.1.1 firmware being a one-way street I'm hesitant to try anything ElGato does now. Certainly the stability of this product was superb only a few months ago under 1.7.1/1.0.3. But without any viable update path what does the future hold for us under OS 10.5.x and beyond?

Please continue to send your crash reports ElGato Support. If Nick believes this crashing to be a "rare" event the outlook for EyeTV 500 is indeed poor.

On a brighter note, I got my AppleScript written last night that calls iTV_LinkMaker every time a new recording is added to my EyeTV Archives. It worked as expected for two shows overnight. The script runs when anything is added to the Folder Actions-enabled EyeTV Archives folder. It first empties my designated SymLinks folder contents to a newly created & date-stamped Garbage_Items folder which then gets moved to the Trash. The SymLinks folder (once emptied) immediately gets a fresh influx of symbolic links from iTV_LinkMaker. The result is an always up-to-date SymLinks representation of my EyeTV Archives. The manual part of the process is having to empty the trash -- which is a desirable to avoid unwanted data loss. Anyone who feels comfortable having their trash emptied automatically can add the words "empty trash" to the script.

I'll post links to my Applescript and iTV after I do a bit more work on them. The same script works as a non-Folder Action simply by removing the first and last lines of code.

Perhaps I should start a new thread to address EyeTV open source projects instead of bogging this thread down with scripting details. Does anyone care one way or the other?

More than just a crash report, please also try to include as much information about the circumstances of the crash as possible, i.e. your setup, when it crashed (during, beginning, end of recording) and anything else you can think of that might help out.

They've reproduced this in their labs but are far from figuring out a reproduce-able case.

Both Lost recordings (overlap mode on end/start) went fine tonight. Leno and Letterman fine last night. Leno/Letterman both fine so far tonight and have both playing live as well at the moment too.

:D

Is anyone having problems getting to TitanTV? The following URL is unreachable for me at home:

http://partners.titantv.com/index.asp?siteid=51260

Is anyone having problems getting to TitanTV? The following URL is unreachable for me at home:

This is what I use:
http://titantv.com/TTV/Grid/Grid.aspx

On to more good news, I just had my first successful run through the CBS Thursday night lineup since May!!!!!! It also recorded NFL opening Kickoff, and I'm halfway through the 3rd quarter of the game too.

On top of that, I have yet to have a single crash. Third unit should arrive tomorrow. Hopefuly, it is only at 1.1.0 and can be downgraded.

:D

Never mind, I'm not sure what is wrong with that link (DNS failure?) but I worked around it.

I posted the project, iTV_LinkMaker, in a separate thread. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=578623) Please address any comments, suggestions or other remarks in that thread.

In case the thread becomes unavailable for whatever reason, here is the iTV_LinkMaker.zip (http://home.wi.rr.com/machound/iTV_LinkMaker.zip) file for download.

Football game finished and even added the falsely advertised Letterman with J.Lo as well. No crashes.

Where is the 1.8.3 beta? I'm assuming you need it to downgrade the firmware?

Where is the 1.8.3 beta? I'm assuming you need it to downgrade the firmware?
Contact elgato if you are interested I can't give it out.

Fair enough. Thanks

3

Tuner

Recording

Works with 1.0.3 firmware and Panther!!!!

If only I had 4. :)

Another 4h football game (ABC), 2h Tennis Match and Big Brother on CBS essentially verifies that the problem is not

1) The new Dual G5 from May
2) The units themselves
3) Memory (3.5GB)
4) Processor settings (Varied from Auto to Highest this week)
5) Energy Saver settings (Varied from "Never" to 5 minutes inlcuding Hard Drives)

The hardware is just fine and able to record on three tuners simultaneously for hours with live playback. If only this was possible in Tiger and later versions.

Another tip if you do it:
Make sure your Panther/Tiger accounts have different short names and stuff the EyeTV.app in a protected folder like "Documents." That way you can edit in Tiger with 1.8.2 and record in Panther with 1.7.x, but not worry about 1.8.2 loading up in Panther for scheduled recordings. If you leave the devices plugged in while in Tiger, you do get a warning before it attempts to update the firmware. Even if it does, as long as you don't use 1.8.3 you can still go back from 1.1.0 to 1.0.3 firmwares.

I face a dilemma. ElGato wants me to test the latest 1.8.3 beta that supposedly fixes (some of) our crashing issues. That means I will burn my bridge to Joseph's firmware downgrade. Since I never really had frequent crashes, and I still don't, I'm not really the perfect beta tester... which is not to say I won't help. But six weeks might go by before I could begin to speculate whether the issue is solved or not.

I really think we need people who are the most severely affected to step up and test the new beta. But that means possibly sacrificing an EyeTV 500 to 1.1.1 firmware with no downgrade path. It also means possibly missing some shows. This isn't such an issue for me since I record PBS shows, most of which have frequent reruns.

