jelockwood

Closed Captions are as far as I am aware a US i.e. NTSC only standard. Australia uses DVB broadcasts so presumably also uses DVB subtitles, EyeTV has long supported DVB subtitles. (DVB subtitles are very similar to DVD subtitles - both are bitmaps superimposed on top of the video image.)

I have just returned to these forums after a prolonged absence, like the other posters here I was shocked to discover the latest update removed support for the HDHomeRun tuners. I had literally today received a new HDHomeRun Connect Quattro aka HDHR5-4DT as an 'upgrade' to my previous twin tuner HDHR4-2DT model. Both of these tuners I had bought because for literally years Geniatech have been promising their own network DVB-T2 tuner and still have not released one. Having received my new HDHomeRun tuner as part of installing it I for the first time in a long time rebooted my Mac mini from its normal Windows7 back in to macOS to also update that side to connect the new tuner. Even though I have a full legal EyeTV license and various older Elgato tuners I normally use Windows Media Center via Boot Camp. It was therefore whilst updating the Mac side that discovered this terrible change. Fortunately the previous EyeTV version was merely moved to the Trash. What I find particularly ironic is that whilst in the latest EyeTV version the list of network tuners no longer lists the HDHomeRun it does list a fictitious NetStream-T the long rumoured network DVB-T2 tuner. I notice that a Windows version of EyeTV has been released. When you think about this, this makes some sense. Microsoft have discontinued Media Center so whilst it was in Windows7 and Windows8 it was not in Windows10. (EyeTV for Windows needs a minimum of Windows10.) However having had a quick look at the product page it does not appear to be anywhere near as good as Windows Media Center. Yes it does live TV, yes it does recording, yes it (allegedly) has smart series recording. What it definitely does not have is a full-blown '10-foot' user interface, also based on the Mac version of EyeTV one would be very dubious over its multi-tuner capabilities. Remember todays saga was initiated by my receiving a four tuner device which is working perfectly in Windows Media Center with all four tuners recognised and full intelligence over simultaneous recordings. The two areas EyeTV for Windows might be better are support for H.265 channels - not an issue here in the UK and since there are none I have no idea if this would merely require having a suitable DirectShow filter in Windows, and the fact that Windows Media Center has never been able to decode the over-the-air EPG data if encoded in Huffman coding like all the UK HD channels are, EyeTV can decode these on the Mac. (It should be noted that there has been a long outstanding bug in EyeTV over extracting DVB guide data with a HDHomeRun which now support for the HDHomeRun has been removed is unlikely to be fixed.) I suspect even if Geniatech get round to shipping a network DVB-T2 tuner it may lack BDS driver support for Windows and therefore not be usable in Windows Media Center. This would put me off it. One can hope the release of a Windows version of EyeTV might lead to renewed software development with new features and feature/bug fixes also being ported back to the Mac version. I know there is still a lot of users of Windows Media Center despite Microsoft's best efforts. (Apart from not providing it for Windows10 Microsoft have also it seems deliberately and repeated sabotaged their own EPG data source.) Apart from people like myself running an older version of Windows specifically to keep Windows Media Center there is also a significant number who use a version of the Windows7/8 Media Center software hacked to run under Windows10. So, there is a potential market for a decent computer based Media Center solution.

In the UK HDTV is in H.264 via DVB-T2, in Germany you are apparently using H.265 over DVB-T2. Roxio Toast can produce DVD discs which contain MPEG2 video, and if you have the optional Blu-Ray plugin Toast can produce Blu-Ray discs which contain H.264 video. Toast cannot yet product UHD Blu-Ray discs which contain H.265. In theory Toast could convert the H.265 video down to H.264 and produce a standard Blu-Ray disc. I don't know for certain but it is likely your German HD broadcast even though in H.265 may still only be in 1920x1080 resolution rather than UHD aka 4K resolution. I could not find an official statement on the Roxio site as to whether it supports converting H.265 but strongly suspect thomaskud is correct in saying it does not. You would therefore need to either tell EyeTV to export to a different format or use some other tool to do the same - possibly Handbrake.

