WisconsinEric

EyeTV 3 Version 7528 release Experiences

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EyeTV 3 Version 7528 was released this morning (US time), announced by e-mail message by Angela Wu. So I started a new thread on this version since other active threads are long. Let's use this thread to report experiences / problems with the new release.

I downloaded it, installed on my non-media center Mac to determine software type. It is 32-bit, so it is obsolete in 2 months when Catalina (Mac OS 10.15) comes out in September or October, since it will no longer support 32-bit applications. Since I have a working version (7524) on my Media Center mac, using XMLTVListings (which is apparently $10/month cheaper than the new TV Guide), I don't see the point in installing the new version and don't plan to.

I noticed that simultaneously the number of recordings in EyeTV Plus in my working version (7524) suddenly dropped from around 50,000 or so to zero yesterday. There is now a signup screen (which I didn't use) for EyeTV Plus, though the "Access Prohibited" message behind it is still in German.

What have been your experiences with version 7528, those who have installed it? I gather it DOES reinstate support for HD HomeRun (I am still using an EyeTV Hybrid).

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The letter explicitly said that if your EPG is working with the old version, there is no reason to upgrade. Not being 64-bit will put me into a real bind when Catalina ships because I will need it for other work (iOS app development). 

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Downloaded version 7528 and it fixed all the problems I was having with the 7527 beta.  Got a six month extension on the TV Guide replacement.  I'm a happy camper!

I'm already going to have to virtualize High Sierra (or maybe Mohave) under Catalina to support some other 32-bit apps.  Maybe time to see how EyeTV behaves in a virtual machine...

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Just downloaded 7528, haven't tried any of the betas, was using ATSC guide, and I had to do a little fiddling to get it off ATSC and on to the eyetv premium guide, had to restart eye tv a couple of times.  The guide looks very similar to the old TV GUIDE, one thing might be missing, it doesn't appear to have NEW search when your setting up a recording guide, so you can have it auto record only new programs.  Otherwise it's nice to have the guide back.  I guess you have to ask support If you can get credit for the missing 5-6 months of use on the guide.

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Could you post the letter?  I did not receive one.   Also still don't see the software on their US site.

With the TVGuide data I had to use 2 zip codes to get all my channels.  New guide I get everything with one. (This version crashes with 2 anyway)

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Here's the email I received from Angela this morning.

****************************************

Dear Sir/Madam , 

Sorry for any inconvenience caused by us. To solve TV Guide problem, we have upgraded eyetv software to version 7528. To enjoy the Premium EPG (North America), please download the software here. 

https://www.geniatech.eu/download/eyetv-3-6-9-7528/

If your EPG is working, please ignore this notification.

Then click eyetv/Preferences/Guide/Service: select EyeTVEPGPremium and sign in your EPG account.

Kind regards

Angela

Thanks & Best regards

=============================================================

Angela Xu

Geniatech Anhui LLC

Tel: +86-551-6555 3836

Mobile Phone: +86-158 0551 9036 

Email: angela.xu@geniatech.com

Website: www.geniatech.com    

Skype: 158 0551 9036

Office: Room 906, Building F5, Innovation Industrial Park, NO.2800 Innovation Road, High Tech Zone, Hefei, Anhui, China

Factoy: No. 25, Shinan Road, High-tech Zone, Hefei, Anhui, China

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I installed this new build (7528).  Several bits of good news:

1) it works with my HDHomeRun tuner (the first build to do so, since (7520)).

2) the guide is working with my existing subscription that has not yet finished.

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Downloaded and installed EyeTV 3.6.9 (version 7528) on two Minis running OSX Sierra (10.12.6). Both successfully downloaded and populated TV listings for the upcoming two weeks. Both have also scheduled, recorded, and played back chosen programming successfully. So, all is as it was prior to February of this year when the software's TV Guide service quit working. I did not receive any notification from Angela that there was now a new working version of the software. Fortunately I was able to find that out here. Thanks to all...

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On 7/22/2019 at 10:40 PM, Bob_S said:

The guide looks very similar to the old TV GUIDE, one thing might be missing, it doesn't appear to have NEW search when your setting up a recording guide, so you can have it auto record only new programs.