I'll suggest to Nick that ElGato provide a firmware downgrade app to their beta testers so we aren't on a one-way trip to 1.1.1 firmware. How hard can it be to produce a simple firmware downgrader app?

I'll suggest to Nick that ElGato provide a firmware downgrade app to their beta testers so we aren't on a one-way trip to 1.1.1 firmware. How hard can it be to produce a simple firmware downgrader app?
I emailed the same request on Friday. Either a firmware app or an EyeTV.app that wants to update to 1.1.2 or later. Want to continue testing, but don't want to sacrifice stability I now have.

I'm testing the new beta, no crashes yet, but I don't have a huge amount of recordings scheduled yet. I'll start picking a bunch of random stuff just to give it more of a workout and delete those shows I don't care about.

I have worst luck with CBS shows if that helps for testing.

I'll add a bunch of CBS shows too then.

Successful downgrade to the 1.0.3 firmware. We'll see if we can make it through a couple days crash-free.

From the email I received it sounds like there is progress on the issue and may have a fix to test in a few weeks. Still no crashes with 1.0.3 and 1.7.1 during excessive scheduling. Had a few mislabled recordings in the listing, but that's easily corrected since I edit everything with 1.8.2 in Tiger.

Well I saw my first crash in some months last night. It dies 19 minutes into Lost and Head Case (both started at 9pm). I have been recording off and on for a few months without issue. I can't say that I had done many dual recordings (EyeTV 500 and Plextor). The only change I made lately was to switch the Plextor from MPEG4 to MPEG2 so that I could watch the recordings on my LinkPlayer2.

I am running 1.8.2 and the latest Tiger. I am a little suprised that it didn't continue recording after EyeTV restarted. My Tivo will continue recording after it reboots so you miss some but not all of the show. EyeTV did get the 11pm Daily Show so it was working again at some point. I have EyeTV restart after a crash so it was running when I check it this morning.

John

I've sacrificed 1 of 3 units to 1.1.1 for the hopeful fix. I'll be recording CBS all tonight including Letterman to see if it goes down. Not going to be gentle either before risking a second unit with the Premieres already underway.

Update: (Testing of supposed fix)

3 hours and counting of continuous CBS scheduled recording. Only one hour of HD with Letterman.

No crashes so far. If it doesn't crash tonight or in the AM, I'll let it try to record the ND game on NBC.

If it passes that, I'll try this version with two tuners on ABC HD and CBS HD Saturday night. (Cringing at thought that it fails and I'm up a creek next Thursday)

We may have had our problem solved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not taking it easy either. Running live window with additional archived show as well at times. Using photoshop to do some printouts and other general purpose apps I needed to do some work tonight.

Never did have a crash in 1.7.1, but there are occasional playlist screwups and I would obviously prefer to not have to leave Tiger to record so I'm giving the "fix" a shot.

I'm testing the same fix and so far so good. I'm going to load up my EyeTV with all sorts of recordings today and see if I can reproduce the crash with the latest beta.

fingers crossed!

Kevin

It also completed a >3h single recording as well without a crash. Really wish CBS had a TV show lineup tonight with 4:3 and HD to test out tonight.

Still no crashes after the football game.

Now underway with Armageddon (eeek) on ABC and Football on CBS. Hope all is well.

Update again:

Recorded entire ND game on NBC (one tuner 1.1.1)
Recorded simultaneous FL v TN game on CBS with Armageddon on ABC (two tuners 1.1.1) and continued for another 40 minutes of just the game for a total of 3:40 on CBS.

STILL NO CRASHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


We have a crash. Not during recording, but the same stupid scheduling crash I had with the earlier beta. For some reason it forgets or fails to acknowlege what the Device tab says and brings up the keep/delete dialog if you have more than one recording scheduled at the same time. When I click keep or delete I get a hard crash right after. Only seems to happen at startup from titantv scheduling. If you have both live windows open prior to scheduling it works. However the earlier bug would also randomly balk when I reopened in the past again asking for keep/delete. :(

The scheduling bug, but not crash is easily repeatable and a major disaster if you schedule via TItanTV.

1) With EyeTV running - Schedule your recordings for two at same time via TitanTV
2) Quit EyeTV
3) Schedule a recording for basically any date or time via TitanTV web page.
4) EyeTV opens automatically and wham you have a "Schedule conflict" of the two programs scheduled previously without issues for you two tuners. Yet, now it's a conflict.

Hopefully they can fix this ASAP. It's a major show stopper on par with the "hopefully fixed" TSReader issue.

The only workaround I see is that this doesn't happen if you hover over and choose "Remote Schedule" If you click the record "meatball" this "Schedule Conflict" will appear every time.