I am in the UK so I use a different model HDHomeRun tuner than you but the following experience might be relevant and of help. Firstly you need to install the HDHomeRun software on your Mac, I suspect you have done this but it needed to be asked, the latest version is here https://www.silicondust.com/support/downloads/ I would then run the SiliconDust HDHomeRun app and confirm it itself can access the tuner. Next you run EyeTV, now here some experience might help, I have found that after previously running EyeTV and previously successfully configuring it to use my HDHomeRun tuner that if I later run EyeTV again it has sometimes 'lost' connection to the tuner, the simplest way to resolve this is to re-run the setup wizard again but only to tell it to look for a HDHomeRun tuner, it is not necessary to scan for stations again. Note: When SiliconDust issue newer software they typically also issue newer firmware for the HDHomeRun tuners. When you run the HDHomeRun app I believe it should offer if needed to upgrade the firmware, I am a bit uncertain about this because I also use Window Media Center and do this mostly on that. You can go to http://myhdhomerun.com on your Mac and it will report the version of software and firmware you have installed. There have been some issues with previous versions and it looks like the latest helps.

I have not tried MPEG StreamClip under Sierra but have tried it under Yosemite. Firstly with regards to MPEG2 recordings, yes MPEG StreamClip requires the Apple QuickTime MPEG2 Component but if you had this MPEG StreamClip unlike QuickTime Player did correctly load the AC3 audio, could play it and could edit it and could save it. In any case at least here in the UK AC3 is not used for DVB-T or DVB-T2 broadcasts. Secondly with regards to MPEG4 aka H.264 recordings, this time the QuickTime MPEG2 Component is not needed and MPEG StreamClip can edit MPEG4 recordings and again preserves the audio. As mentioned at least here in the UK even HD broadcasts over DVB-T2 are not using AC3, here in the UK HD over DVB-T2 broadcasts using AAC audio. I would not expect MPEG StreamClip to be able to open or edit H.265 broadcasts as used in I believe Germany.

@thomaskud As per my posts I have been updating the firmware of my HDHomeRun as updates became available and this has not changed the problem, as a further reminder this has happened with both a HDHR3-DT (DVB-T) tuner and the newer current HDHR4-2DT (DVB-T2). I had previously raised this with SiliconDust and they say extracting the DVB EPG data from the broadcast signal is handled by the application in question - in this case EyeTV and therefore any issues are down to the developer of that app i.e. Geniatech. A much more recent post by another user here… …suggests at least one other person is suffering the same problem or at least one of the three problems I reported, the one whereby EyeTV will only get EPG data for a handful of channels and then fails to get the rest, that is my Bug1 as per my original report above. (If a channel has no EPG data it is no longer listed in the EyeTV guide view, hence 'losing channels'.) Personally I do suspect that the HDHomeRun is slightly culpable but also that EyeTV is. As a comparison I also use a Windows tool called EPG Collector with the same exact HDHomeRun tuner and it has no problems getting EPG data for all the channels. Again as a reminder, if I view briefly in a live TV window each channel that is missing EPG data from a 'full' scan it does get the EPG data for that channel. It would seem the problem relates to EyeTV moving between channels or multiplexes to get more EPG data. EPG Collector seems to work differently it gets EPG data from a single channel/frequency which contains data for all channels. It is therefore not needing to switch between channels/frequencies/multiplexes. Perhaps you should consider this approach or make it a choice selectable in preferences? The possible implication is that a series of rapid 'changel changes' as EyeTV is trying to scan for EPG data might be disrupting things. Note: The HDHomeRun HDHR4-2DT being a DVB-T2 tuner will work for the German market so it would be potentially possible for you to get one and test using your own local TV signal. Shipping me a free NetStream-T i.e. DVB-T2 network tuner when it is released would be considered an 'adequate' fix for this problem.

I would guess you are using the UK EPG subscription offered via Geniatech, this is actually a service provided by Gracenote whom I believe are now a subsidiary of Sony. It could be Gracenote only update their data once a week i.e. on a Saturday, this would seem consistent with your symptoms. You might want to search for information about Gracenote via Google to see if applicable articles crop up, or you could try contacting their support direct and mention your Geniatech provided subscription. I personally use the free EPG provided in the DVB signal although this is only for seven days.