This is probably because the new guide is lacking Season and Episode number information in the fields "SEASONID" and "EPISODENUM".  This information was available in the older guide (for example using Apple Script and the EyeTV feature "TriggeredScripts" show titles can be updated automatically with S01 E01 text by reading the information from these fields at the end of a recording). With the new guide these fields do not contain any information: observed with Modern Family (ABC) and Big Bang Theory (FOX) shows.  Hopefully the new guide will get this information too.

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6 hours ago, chuckles67 said:

This is probably because the new guide is lacking Season and Episode number information in the fields "SEASONID" and "EPISODENUM".  This information was available in the older guide (for example using Apple Script and the EyeTV feature "TriggeredScripts" show titles can be updated automatically with S01 E01 text by reading the information from these fields at the end of a recording). With the new guide these fields do not contain any information: observed with Modern Family (ABC) and Big Bang Theory (FOX) shows.  Hopefully the new guide will get this information too.

Of the two non EyeTV Plus commercially available EPG's, XMLTVListings (which I use) also lacks season and episode information but works just fine otherwise. Reportedly (from those on this Forum using it) schedulesdirect.com does have this info in its EPG..

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The new Geniatech version of EyeTV 3 has an interesting anomaly. When checking just now under Prefs->Guide to see if it was doing its daily update as my pull-down choice has mandated, it says my schedule was updated "Today at 2:59 p.m." Interesting....since it is now only 12:39 p.m. EDT. here.

So I am guessing that it is showing the update in terms of GMT or GMT +2 (Germany's time zone). That seems to not be converted to my Mac's system time. No big deal, I am just glad it is updating daily as I could never get the SchedulesDirect "script" to auto-update for me. This feature alone, since working, is enough to bring me back to the Geniatech EyeTV fold no matter what the difference in cost per year turns out to be. I will miss the episode number designation that Schedules Direct was providing, but I can get that from my cable provider's listing for any given episodic programming.

Edited by Holden
typo

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The old TV Guide's updates seemed to end at 4pm PST after the two weeks, which would be midnight GMT (or UTC).  I presume that meant the update was done at midnight GMT.

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My TV Guide subscription ended long after the EyeTV dark times began. After many emails to Angela during the time since, she promised that I would be compensated for or given a subscription once the new version came out. The letter indicated the same, but I didn't find a way to get that subscription without actually paying for it and then trusting them to make it right. Trusting Geniatech is not something that will come easily to many people right now. 

Any insights?

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Good news I just noticed that the listings now contain information about whether the program is new.  New episodes now contain the (New) designation in the grid entry. That was the one feature I really missed.  Would also be great to see episode date first aired in the detailed description but I'm not complaining. Just happy to have the guide back up and running

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Just downloaded & installed build 7528, eyeTV-HD--connected to a Comcast cable box--works fine. My TV-Guide subscription had expired right when its service stopped, so I purchased a subscription to the EyeTVEPGPremium-USA service, and activated it, again no problem. BUT: When I try to update the new EPG, I get a response: "Update failed due to server error." The "Diagnostics" button says my zip code, network connection, and EPG database are all OK, BUT tells me "I do not appear to receive any digital cable channels", analog channels, or any other kind of channels.

?? Do I need to do the whole eyeTV-setup again?

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Levanah...I had the same experience initially but after I ran the "Uninstall" routine from the EyeTV Reporter utility (recommended in a previous thread here) and then reinstalled the new 3.6.9 (7528) the problem was resolved. The "Uninstall" app removes all ancillary EyeTV files (visible and hidden) from your older copy of EyeTV which I assume was making an improperly formatted request for update and hence the "server error" response. You can read about and download the EyeTV Reporter utility here:

                                    <https://www.geniatech.eu/faq/wie-nutze-ich-das-eyetv-reporter-dienstprogramm/>

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I installed 7528 over the weekend, and made the following observations to pass on. Up to this point I have kept our version at 7520, because later versions did not recognize our HDHomeRun. Some of these may not be news to you if you have installed versions after 7520:

