Elgato EyeTV 2.5 Update Adds iPhone, Touch Support

by , 2:25 PM EDT, September 24th, 2007

Elgato announced on Monday a free update to their EyeTV 2 television software. Version 2.5 adds Wi-Fi access for iPod touch, iPhone, one-click export to iPod touch and iPhone, recording from the buffer and more.

Wi-Fi Access. Owners of an iPhone or iPod touch can access their library of EyeTV recordings and watch recorded shows over a local Wi-Fi network. iPhone or iPod touch connect via Safari to a web server running within EyeTV 2.5 and can browse the EyeTV Archive and its playlists. Movies can be selected via the touch screen and played back.

One-Click-Export for iPhone and iPod Touch. For owners of brand-new iPhone and iPod touch devices, EyeTV 2.5 offers a simple export via mouse click to enable easy transfers of recorded television shows for later, off-line viewing on the go.

Record from Live Buffer. The timeshift buffer contains the portion of a television show that lies in the past and has already been watched "live." EyeTV 2.5 can record this portion and store it as a complete recording.

Float-on-top. EyeTV 2.5 features the option to have the playback window float in front of all other windows, always remaining the frontmost window, even in front of other applications. This applies to live television windows as well as recordings. The floating window can be moved and continuously resized, and even supports picture-in-picture functionality.

IPTV Support for Freebox. EyeTV 2.5 adds support for watching live television streamed over the local network from the Freebox, an IPTV set-top box available in France.

In addition to the features highlighted above, the update contains many new enhancements. EyeTV 2.5 improves H.264 HDTV playback performance. H.264 HDTV playback remains quite CPU intensive and requires at least an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. EyeTV 2.5 now supports timeshifting functionality for analog TV tuners without built-in hardware compression, such as EyeTV Hybrid, according to Elgato.

EyeTV, with compatible hardware, turns a Mac into a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). It is bundled with many of Elgato's hardware products. The upgrade to version 2.5 is free.