@Alex Ingram Yes I have. See my older post as per below. As you will see there are three related bugs to do with using HDHomeRun tuners with EyeTV. The workaround is to briefly view each missing channel in a live TV window. I have however recently chased Geniatec over these issues, it would be helpful if you could post a reply in my older thread as above to add weight to this issue.

@thomaskud Thanks, that answers the availability of the NetStream DVB-T2 tuner issue, but what about the three HDHomeRun related bugs?

@alfons your Automator script appears to use ProjectX amongst other things. I remember using ProjectX a long time ago to convert EyeTV recordings to VIDEO_TS i.e. DVD format without re-encoding, and preserving subtitles by converting them from DVB format to DVD format. (Both are bitmap subtitle formats.) Sadly ProjectX appears to not have been updated for many years. What version of OS X are you running it under? It would be interesting to know whether it still works under recent versions of OS X. To everyone in general, has anyone tried using MPEG StreamClip to open directly the EyeTV video file inside the EyeTV recording package and then using MPEG StreamClip to re-save it? MPEG StreamClip is very good at handling both program streams and transport streams. To everyone in general. I find VLC's conversion wizard totally useless for MPEG4 files. It never lets you select a mp4 container format only AVI at best and even then the results are also useless, especially if you try using pass-thru. I find AviDemux best for this sort of thing. To everyone in general. I have found some Internet sourced MPEG4 videos on occasion have had audio tracks which have been MP3 which QuickTime does not like - QuickTime will only accept AAC, but I have also seen a few supposedly AAC ones also cause problems. Like suggested by @SiChan I have used AviDemux to 'fix' these by re-encoding the audio track. To everyone in general. Neither DVB-T standard definition MPEG2 aka FreeView or DVB-T2 high definition H.264 aka FreeView HD as used in the UK have DRM. (At least if you exclude the mainly adult channels that require a subscription.)

@Dalle I keep an older Mac on an older operating system so I can still run tools like MPEGStreamClip although it is also available for Windows. (You would then need the Windows versions of QuickTime and QuickTime MPEG2 component.) You could also use the free Parallels from the Mac App Store to run a Mac VM guest which could be an older version of OS X.

MPEG video files as used by EyeTV cannot normally be edited at a frame accurate level without being forced to completely re-encode the entire video file. I believe this is down to the fact that MPEG video files achieve some of their compression by only recording the differences between frames so you need a certain minimum number of frames to generate a complete image. Therefore to do frame accurate editing would first require converting the entire video file to an alternative format e.g. Apple's ProRes, then doing the editing, and then re-encoding to a compressed format perhaps MPEG2 or MPEG4 again. In MPEG terminology this is called a GOP - group of pictures. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_pictures For what its worth I also find MPEG Streamclip to be an excellent editor and as long as you accept being limited to GOP level editing it does not need to do a full re-encode meaning saving your edits is very fast.

Yes H.265 aka HEVC will have greater CPU requirements because it is both doing a greater level of compression and more importantly at this point in time Macs do not provide any hardware assistance to off-load the processing. H.264 the predecessor to H.265 having been around longer is now able to be processed in silicon by either a component of the main CPU or the video card GPU chip. As a related comparison Apple's AirPlay screen mirroring function only works on newer Macs, this is because it requires an Intel CPU chip new enough to include Intel's 'Quick Sync Video' feature. Yes it is possible to get a third-party AirPlay compatible tool to run on older Macs but anyone who has done so has seen that they are much slower than using Apple's tool on supported models of Mac precisely because of this issue. So the same thing is currently the case with H.265. No Mac currently has any hardware assistance since most Macs have comparatively old generations of Intel CPU and equally old generations of video chip. On top of this Apple so far have themselves provided no support for H.265 even their flagship 'Pro' video editing package FinalCut Pro X does not support H.265. Thinking about this I think we can safely assume this is not because Apple feel there is no need for H.265 in FinalCut Pro X but because they know that all their current Macs are simply inadequate for the job and if they did it would merely show up how bad Macs currently are. So, at the moment we have to throw lots of CPU at the problem since the H.265 processing is being done purely in software, if your using a Mac mini you simply don't have enough CPU resource to do it. I do also suspect that currently the implementation in EyeTV might not be as efficient as it could be and hopefully Geniatech will continue to improve this.

