EyeTV Hybrid Experiences

My EyeTV Hybrid arrived today. I’ll tell you what, it’s a good job I didn’t get the DVB-T only version despite being a lot cheaper because as expected I get sod all Freeview here, it does detect the existence of a couple of Freeview channels, just the BBC ones (do they have preference where freeview frequencies are concerned?) but it can’t make head nor tail of them. To be fair my room hasn’t a roof-top aerial connection, I have to use a portable, but I did also try it on the house aerial downstairs via the iBook and it still had no luck.
So, I’m having to use its analogue support which still gets you the quality EPG via a web service and recording facilities so woo. From a portable aerial my reception is barely watchable… as expected. After a mammoth amount of hunting through old cables and shit I found a CAT5 splitter from many years ago so I was able to see if there was anything pick-up-able from the Telewest cable, which my cable modem is using. Hey, who’d have thunk it, Telewest are still transmitting a couple of analogue channels. Analogue cable TV has always been pretty grainy and a little washed out but its preferable to all the wierd ass atmospheric interference I’m getting from the aerial. The channels I get are BBC One, BBC Two, Channel 4, ITV1 and bizarrely a channel which seems to be Bloomburg during the morning and early afternoon and E4 the rest of the day. I cannot fathom why i’d be able to find that, and not say Channel 5?

I’m finding the software to be neat and well designed but during the messing, re-scanning and all that it did crash a few times, or as the mac puts it, unexpectedly closed.

It isn’t quite as streamlined and intuitive as a PVR, for instance you can’t just pause live tv any time you like, it isn’t always recording so you have to press record before you can pause it. Although, confusingly when it isn’t recording pause will do “freeze frame” which at first looks like it’s paused but when you press pause again it will jump to whats happening now and you’ll have missed what had happened meanwhile.

I’m disappointed with EyeTV’s apple remote interface. It feel’s obviously not integrated with front-row despite them trying hard to mimic Apples interface. Also, I appreciate that the Apple remote is rather lacking in buttons but even still they could have done better to make the most of it. Up/down does volume and left/right does seek. If you do Seek when record isn’t running or you aren’t playing something back it just flashes up “not applicable” or words to that effect, you would have thought it more sensible to make left/right do something else useful whilst seek isn’t applicable, especially when stupidly if you want to change channel you have to press “menu” to go back to the menu screen, which makes good old channel surfing a total chore.