I've scheduled a whole bunch of recordings and still no crashes. HD/SD content on all different channels. (Mine is a single tuner box setup).

I'm getting pretty stoked.

(Mine is a single tuner box setup).
That's why you're not seeing this one.

Yeah, that's why I mentioned my setup. Just wanted to indicate that the main issue people are seeing with recording crashes is looking good so far on my machine.

:D

I still have yet to see a recording crash after another 4 hour CBS football recording.

As long as you avoid TitanTV's "Record Meatball" and/or only have one tuner it seems stable. Obviously, this Thursday will be the big test to see if I can actually get a complete Thursday schedule done in Tiger.

How does one get to test the Beta versions of EyeTV?

John

Contact ElGato's support if you have been experiencing these crashes and ask if you can help out by testing one of their beta's.

Remote scheduling doesn't cause the conflict. However, it doesn't seem to send all the programs in the queue for tonight so I had to manually enter a bunch. :(

Tonight might as well be a "Thursday" test run.

NBC: Surface, Vegas, Medium
CBS: All shows
Fox: Arrested Development and Prison Break.

So far so good with 3 EyeTV 500s now at 1.1.1 with the beta app. Will update if problems or at the end. If I wanted to check out WB or the Football game I have to go to the cable box. Some of these nights are absolutely packed this year.

So far no crashes, but scheduling is a complete nightmare. Although, I've been begging for two years now we still don't have anyway to have stuff start or stop "X" seconds before/after. We're still stuck with the absolutely worthless option of "X" Minutes before/after.

The CBS shows were all screwed up ending and staring at oddball times and Las Vegas on NBC ran all the way until 9:00.

Other major issues with the scheduler:
1) It changes the stop times when you change the start times. This one drives me nuts and has been the source of countless recording errors.

and

2) THERE IS NO CANCEL OPTION if what you just did brings up the dreaded "Conflict" window. You've now got to pick to keep one or the other and you can't let it stay as it was before. :( Tonight "keeping" one show hosed the current Las Vegas and Medium up next.

That's too bad about the simultaneous scheduling bug. I'm having good results so far with 1.8.3beta on one tuner and I was about to try adding my second 500 back in until I read Joseph's post from yesterday. Now I'm not so sure about the wisdom of doing that. Still no crashes so far with one tuner.

I sent this to el Gato regarding my issues with the scheduling portion of the app.
With today's network schedules, minutes is about as helpful as hours in scheduling. We need a way to account for actual time slots.

"Show info" Page/Preferences:
1) "Seconds" needs to replace "Minutes" for the "Extend scheduled recording time by" preference. The other alternative is a drop box for us to choose if we want a seconds or minutes buffer.
2) "Seconds" needs to added to the "Show Info" page so that we can create "Season Passes" and general recordings that take into account the actual time slot for the show. In many cases that isn't 30 minutes or one hour, but rather 30 minutes and 15 seconds or 60 minutes and 45 seconds.
3) We need a checkbox on the "Show Info" page to specify if we want all episodes to record to the same folder or individual folders.
4) The "Show Info" page needs to stop altering times in the start/end box based on what you click in the other box. I couldn't tell you how many times I've lost the ending of a show because of this foolish application behavior.
5) Pasting of show information into the description needs to be corrected to a default font and font size. It used to do this in 1.7.x, hasn't worked since 1.8.

Titan TV issues:
1) The previously mentioned "record" button bug in 1.8.3 beta which can destroy your entire schedule
2) The episode title is never added to the listing

Schedule Conflict Window:
1) There needs to be a "Cancel" option to forget what you just did. As it currently stands there is only a "Keep" option for one of two shows, but no means to cancel the prior move that created the conflict so you can keep both.

If anyone else has additional suggestions please let them know. (Yeah, I want a SageTV like scheduler too. :D )

Well, because of the bug, I'm working on a massive "Season Pass" style schedule. I will then dupe this as a backup in case I accidentaly hit the record button. One thing I've noticed is there are some days where even 4 tuners with buffers wouldn't cut it. To do this right you really need 10 tuners to buffer recording on 5 separate stations due to the lack of a "seconds" option for the stable scheduled stuff and the fact that some shows vary by week in length. :)

I've definitely had to settle on my season pass with three tuners, because of the Lost/Boston Legal varying length by week. That effectively means my 3 tuners can only get 2 shows fully on some days. Stuff like "Supernatural," "Smallville," and "Veronica Mars" are bumped to Sunday rerun/alternate sources. I'm not sure about what to do on Wed either with "Head Cases" and "Criminal Minds" being the other odd man out with "Veronica Mars."

Maybe they can add more reality stuff on the busy nights to free up competition. ;)

I sent this to el Gato regarding my issues with the scheduling portion of the app.


