lelegard

Software interface to EyeTV hardware on macOS

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Hello,

I consider purchasing some EyeTV hardware, probably a Diversity one for a start. But my needs are maybe specific and I would like to make sure I can achieve what I want before spending some cash.

I don't need to "watch TV" on my Mac. So, I have no use for the EyeTV TV watching application. I need to access the tuner from a C++ application of mine, namely tuning to a specific transport (frequency and other tuning parameters) and then reading the TS packets. Can I do this on macOS using an EyeTV tuner and how? What is the software framework, API or driver to be used? It can be done since the EyeTV software does it. But how? Where is this documented?

I have done this for years on Windows and Linux, using the DirectShow framework on Windows and the LinuxTV S2API on Linux, using various tuner hardware. I am now seeking to do the same on macOS. EyeTV hardware seems to be the widely recommended solution on Mac. But I cannot find any software information.

Thanks for any help.

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I doubt Geniatech will provide the necessary APi & other technical info. Better luck might be HDHomerun from SiliconDust. All their info is public.

 

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Thank you for the answer. The HDHomeRun is another type of product. It is a media server which distributes TV channels over IP in a home to any type of networked devices. That being said, they indeed have a free online complete development guide.

My purpose is more lab-oriented : pluging a USB tuner into a laptop, connecting it anywhere to an antenna or even a modulator and getting a technical analysis of transport streams. In fact, reading a transport stream from a tuner is just one option. The input can be a transport stream file or IP streaming. The software is running fine on macOS, Windows and Linux. However, using a physical tuner is currently possible only on Windows and Linux. I am looking for equivalent capability on macOS.

This is why I am searching for information on interfacing a physical tuner on macOS.

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I have asked the question to Geniatech official support and simply got a very terse answer "not possible". I assume that this doesn't surprise the readers of this forum. So, I won't use EyeTV. Too bad.

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s/d's hdhomerun_config_gui.app can display a tuner's stream on vlc by piping it thru udp...see attached screencap...so i imagine u can capture it too...i use both an ota hdhr & a cablecard hdhr ip tuner

hdhr2vlc.tiff

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Thanks tomw. However, what is streamed to UDP in this case is not the tuner's raw stream. It is a demuxed program (ie. TV channel) from the tuner's transport stream. It is "watching TV", extracting a specific program from a multiplex, removing most of the original transport stream, just keeping one single program. This is the standard end user's requirement. Why I want is technically simpler : just get the raw complete transport stream without demultiplexing anything, without processing, without removing anything. But it seems impossible to achieve. Too bad...

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