Filed under: iPod Family, Video, iPhone
EyeTV 2.5 offers free slingbox-style video streaming
Gallery: EyeTV 2.5 Wireless Streaming
As we posted last week, Elgato's new EyeTV 2.5 upgrade (free to existing customers) offers WiFi video streaming. Today I finally had the opportunity to sit down and put the update to the test: to see how it worked and to see where the new technology could take me. I found that this update turned my Mac Mini into a free, low-rent slingbox. I can now bring my home TiFaux with me on the road, just by tuning in using my iPhone, iPod touch or laptop.
Setting up Wi-Fi Access
To get started with video streaming, you must first enable Wi-Fi access in the EyeTV software. Open EyeTV > Preferences (Command-,), tap the Wi-Fi access icon, and click Start. When you do this, EyeTV prompts you to decide whether you want to prepare all your existing recordings for streaming.
So what do you do? Here are some things to keep in mind:
- Wi-Fi streaming takes space. You'll need to store all those converted videos somewhere on your disk. So if you're short on space, you may want to think twice.
- Wi-Fi conversion takes time. Converting each hour of video may take a couple of hours on your computer if you don't have access to Elgato's turbo.264 graphics accelerator. I do not, so I decided to skip this option and choose which videos I wanted to convert by hand.
To prepare all your videos, click Prepare All. Otherwise choose Don't Prepare, which is the option I picked. If you choose Prepare All, EyeTV automatically starts converting your videos to make them available for streaming.
Manually Converting Videos
Should you choose the convert-by-hand route, you'll need to select each video you want to stream and tell EyeTV to convert it. To do this, open your EyeTV Programs window and select your Recordings list. Right-click (or Control-click) any recording and choose Prepare for Wi-Fi Access from the pop-up menu. EyeTV begins the conversion, which will take some time.
To convert more than one video, choose the Prepare for Wi-Fi Access option again. EyeTV queues the additional video conversion requests in order to convert just one video at a time.
Streaming Locally
Once converted, you can use the local IP address listed in EyeTV's Wi-Fi preferences to select and stream video to your private network. For example, my Wi-Fi streaming address is http://192.168.0.101:2170/eyetv/. Point your browser to the address, select a video and play it. You can do this from your laptop, from your desktop computer, from your iPhone or iPod touch, or any other Internet-capable QuickTime-enabled browser and device. To take your shows with you on the road, takes a few more steps.
Creating a free DynDNS account
DynDNS offers free domain names that work with dynamic IP addresses--the kind of address most of have with our cable or DSL service that changes once or twice a day. When you sign up for a free account, you select a domain name. DynDNS assigns this to your current IP address. They offer a free Mac tool that updates your IP address whenever it changes. All together, this allows you to create a domain name that always points to your home Mac.
Start by creating an account. This entitles you to create a single hostname using a variety of domains. I'm particularly fond of the "is-a-geek.com" varieties. Set up the IP address using the auto-detected remote IP. Then install and use the DynDNS Updater tool to keep that IP current.
Setting up your Modem and Router
After creating and setting up your DynDNS account, your new domain name will point to your cable or DSL modem. You must then access your modem and set it up to forward port 2170 to your Mac. Doing this obviously varies by manufacturer. If you use a router in addition to your modem, you will have to do the same on your router. Make sure your Mac firewall is either disabled or you have added an exception for port 2170 to allow access. You can read more about this at Hackint0sh.
Remotely accessing your videos
Once you've set up your modem, router and/or Mac for port 2170 access, you can point your browser to the new address, for example http://ericasadun.is-a-geek.com:2170/eyetv/. (This is not a real URL) You will see the same menu you saw when using your local IP address. The difference is that now, you can access this menu from outside your local network.
Playing back videos
If you intend to watch your videos on the iPhone or iPod touch, decide whether you want to play back your videos in portrait or landscape orientation. Adjust your iPhone/iPod touch accordingly and load the EyeTV Wi-Fi video menu.
Select any converted video and tap it. This opens a video description page with a summary of the episode, as gleaned from Titan TV listings. To play the video, tap the image at the top-left of the page with the small play button in it. Your system opens the video and uses its native QuickTime player to stream the video for playback.
Conclusions
EyeTV's new WiFi streaming abilities elevate the system to new levels. If you're already an EyeTV owner, it gives you slingbox-level capabilities for essentially no further investment. If you're not an EyeTV owner, it offers you a compelling reason to become one. And as for Elgato's turbo.264 sales? After this new software update, I expect turbos to start flying off the shelf. I'm seriously considering buying one.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
brian said 6:52PM on 10-03-2007
isnt the advantage of a slingbox to watch LIVE tv? this seems more like a tivo
Reply
Troy said 10:05PM on 10-03-2007
Having all of the above hardware (ok, no iPhone, but I do have an iPod Touch), this being able to stream is pretty neat - mainly because I can access recorded TV shows without having to transfer them to my iPod.
But you're right that it's more like a Tivo-to-go; slingbox lets you watch it live. This requires you to re-encode the show to H.264, either via software or the Turbo.264 hardware.
In my experience, the turbo.264 hardware doesn't quite encode in real-time as a best case for a TV recording. In all honesty, the Turbo.264 is slower than the MacBook Pro I have it leashed to - but it does free up the cores to do other things.
That being said, the Turbo.264 is _much_ faster than the PPC Mac Mini I use as a DVR.