There have previously been several legitimate complaints about not being able to use all four tuners on the NetStream 4Sat and similar devices - typically Sat>IP network tuners. I have not seen although I may have missed it a post here in the forums on how to solve this but Geniatech have added a feature to EyeTV which should solve this. See https://www.geniatech.eu/eyetv/faq/how-do-i-receive-4-channels-from-eyetv-netstream-4sat-on-my-mac/

For what its worth a lot of EPG providers incorrectly label episodes as repeats even when this is not correct. Sometimes this is because the episode was previously shown on a different channel by a different broadcaster however this may be referring to a broadcaster/channel which you cannot receive e.g. over-the-air vs satellite/cable. Sometimes I suspect it is crass stupidity where the EPG provider looks at the 'original broadcast date' they have been given/found and that might be for a completely different country. Sometimes they are simply wrong. As far as I am concerned and I suspect most people are concerned it should be from the perspective of the specific broadcaster/region you are receiving it in.

@thomaskud I finally got round to building a new updated Mac to run the latest EyeTV 3.6.9 (7517), this is now under El Capitan 10.11.6 with HDHomeRun software version 20161117. As a further reminder this is to use a SiliconDust HDHomeRun HDHR4-2DT network tuner, and actually viewing both DVB-T MPEG2 and DVB-T2 H.264 channels still works. Sadly however I am finding all three of the issues I listed still remain a problem. PS. What happened to the EyeTV Netstream for DVB-T2? This is still not shown on your website.

MPEG StreamClip as I recently discovered makes an excellent H.264 editor. It can do so without having to re-encode the file so like EyeTV it merely edits to the nearest GOP frame. If you want to do this and still use it as a .eyetv file then you need to follow my previous instructions regarding opening the .eyetv container/package and also removing whichever XML file is necessary which will then force EyeTV to re-analyse the video and update things like duration, file size etc.

I am using a HDHR4-2DT which is the only HomeRun model that does HDTV channels for the UK. I use the DVB EPG as the source of guide data and I do get BBC One HD listed as 101, BBC Two HD listed as 102, ITV HD listed as 103 and so on. If you have the older HDHR3-DT model this does not support DVB-T2 channels and hence does not support HD channels. Yes the indications from Geniatech is that they are supposed to be releasing a NetStream-4T as a DVB-T2 network tuner although this does seem to have slipped significantly. I believe the NetStream-4A is the equivalent for the US market and maybe shipping. It is interesting that the name is apparently going to be NetStream-4T as this implies it will be a four tuner device like the 4S. As others have pointed out EyeTV is currently unable to use more than two tuners even with a NetStream-4S. One hopes this will be addressed at the same time.

I believe there used to be a post in the old Elgato forums before they closed regarding this, I did successfully follow the steps to do this. In my case I had recorded two consecutive programs on the same channel which as it should resulted in two saved files. However the scheduling had slipped compared to the EPG data so that the last bit of the first program was stored in the second file. I was able to duplicate the second file, edit the duplicate to get just the remaining part of the first program, and then follow the steps to 'join' it to the first recording. As I (vaguely) recall the steps to join two files were something like the following - Quit EyeTV Append the second MPEG2 file to the end of the first MPEG2 file, this could be done in Terminal using the cat command Delete one of the XML files in the first file package - remember an EyeTV recording is actually stored as an Apple style package i.e. a folder inside of which are several XML files, the MPEG2 file and a bitmap preview image Relaunch EyeTV, it will spot the missing XML file and rebuild it which will result in it now recognising the new bigger version of the MPEG2 file What I cannot remember off hand is which XML file to delete. I last did this well before it was possible to do DVB-T2 on a Mac so I have not tried this with H.264 recordings, it could be due to the different file format that this approach will not work for H.264. The same may eventually apply to H.265 aka HEVC.