If anyone else has additional suggestions please let them know. (Yeah, I want a SageTV like scheduler too. :D )

Well, because of the bug, I'm working on a massive "Season Pass" style schedule. I will then dupe this as a backup in case I accidentaly hit the record button. One thing I've noticed is there are some days where even 4 tuners with buffers wouldn't cut it. To do this right you really need 10 tuners to buffer recording on 5 separate stations due to the lack of a "seconds" option for the stable scheduled stuff and the fact that some shows vary by week in length. :)

I've definitely had to settle on my season pass with three tuners, because of the Lost/Boston Legal varying length by week. That effectively means my 3 tuners can only get 2 shows fully on some days. Stuff like "Supernatural," "Smallville," and "Veronica Mars" are bumped to Sunday rerun/alternate sources. I'm not sure about what to do on Wed either with "Head Cases" and "Criminal Minds" being the other odd man out with "Veronica Mars."

Maybe they can add more reality stuff on the busy nights to free up competition. ;)

Well the varying show lengths and start times was what I saw missing so I decided to write something myself. I haven't made much progress, but I have some demo stuff in Perl and PHP and after that stuff works I plan to write a OS X native application.

John

Looks like the beta is over. EyeTV 1.8.3 update is online now.

http://www.elgato.com/index.php?file=support_updates_eyetv

John

To do this right you really need 10 tuners to buffer recording on 5 separate stations due to the lack of a "seconds" option for the stable scheduled stuff and the fact that some shows vary by week in length. :)
Sounds like ElGato found a way to boost EyeTV 500 quarterly sales! ;)

I've definitely had to settle on my season pass with three tuners, because of the Lost/Boston Legal varying length by week. That effectively means my 3 tuners can only get 2 shows fully on some days. Stuff like "Supernatural," "Smallville," and "Veronica Mars" are bumped to Sunday rerun/alternate sources. I'm not sure about what to do on Wed either with "Head Cases" and "Criminal Minds" being the other odd man out with "Veronica Mars."

Maybe they can add more reality stuff on the busy nights to free up competition. ;)

Hey Joseph:

I very much appreciate your efforts in working out these multi-tuner conflicts, as I am considering getting a second 500...

But wow, you watch a lot of TV!

Z

But wow, you watch a lot of TV!Point of clarification -- he only talks about RECORDING a lot of TV, he couldn't possibly have the time to watch all of it! :)

Hey Joseph:

I very much appreciate your efforts in working out these multi-tuner conflicts, as I am considering getting a second 500...

But wow, you watch a lot of TV!

Z

Between my wife and I we record and try to watch about 30 hours per week. Last season using 2 Tivos we did get backed up and ended up watching about 15 episodes of Alias over the summer.

A problem with the Tivo (that I think will be less of an issue now that some networks have stopped the odd start times) was that some shows lasted 1-5 mins longer so that you couldn't schedule a show on a different channel back to back. I would like to see the scheduling application let you prioritize the shows and record partial shows if needed based on your ordering. So if NBC ends the 8PM show at 9:02 instead of 9:00, you can start recording the ABC 9:00PM show at 9:02PM.

John

I just tried a second EyeTV the other day (10.3.8, 1.8.1). Seems to work as long as I babysit it, but otherwise, I get broken recordings, recordings with holes in them, recordings of the wrong channel, completely trashed recordings.

I'm trying to decide if the new version is going to make it worth trying again.

No crashes tonight with the official release. FOX x1, NBC x3, CBS x2.

No crashes for me either. I'm currently near the end of simultaneous recordings with my two 500s without a hitch. Joseph's schedule conflict bug seems to be fixed, at least for me. I was able to choose which show to keep when a conflict occurred before I reattached my second 500. Anybody still having trouble with that?

It's starting to look like ElGato might have fixed the problems we've been having all summer. Hurray!

Joseph's schedule conflict bug seems to be fixed, at least for me. I was able to choose which show to keep when a conflict occurred before I reattached my second 500.
That's not the bug. I get the "Schedule conflict" window when I shouldn't.

Schedule two shows for two tuners. Close EyeTV and try to schedule something else on any day/time. The schedule conflict window pops up as the app opens even though there is no real conflict because there are two or three tuners attached.

Anyone with 1.8.3 (1.1.1 firmware?)? I've been having my Fox recordings crash (at the end of Bones or the start of House). Updated, but, will need to see if it records Reunion tonight.

Anyone with 1.8.3 (1.1.1 firmware?)? I've been having my Fox recordings crash (at the end of Bones or the start of House). Updated, but, will need to see if it records Reunion tonight.I'm running that combo (under Mac OS X 10.3.9) and haven't had any problems with lots of recordings, FOX included.

