So I'm using an HD Homerun Dual right now but I've been wondering about upgrading to one of the newer units that can send EyeTV h.264 files natively (if I understand everything right). Two questions:
1) How well doe that work? Any hiccups I should be aware of with EyeTV?
Been using the HD Homerun Plus (the one with on-board transcoding so that it delivers the video to EyeTV as H.264 video in the first place) successfully for the past 10 months or so.
Does it work? Yes, in that the video ends up in EyeTV in already-transcoded H.264 format. So the HD Homerun device is doing it's job just fine. And Silicondust has decent a decent HTML interface that lets you change settings on the HDHomeRun Plus from a web browser (kinda like you can with most routers). So you can use that interface to change the transcoding settings (essentially just set it to off (non-transcoded mpeg2 video), "heavy" (transcoded H.264 720p with a high bit rate resulting in a bigger file), or "light/mobile" (transcoded H.264 720p with a lower bit rate resulting in a smaller file). The "light/mobile" is supposedly useful if you just want to stream live tv to your smartphone on your home wifi network, but I never do that so mine is set to "heavy".
2) Does this speed up export to iTunes? I would imagine it would since it's starting out as an h.264 file so there shouldn't be much conversion necessary, but you never know... Right now it exports in less than real-time, i.e., a 30 minute program often takes over 30 minutes to convert and export (though I do have the commercial skip feature running, but I can't imagine that adds all THAT much to the export).
This was the sole reason I purchased the HD Homerun Plus. I previously had an HDHR3 dual, and was annoyed that my mac (2009 MBP 17", Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 MHz, 8GB ram) was being tasked so heavily to transcode all that high-def video. On my machine, it would take longer to transcode than the length of the program. So a 1 hour program would take ~1.5 hours to transcode, and of course if I'd recorded two shows at the same time, then it would take at least 3 hours after they had finished recording before they were both finished and ready to watch in iTunes/Apple TV. Obviously if you have a more powerful processor it should take less time for your CPU to transcode, but it is likely still going to be close to the time duration of a recording.
So, does the HD Homerun Plus speed up export to iTunes by pre-transcoding? YES! Now, when I have a pre-transcoded 1-hour HD recording sitting in EyeTV, if I manually click the "720pHD" button (the graphical button that looks like a black Apple TV), that program will "export" to iTunes in less than 3 minutes. I consider 90 minutes reduced to 3 minutes to be a big improvement. At only 3 minutes, EyeTV is obviously not transcoding the video. I think it may be transcoding the audio only (to match iTunes' requirements for audio), and apparently that takes less time than transcoding audio AND video.
Here's the rub: Elgato (the company that makes EyeTV) does not officially support HD Homerun Plus, and has made ZERO effort to accommodate the pre-transcoded recordings. In fact, when I talked to Elgato tech support about this last year, before I'd received my HD Homerun Plus, they said that EyeTV wouldn't even PLAY the H.264 video from HD Homerun Plus. Luckily, they were just plain wrong as EyeTV plays the transcoded recordings just fine. But the point is don't expect ANY helpful support from Elgato for anything coming out of the HD Homerun Plus. They will just say "we don't support that" and that will be that.
I'm telling you this because I've noticed that, on some of my recordings set to "auto-export" to iTunes, I'll come in and find that my mac is doing the same old transcoding it was doing before I had the Plus, taking 1.5 hours to "export" a 1 hour HD recording to iTunes. In other words, even though the recording is already in H.264 format in EyeTV, EyeTV doesn't seem to KNOW that it doesn't need to transcode the video, and so it tasks the computer to do the full transcoding treatment anyway, even though it shouldn't have to. I get this behavior for recordings set to auto-export. When I notice this happening, I click the "cancel" x button to cancel the export. Then I click the manual "720p HD" button that looks like a black Apple TV, and the export now only takes < 3 minutes. But I can't seem to reliably get this "3-minute exporting" to happen on auto-export. I have to manually click that button to get the super-fast exporting. Annoying since I much prefer for the shows to just magically appear on my apple TV so I don't have to go over to the computer to click "export" before hopping in bed or onto the couch to watch a show.
Yes, I know this sounds silly. But this is what I have found consistently, despite several EyeTV software updates over the past year. Basically, the export process must be somehow different for auto-exporting vs. clicking that Apple TV shaped button.
. . .
other hiccups (seemingly unrelated to export speed): I'd say about 10% of the recordings are completely screwed up in some way. Like, for example, the recording will be set for NBC at 9 pm, and the recording will happen and all metadata says it was indeed the show you wanted, but then when you actually view the recording it was on the wrong channel. Weird and annoying, and I have no explanation for it. About 10% of the time.
So. . . does it work? Yes! Are there hiccups? Yes!
The hiccups are annoying but not enough for me to do something drastic like buy a Tivo or pay for cable.
I will say, though, that were I starting from scratch today, I might eschew the HD Homerun--> EyeTV --> iTunes --> Apple TV watching tact and just buy a Channel Master DVR+ for each of my two TVs. I actually have one already for one of my TVs, and it works pretty well. The down side is you need one per TV. The up side is there are no recurring fees. You don't even have to pay for the guide data, like you do for EyeTV ($20/year for TV Guide).