In the UK at least DVB-T2 uses just H.264, at this point there are no test 4K channels on DVB-T2 in the UK which is when I would expect HEVC to be used. So for the UK and DVB-T2 HEVC is not yet needed. For what its also worth I already am able to receive and view DVB-T2 channels here in the UK using a SiliconDust HDHR4-2DT network tuner and EyeTV software. There are however three bugs using EyeTV and SiliconDust tuners. See Note: While there are no DVB-T2 4K test broadcasts in the UK that I am aware of I believe there are some live HEVC broadcasts over DVB-S2 on Sky UK. Sky is encrypted so adding support for HEVC for those would be hard to justify. The un-encrypteed FreeSAT service in the UK is as far as I am aware not doing any 4K broadcasts yet and hence again not needing or using HEVC. Still saying all the above, it would be nice if EyeTV was ahead of the curve for a change and did implement HEVC before it was needed rather than as an example taking years and years to add DVB-T2 support. (Nine years after widespread use of DVB-T2 started.)

Elgato used to I believe resell a version of the SiliconDust network DVB-T tuner. Recently I bought a HDHR4-2DT model SiliconDust tuner as the only way to get DVB-T2 on a Mac since for years Elgato had failed to release any DVB-T2 tuners. Update I see Geniatech now list a USB DVB-T2 tuner but still do not have a network DVB-T2 tuner. The EyeTV software does sill support HDHomeRun tuners and I can successfully get EyeTV to find it and can also get it to successfully get EyeTV to scan for channels, and also to view both DVB-T standard definition channels and DVB-T2 high definition channels. Unfortunately I am finding three old bugs specific to using a HDHomeRun tuner with EyeTV still exist. I first encountered these bugs with an older HDHR3-DT model which is DVB-T only. With the recent discontinuation of the previously free RadioTimes XMLTV guide source on June 16th 2016 these bugs have now become more critical as I now have to use the DVB guide instead. I have reported these issues to Geniatech a week ago but as of yet still had no response. I am using the latest 20150826 firmware and software for the HDHomeRun. Bug 1 When I tell EyeTV 3.6.9 build 7416 to use the DVB guide data for channels and to then scan for DVB guide data it will initially start off successfully scanning but part way through will stop finding guide data with the result at the end of the scan only some of the channels will show guide data. I have proven that all the channels do have DVB guide data available by doing the same thing in Windows using the exact same HDHomeRun tuner and this finds DVB guide data for all channels with no problems, and also a real TV fitted with its own DVB-T/T2 tuner is also able to get DVB guide data for all channels. More importantly I can even successfully get DVB guide data for all channels in EyeTV if I tune in to an view individual channels for a few minutes - long enough for EyeTV to extract DVB guide data automatically from that channels/multiplex. If I do this for all the channels missed out during the full scan I can get a full set of DVB guide data for all channels but obviously this is extremely tedious and time consuming and should not be necessary. It seems the failure of the full scan for DVB guide data fails at the same point each time and this seems to be when EyeTV switches from scanning one channel or multiplex to another. However remember it is possible to get DVB guide data for all channels by manually tuning in to and viewing them so it is not as simple as a specific channel causing EyeTV to choke. Bug 2 Once EyeTV has been told to do a full DVB guide data update and it as per bug 1 fails part way through, a subsequent DVB Guide update request will fail straight away as will a 3rd, 4th, etc. It is only possible to then get even a partial scan to work by quitting and relaunching EyeTV. Note: This would further support the case that it is not simply EyeTV choking on the results of a DVB guide scan from a specific channel since a repeat request starts from the first channel which on the 1st attempt does at least give some results. Bug 3 If EyeTV is not used i.e. not running for an indeterminate amount of time - more than a few minutes per a few hours, then EyeTV will no longer reconnect to the network tuner. It then becomes necessary to re-run the EyeTV Setup Assistant and reselect the network tuner. Fortunately you do not have to re-scan for channels. All three of these issues have previously also occurred with older versions of EyeTV, and both a HDHR4-2DT and an older HDHR3-DT tuner and also older versions of the HDHomeRun firmware and software. On the good news front EyeTV is able to extract DVB guide data for DVB-T2 high definition channels which at least in the UK using the Freeview HD service are apparently encrypted with a simple Huffman encoding.