Of course, I haven't been having any of the crashes reported others on the recent previous versions either, so I don't know if that is much help. Perhaps not running Tiger nor multiple EyeTV 500's eliminates the troublesome issues.

Anyone with 1.8.3 (1.1.1 firmware?)? I've been having my Fox recordings crash (at the end of Bones or the start of House). Updated, but, will need to see if it records Reunion tonight.

I also had a Fox recording crash on Thursday night with this combo (runnin 10.4.2). I'm bummed, I think this was my first missed recording ever.

Still running 1.8, but I have recently been able to do something that I never could before. I can now set my EyeTV 200 and 500 to schedule record two shows on the same night using the different tuners, without having to babysit and switch firewire connections. Before, if I tried this, only one would record, or more oftenly, the show scheduled for the 500 would attempt to record with the 200 hardware (or vice versa), resulting in a blank movie. What seems to have fixed this is having the EyeTV software launch at startup. I set this a few weeks ago along with an auto bootup schedule for my mac while I went on vacation, only using the 500 to record (SD stuff was recorded with my TeleVideo hardware). I left the setup like this but re-enabled the 200 recordings and so far this week everything has been peachy. No faults or crashes in the recordings and the correct tuner has been used to initiate the proper recording.

I'm not babysitting anymore either for the first time in a long time. Also had a weird instance tonight when I was accidentally using the third tuner for a demo record, when I stopped that one it started up with the overlapped setting for Threshold/Numbers even though it was 30 seconds late.

Lots of shows this year are running until the hour. CBS/NBC/Fox used to give a nice 3 minute buffer. Not anymore. Don't try scheduling to :59, you'll get burned. Overlap or to the hour is the only way to go. ABC is a must for overlap, I don't trust their start times after last year.

Well, BSG didn't record correctly last night, so its back to the drawing board. I'm thinking actually that once you open a tuner window to view, it will throw everything off. Because if my mac and EyeTV start up but no tuner window is opened, it appears the proper tuner is initiated and the recording goes as it should. But, if I do as I did last night, which is open one of the tuners, then the software is "locked" on one tuner and the correct one cannot be initialized.

I derive this because last night Threshold was recorded with the 500 and Nip/Tuck with the 200. I did not have to babysit the recording and both were fine. But, then I opened the 200 to watch some Sportscenter on the 200, and when BSG was scheduled to record (the 1am showing), it tried to initiate the 500's tuner to record and left me with a blank movie. Thankfully this happened on a show that is repeated through the week.

**Update** Did some more testing and found that no matter what, the second SD or HD recording with the 200 and 500 will not work. So, I can set the EyeTV 200 and 500 to record one program each from startup and not have to babysit, and everything will be fine. But, if the computer stays on, then the next recording will be junk, and the one following will use the wrong tuner to record (HD will be recorded with the 200 for instance.)

**Update #2** So, I tried some more tests and found that as long as I schedule the 500 to record in between the two 200 recordings, everything is fine. So, if I have a situation like last night, where Threshold aired at 9pm (recorded with the 500), Nip/Tuck at 10pm (recorded with the 200), and BSG at 1am (to be recorded with the 200), all I need to do in order to not have to babysit is schedule a recording on the 500 in between the two 200 recordings. It doesn't have to be a long program, as just a one minute recording would suffice. Its not elegant, but it works (so far). Also, it needs to be noted that the 500 has to be the one that records first. Otherwise, if the 200 is set for first, then the 200's scheduled recordings will not be successful while the 500's will.

Well I have to give a thumbs up for the EyeTV and Toast Titanium 7 combo.

Previously I've been just exporting episodes of Sesame Street as DV and burning with iDVD. Wow, that took way too long!

With Toast, I just hit burn, and it only takes about 5 minutes total, not a couple of hours! At this rate I should be able to finish burning the last 15-20 episodes today. (I have to admit I've kind of gotten obsessed with getting as many epsiodes of Sesame Street burned as possible for car trips, funny that 50 DVDs just won't be enough, thank goodness the new season has started)

:D

Well I have to give a thumbs up for the EyeTV and Toast Titanium 7 combo.

Previously I've been just exporting episodes of Sesame Street as DV and burning with iDVD. Wow, that took way too long!

With Toast, I just hit burn, and it only takes about 5 minutes total, not a couple of hours! At this rate I should be able to finish burning the last 15-20 episodes today. (I have to admit I've kind of gotten obsessed with getting as many epsiodes of Sesame Street burned as possible for car trips, funny that 50 DVDs just won't be enough, thank goodness the new season has started).
Wow, that's great! When you get a chance, could you post your impressions over at the Toast Titanium 7 thread. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=573284) I'm really curious about the DivX stuff. The idea that you could put, say, 20+ hours of Sesame Street on a single DivX 480i DVD would have ramifications for all of us with kids... but does it even work? What about transcoding a 1080i show to a 720p DivX DVD? None of the reviewers appear to have tried DivX transcoding yet.

