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Jamie0003

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 17, 2009
1,038
700
Norfolk, UK
I am trying to set up my EyeTV Diversity TV tuner stick in my dad's mac mini media server. It works well, however the family want to be able to watch TV normally.

Is there a way to have the signal go into the stick, and then back out through the TV like you can on DVD players/recorders? (So a signal is going into both TV and EyeTV)
 

Panch0

macrumors 6502a
Feb 23, 2010
684
9
Virginia
You only have 1 tuner. EyeTV will let you watch Live TV, but it won't record another channel at the same time. Not sure if you can record the current channel at the same time you watch it, but I think you can - I've never tried it.

You can get a Silicon Dust HDHomeRun. That is a network based TV Tuner. You plug it into your ethernet network and your Antenna. It makes 2 tuners available to EyeTV. In this case, you could watch one channel live (through EyeTV) while recording another, or you could record two shows at once.

If you just want to split the signal and let the TV use it's built in Tuner, then yes you're right, the signal will be weaker. That may not be a problem; it depends on how much signal you have to start with.

If a standard splitter degrades your signal too much, you can get what's called a Distribution Amplifier instead. This has a power input that boosts the signal, compensating for the signal loss.

Something like this
 

eddyg

macrumors 6502
Sep 5, 2003
331
0
Christchurch, New Zealand
You only have 1 tuner.
The diversity has 2 tuners. Everything else from Pancho0 still applies. Hopefully one day the atv will have an eyetv app and then you could simply put in an atv. For now things are tricky unless you don't mind jumping through a few hoops (eg. Use the eyetv app on an iPad and then AirPlay that to the atv connected to the tv, then you have live and recorded tv).

Cheers Ed
 

peterjcat

macrumors 6502
Jun 14, 2010
457
1
Since the EyeTV Diversity is purely digital, by splitting the signal beforehand you'll either lose it just about completely or you won't lose any of it. Unless you have a marginal signal in the first place you should be fine; at any rate you could try a 50c splitter before going for an amplified solution.

There's no way to pass through the signal to another device. In any event, that old passthrough that VCRs would also degrade the signal slightly.
 

eddyg

macrumors 6502
Sep 5, 2003
331
0
Christchurch, New Zealand
Since the EyeTV Diversity is purely digital, by splitting the signal beforehand you'll either lose it just about completely or you won't lose any of it. Unless you have a marginal signal in the first place you should be fine; at any rate you could try a 50c splitter before going for an amplified solution.

The input to the eyetv is one or two aerials, which are analog, over which is modulated digital tv. Every time you split the signal you get loss and extra noise, the result of which with digital tv is freezing picture and macro blocking.

You are going to have to split it anyway to run both inputs into the diversity so that you can run both tuners. Maybe go for a three way splitter there instead of a two way. Whether that is too much loss of signal depends on signal strength and how many splits already in the system.

Cheers Ed.
 
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