Reply
Laura said 7:20PM on 10-03-2007
who cares if it's tivo or slingbox.
This Rocks!
Reply
Scott said 7:24PM on 10-03-2007
Good article, especially about accessing outside of the local net. Also to get this to work don't you need Eye Connect as well from ElGato?
Reply
Dr. Macinto said 8:06PM on 10-03-2007
I've been using this and it works great, however, streaming over the internet is handled by another piece of El Gato software called Eye Connect. It's not free; they charge $50 after the 30 day demo period expires to continue using it.
Reply
Andrez Gockel said 9:41PM on 10-03-2007
apple store is down
Reply
beans said 7:32PM on 10-03-2007
I think the whole point of the article was how you don't need that
Reply
Nick Freeman said 7:33PM on 10-03-2007
EyeTV now has a version of EyeConnect built in. See this article:
http://faq.elgato.com/index.php/faq/more/609/
All you need is EyeTV 2.5 for Wi-Fi Access; a separate EyeConnect install isn't necessary.
Reply
Scott said 7:54PM on 10-03-2007
Must be just me, works fine if Eye Connect is installed, don't work if it's not, back to fiddling :-)
Reply
Elgato Support said 8:37PM on 10-03-2007
Honestly, EyeConnect is not needed for Wi-Fi Access. We (Elgato) intentionally made it so that a special version of EyeConnect is inside the EyeTV 2.5 download, and you can use it for free, with no payment later on, and no need for any other download.
If you decided to download and install EyeConnect, for some other purpose, then it should be separately installed in the System Preferences. Try removing it. Wi-Fi Access should still work, perhaps after a restart of OS X. If it doesn't, then there's a rare bug affecting a few users - users shouldn't need a separate EyeConnect installation at all.
Contact Elgato Support and we'll sort that bug out for you. Thanks.
Nick Freeman
Customer Support
Elgato Systems LLC
http://www.elgato.com - http://faq.elgato.com
For news, special offers and user tips, subscribe to our newsletter:
www.elgato.com/subscribeNews
Reply
Dom Ramsey said 8:54PM on 10-03-2007
Alternatively, just download CyTV and you can watch all your EyeTV programmes in their full, original resolution *and* stream live TV.
http://www.lucid-cake.net/cytv/index_en.html
Reply
Tony said 9:02PM on 10-03-2007
The whole point of a slingbox is not necessarily to watch *live* tv...Many (most?) people have them hooked up to their Tivo, so they can watch any of their recorded programs on the road.
I have EyeTV, so this is a no-brainer for me. I'm still considering a sligbox pro, though, since my EyeTV is only for OTA HD...It doesn't work with my DirecTV HD.
Reply
Marcos said 10:11PM on 10-03-2007
If you are in your local network, no need to type in IP addresses (192.168.1.101 or such)... Mac OS X has Bonjour buit-in which, among other things, allows you to refer to other machines in your net by name, as set in the Sharing pane in System Preferences... so in the example from the article the address would become http://my-computer.local:2170/eyetv (which is slightly better).
Reply
Mike said 12:20AM on 10-04-2007
tried this and works great over local network...but doesnt seem to play well over the web ie lots of buffering etc...any suggestions?
Reply
Elie Abitbol said 3:26AM on 10-04-2007
HI,
I tried it and it's a fantastic upgrade !
It would be even better if we could import quicktime files and convert them so that they become part of the library. That way we'd have a really great media center.
Also, being able to watch live tv (using turbo264 or the recording buffer) would be a definite improvment.
Regards,
Elie
Reply
Quinton said 8:29AM on 10-04-2007
This is a pretty cool feature. I invested in a Slingbox not too long ago, but I'll be returning it soon as I just placed my order for a new EyeTV Hybrid. If it works as good as I'd like it to, I'll most definitely be getting a Turbo.264 as well. My poor G4 PB doesn't handle the encoding part very well.
Reply
Anders Hakkanson said 8:53AM on 10-04-2007
Sure would be great to see features like this added to the next iteration of the Apple TV. With users so excited over EyeTV, Apple must see the value of adding a TV tuner. There's an interesting article about this as well:
http://www.brianholdsworth.com/apple-tv-coming-attractions
Reply
George said 12:34PM on 10-04-2007
I'm having a little trouble with this, it could be due to the fact that I am on a school network (ie no control over port forwarding on routers). I opened port 2170 and did everything else as instructed. I'm pretty sure my problem is in how I set up the Dyndns account. Can someone post a quick, thorough how to on that? I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing. Thanks!
Reply
JP said 4:24PM on 10-04-2007
I'm on a school network and am having problem's similar to George. Any help?
Reply
badweasel said 7:01PM on 10-04-2007
I just used my iPhone $100 rebate to buy the turbo.264. They had it at my local Apple retail store!
I've done some experimenting with streaming content over the net to my iPhone. From what I understand, to the iphone it's not really "streaming" but just playing it. In order to play a long quicktime, like a television show, it has to be in a specific format. I think a specific m4v?
Since elgato is apparently reading these comments, I'd love a better explanation of this, what format to use for "streaming" to an iphone.
Also, with the turbo you just choose a format: ipod High, iPod Standard, Sony PSP, Apple TV, iPhone. Can I encode one file to work on all of those devices or do I need to re-encode for each one? Say I want my files to work on AppleTV and stream wirelessly to iPhone, but also be able to be loaded on my iPhone. Which format is right for all that?
Reply