Well I haven't done any DivX encodings and am just burning one episode per DVD to watch in the car. No decoding/encoding cycles since the EyeTV content is already MPEG2.

What I'm more interested personally is a way to convert a VIDEO_TS folder encoded with MPEG2 into a smaller folder encoded with H.264 with little quality loss.

I'm still looking into what this entails, it might be something I have to use DVD Studio Pro for, but if I could somehow use the QuickTime Codecs to do this conversion and still have a result that has menus and original content that DVD Player could read, that would be ideal.

Well I haven't done any DivX encodings and am just burning one episode per DVD to watch in the car.

Please tell me you aren't driving *and* watching. :D If you are, would you mind posting the path you use to drive to/from work so I can avoid you... ;)

What I'm more interested personally is a way to convert a VIDEO_TS folder encoded with MPEG2 into a smaller folder encoded with H.264 with little quality loss.
How on earth are you going to play those back? There isn't a single DVD player on the market that handles H.264. Best guess is sometime in 2006, after the next generation Sigma chip is out, but initial reliability and bitrates is anybody's guess.

Meanwhile DivX players are cheap and widely available -- less than $100 for a 480i player. My $250 I-O Data LinkPlayer2 handles 720p DivX DVDs, though I haven't had any good way to make those until now. Toast 7 potentially breaks the barrier to DivX creation on the Mac. (Don't waste your time with the DivX encoder in ffmpegX.)

Which format will ultimately turn out to be the winner: H.264 or DivX? Who can say for certain -- but DivX has a huge lead in market penetration. It includes all DVD style subtitles, menus, etc., which to my understanding H.264 does not. Those are considerations before launching into transcoding your entire DVD collection.

In my case, I hope to transcode our family videos from DV to a more compact format. Being able to play them on a commercial DVD / media player has its advantages. I hope to avoid doing this all twice.

Heh, no the videos are for my 2 year old in the back...

Though I do have a two screen setup with one on the floor up front just so I can see what is happening when I hear an "uh oh" from the back seat. This usually means that the DVD is screwed up some how.

:D

Which format will ultimately turn out to be the winner: H.264 or DivX? Who can say for certain -- but DivX has a huge lead in market penetration. It includes all DVD style subtitles, menus, etc., which to my understanding H.264 does not. Those are considerations before launching into transcoding your entire DVD collection.Not that I am slamming, I honestly am not, but DivX stands absolutely none, nada, zero chance of besting H.264 in the next gen DVD market. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is the still perceived repution by Hollywood that DivX is only valid for those who want to pirate. Also, if you compare the highest quality encode of a DivX file to the highest quality Windows Media (VC-1) or H.264 encode, there really is no comparison, DivX gets trounced. (If you have a hard time noticing the difference in DivX/H.264 encodes from your EyeTV 500 captures, that is because the ATSC streams are already heavily compressed. If you had the source uncompressed stream to encode and compare from, then you would see the difference easily.) DivX has been good for its role thus far, but in the fixed media format world, where it will be the ultimate quality that drives the next generation, DivX doesn't stand a chance. It is in the same boat as MPEG-2 right now, both are decent and do a good a job, but neither is really being considered as the studios' ideal choice for the future because there is a lot to be desired in terms of quality.

As far as "DVD style menus", if you are talking about using H.264 to encode content for a disc with menus, then that is more than possible. If you are talking about using H.264 and having menus for desktop playback, then that is possible as well using HTML or Java.

Well, I have EyeTV USB and it was not picking up all the channels that my VCR (in the other room) was able to see. So I simply used the info in the auto-tune log file to create a command, that seems to have worked! Now I get EVERY channel -- even the ones that don't actually work. ...And it was a "quick" AutoTune (not 2hrs like it was taking).
Okay okay...
The command is:
defaults write com.elgato.eyetv "Add No Signal found" -bool 'true'

New issue with scheduling thanks to the bug it's makes scheduling via TitanTV impossible.

"TitanTV received bad parameters" error now pops up when EyeTV tries to get the remote schedule from TitanTV. :(

Sorry to hear to your problem JS, but no problems with TitanTV here... running 1.8.3, now that it seems the stability issues from 1.8.1 and .2 have been addressed.

Well, I have EyeTV USB and it was not picking up all the channels that my VCR (in the other room) was able to see. So I simply used the info in the auto-tune log file to create a command, that seems to have worked! Now I get EVERY channel -- even the ones that don't actually work. ...And it was a "quick" AutoTune (not 2hrs like it was taking).
Okay okay...
The command is:
defaults write com.elgato.eyetv "Add No Signal found" -bool 'true'

That's writen to the prefs, CLI? I'd like to try it with my cable (QAM).

