Issues with Smart Playlist

[Russ One 1]

I've been running EyeTV since 2009 on 10.6.x along with Front Row with the EyeTV plugin on a MacMini 2009 w/8gigs ram connected to UnRaid NAS for recording OTA TV.
I recently had to update to EyeTV 3.6.9 to get TVGuide to work and since then It crashes just about every night. I tried upgrading to 10.8.x and had issues with playback and very frequent stutters. I lost Front Row with the OS upgrade and the nice hierarchical listing of TV Shows. I tried using Smart Playlist in EyeTV, not as nice because I have to make 180 + lists manually.

So my problem is I can enter a name for the playlist but then the window collapses to a narrow bar before I can enter anything else and the only way to see it is to switch to finder but then can't enter anything in the window without it collapsing again, so it is sort of useless.
I tried OS 10.9, 10.10 and now running 10.11, which plays flawlessly but still the problem exist with the Smart Playlist. I also tried this on a 2012 Mac Mini with the same results. So I tried a fresh install of 10.11 on the 2012 and the only way I can get the smart play list to work is to record to the local drive but I can't use that for 1600 + TV Shows and scrolling through that many shows is a PIA without Smart Playlist. I tried uninstalling and a fresh install of EyeTV and Prefs as well.
Has anyone run into this and how was it solved, if it was solved?

[Russ One 1]

Well it's going on 2 months in another week or so and I still not heard from "tech support", though they did get back quick when I had an issue with my TVGuide renewal key.

Anyway I found a solution and I'm putting it here in case someone else runs into this.

It turns out that I/you can not make a new Smart Playlist if there is video in the background playing, which there normally is a live TV window open.

The solution was to close the window...

Simple but a big PIA to figure out and a big time waster.