New issue with scheduling thanks to the bug it's makes scheduling via TitanTV impossible.

"TitanTV received bad parameters" error now pops up when EyeTV tries to get the remote schedule from TitanTV. :(
Which EyeTV software or beta version are you running now?

I've not seen this error reported yet with 1.8.3 and OS 10.3.8 / PowerBook G4. I'm just about to install 1.8.3 on my two day old 1.5 GHz Mini running OS 10.4.2. :)

I'm using 1.8.3 and it happens with Remote Scheduling on TitanTV (because of the bug). I click the update button in EyeTV to get my remotely scheduled shows and it returns, "Titan TV query received bad parameters. Please try again later."

Started sometime this weekend.

I recorded an NFL football game yesterday on my EyeTV 500 that I wish to dump to DVD-RW to watch again. I have edited out all the commercials and am left with a recording that is 2 hours 10 minutes long. Repeated attempts to export this recording as either Program or Elementary Stream always stalls less than2/3 through the export with the exported file size being 5.95 GB. This happens even when left to run overnight. The EyeTV 1.8.3 export window estimates that the final file size should be 11 GB.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.3.9 on a dual 1.25 GHz "MDD" machine with 2GB RAM and 38 GB free on my internal boot hard disk and 58 GB free on the external source hard disk where the recordings are stored.

Can anyone offer any clues as to what might be happening here?

Don't know, but the "Updating" process to fix corrupted .eyetvi files never works for me on G4s but works on the G5.

Why are you exporting anyways? I probably would, but there's no real way to get them re-imported to play with EyeTV or QT. The current MPEG works with EyeTV and VLC as is.

I recorded an NFL football game yesterday on my EyeTV 500 that I wish to dump to DVD-RW to watch again. I have edited out all the commercials and am left with a recording that is 2 hours 10 minutes long. Repeated attempts to export this recording as either Program or Elementary Stream always stalls less than2/3 through the export with the exported file size being 5.95 GB. This happens even when left to run overnight. The EyeTV 1.8.3 export window estimates that the final file size should be 11 GB.

I'm running Mac OS X 10.3.9 on a dual 1.25 GHz "MDD" machine with 2GB RAM and 38 GB free on my internal boot hard disk and 58 GB free on the external source hard disk where the recordings are stored.

Can anyone offer any clues as to what might be happening here?LOL, I read your report and I thought it sounded just like an issue I have recently experienced with 1.8.3 (my system setup is virtually identical to your description as well). EyeTV gets about 2/3 of the way done exporting at normal speeds and then it starts to slow to a crawl. Although, if I give it enough time, then the export finishes. This seems to happen mostly with 200 captures, but I have seen it with 500 recordings as well. But it doesn't occur on all exports. I never noticed this with 1.8.0 BTW.

Another major issue I am having, have so since 1.8.0 at least, is HDTV exports longer than 30 minutes have skipped frames. The skipped frames aren't on the recording, and if I export segments (say, from commercial to commercial), then the skipped frames aren't present. Which brings me to a possible work-a-round for you. Why not edit half of the program to a program stream, then do the second half. After that is done, then open the streams in MPEG StreamClip and join.

Failed recording with latest version. So everything was working fine until Sunday evening.

EyeTV was scheduled to record the whole 8-11pm of NBC from cable (QAM). First the West Wing was fine. Law & Order CI started recording but the picture hung early into the show, maybe 10-15 mins, but the sound keep going. I have the Tivo still recording so I didn't miss anything.

Then I went to watch Crossing Jordan and it was still showing the same hung picture from L&O CI, but the sound was just fine.

Anyone else see this before? Things worked Monday evening going to keep trying.

John

Hello all, I have been "lurking" on this thread for while now while playing with my EyeTV 500 for about 6 weeks or so.

I have a question about exporting the Program Stream. I save episodes of shows like "Lost" so I've gotten a good process down for exporting them to XVID/H.264 . . . something way smaller than the program stream. That's not my question. My question is that when I export the Program Stream in EyeTV 1.8.3 and with the EyeTV500, the program stream is always smaller than what it should be. For example, if I edit a file down to 41min 56sec, for example, I export the Program Stream and I get a resulting file that I can open in both Quicktime and MPEG Streamclip that shows it as 41 min, 23 sec. This is for HD files. For SDTV the discrepancies are usually larger, like more than a minute shorter, and you can observe skips in the file on play back.

I used to record using the EyeTV 200, which digitizes the signal from an analog source, so it produced consistant files that I could edit cleanly and the Program Stream export was exactly as expected. With the EyeTV500, where it simply record the digital stream, the Program Stream is consistantly smaller. Obviously the export of the stream is kinda flawed. Has anyone else observed this behavior, and is there any solution for it?

Thanks,

-STS

Anyone else see this before?

Not that, but something similar where when the signal was lost with Surface on NBC EyeTV continued to record nothing for the rest of the hour. There is no "recheck" in x seconds/minutes. Once the signal is lost you know the recording is hosed because the time ticks but the recording length remains the same.

Not that, but something similar where when the signal was lost with Surface on NBC EyeTV continued to record nothing for the rest of the hour. There is no "recheck" in x seconds/minutes. Once the signal is lost you know the recording is hosed because the time ticks but the recording length remains the same.

I have seen that in the past (i.e. older software version). In this case the program time lengths were all correct.

John

Failed recording with latest version. So everything was working fine until Sunday evening.

EyeTV was scheduled to record the whole 8-11pm of NBC from cable (QAM). First the West Wing was fine. Law & Order CI started recording but the picture hung early into the show, maybe 10-15 mins, but the sound keep going. I have the Tivo still recording so I didn't miss anything.

Then I went to watch Crossing Jordan and it was still showing the same hung picture from L&O CI, but the sound was just fine.

Anyone else see this before? Things worked Monday evening going to keep trying.

John Question is, while the picture "hung", did EyeTV continue to record? And if it did, if you play back the recorded stream, is there actual video there and is it what was supposed to be recorded? I ask because I have had the same issue, where the video will hang on a frame indefinitely during playback of the live stream, but EyeTV is actually still recording the program, so nothing is wrong with the recorded stream. If this happens, I usually just close the live picture, and then wait a few seconds to reopen it up and jump to where I need to be. It seems to be a bug in the playback, but the actual recorded file is fine. My question is that when I export the Program Stream in EyeTV 1.8.3 and with the EyeTV500, the program stream is always smaller than what it should be. For example, if I edit a file down to 41min 56sec, for example, I export the Program Stream and I get a resulting file that I can open in both Quicktime and MPEG Streamclip that shows it as 41 min, 23 sec. This is for HD files. For SDTV the discrepancies are usually larger, like more than a minute shorter, and you can observe skips in the file on play back.

I used to record using the EyeTV 200, which digitizes the signal from an analog source, so it produced consistant files that I could edit cleanly and the Program Stream export was exactly as expected. With the EyeTV500, where it simply record the digital stream, the Program Stream is consistantly smaller. Obviously the export of the stream is kinda flawed. Has anyone else observed this behavior, and is there any solution for it?This sounds exactly like what I just reported with the skipped frames on the exported file. Although, I hadn't really noticed the time disparity of what length the movie should be versus what it really is. As I suggested, the workaround is to export smaller segments and then join those in MPEG StreamClip.

UPDATE: I have opened a test case with ElGato about this issue. If anyone wants to see what I am talking about, PM me as I have some good examples of this on my iDisk.

So, what's the latest consensus on all of this?

I have a mini, running 10.3.8, and have one EyeTV-500 plugged in with a second unit sitting there unplugged because of terminal flakiness running whatever outdated load of the EyeTV app I was running. I've since upgraded to the latest release of the app and have had no problems running in single EyeTV-500 mode.

1) Are there any suspected outstanding issues that'll grab me if I decide to update the system to Tiger?

2) Are there still issues with multiple EyeTV-500s, and if so, are they OS version dependent?

Since a Tiger upgrade is gonna cost me $130, I'd like to know if there are any immediate issues before I take the plunge.

(And besides, it also probably means having to cable up a real monitor to the Mini, since booting from the Tiger distro is almost certainly gonna want to use a resolution that my CRT based RPTV can't handle, so there's also some lifting involved.)

2) Are there still issues with multiple EyeTV-500s, and if so, are they OS version dependent?


There is a TitanTV scheduling bug that I mentioned earlier with multiples, but the crashing is gone with the latest version and Tiger. Don't know about Panther as I've switched back to exclusively recording in Tiger.

I've had my EyeTV 500 for around 16 months and mostly it's been reliable. But the last software update and firmware update seem to have changed the sensitivity of the tuner somewhat. Previously, I never had a problem with shows not getting recorded, even if there were signal issues like dropouts. When there was a dropout, it could continue recording.

Since the last firmware update and software upgrade, however, I've seen a lot of problems where a show starts recording but then just stops. I've gotten quite a few 3 minute recordings or once I recorded 37 minutes of CSI and started watching it before I realized that I didn't have all of it. In other words, recording seems more unreliable than it did before the last round of upgrades. On the same night, though, I might have only a 3 minute recording of Threshold, but a full one hour of Numbers, right after.

Anybody else notice this?

Dennis