  • 7528 installed and worked fine, picking up all existing recordings and schedules. (After TV Guide stopped working, we have been scheduling using TitanTV because it was not that much of a hassle, and could be done from any of our devices with a web browser.)
  • 7528 recognizes our HDHomeRun again. While others in this thread have also noticed this, it doesn't seem to be mentioned in any release notes, so I'm wary that it might not be officially/permanently supported. But at least there is now a build that we can use as long as we don't need the Mac to go beyond macOS 10.14 (since 10.15 won't run 32-bit applications). That means we can keep using this version of EyeTV at least until 10.14 stops getting security updates, which might be in 2022. So, another 3 years of service at least. Of course, this is a moot point if Geniatech issues a 64-bit update of EyeTV.
  • We are in the USA. Now that the TV Guide subscription is available again, I paid to subscribe for another year. Price went up from $20 to $30 a year, not happy about a 33% price increase. But it works again.
  • I ran a channel rescan. At the end it puts up the dialog box where you enter your zip code and choose how you get your TV (I choose OTA broadcast). At this point 7528 would either crash, or hang with the rainbow pinwheel of death. I had two zip codes entered; testing revealed that it crashed if I left it that way, but no longer crashed if I deleted the second zip code so that there was only one ZIP code in there.
  • I had to go into Channels view and make sure all channels were set to EyeTVEPGPremium-USA, because they had lost their program guide setting after TV Guide went down. The easiest way to do this is Select All first, then change one and all selected channels update.
  • The left column of 7528 includes the EyeTV Plus service. This is not available in the USA, so it was just taking up space. It turns out you can disable EyeTV Plus in Preferences, so that disappears from the left column.

All in all I'm relieved that we no longer have to consider an alternative OTA recorder for our old faithful Mac mini. (I do have Plex but it has its own issues.) We'll just keep cranking along with EyeTV. While I thank Geniatech for this update, I am not happy about how it happened because after TV Guide became unavailable and HDHomeRun support was dropped, communication with customers was handled very badly. They need to work on this.

Edited by tvparty2nite
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I installed 7528 and didn't have the great experience others did.. 

First, I was unable to get the program guide to recognize more then 2 channels,  after digging I realized that those 2 channels were just getting ATSC guide, not the guide from Geniatech.  

I then performed the suggested the EyeTV Reporter uninstall  and reinstalled eyetv.  I performed a channel search.  every channel came up with ATSC guide, If I try to switch any of them to the Geniatech guide eyetv crashes.  

last,  set up to record and noticed that it seems to randomly start recording no necessarily at the time scheduled,  so if I set it to record at 10:00 it will start recording at 9:59;27 I will be swapping back to an earlier version until 7529 comes out.

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49 minutes ago, bilzabub said:

I installed 7528 and didn't have the great experience others did.. 

First, I was unable to get the program guide to recognize more then 2 channels,  after digging I realized that those 2 channels were just getting ATSC guide, not the guide from Geniatech.  

I then performed the suggested the EyeTV Reporter uninstall  and reinstalled eyetv.  I performed a channel search.  every channel came up with ATSC guide, If I try to switch any of them to the Geniatech guide eyetv crashes.  

last,  set up to record and noticed that it seems to randomly start recording no necessarily at the time scheduled,  so if I set it to record at 10:00 it will start recording at 9:59;27 I will be swapping back to an earlier version until 7529 comes out.

Suggestion: did you spend some time in EyeTV Preferences? Both of the problems you mention are controlled by a Preferences setting. It is possible the Preferences file survived your reinstall of EyeTV. For the ATSC problem, reset your source to the EyeTV Guide from ATSC. For recording start time, you can set EyeTV to start recording a set time before the program start, such as one minute ahead (which is what I do). It sounds like that is what's happening. Qualification: I am still using 7524; since I subscribed to XMLTVListings.com for the EPG, there was no need to update. So some of these things may have been broken in the transition to 7528.

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As of 20:16 PDT on 30.07.2019, the download for (7528) is a dead link.

I was about to attempt this install, since it allegedly restores support for HDHomeRun hardware abandoned after Build (7520), and I've found OpenCable schedules an absolute nightmare to use. But it's gotten very hard to trust the competence or veracity of Geniatech, given the way they've behaved towards US and Mac users over the last several years. You'd think ElGato would have told Geniatech that the business was built on our backs...

http://file.geniatech.com/eyetv3/EyeTV3.6.9(7528)20190730.dmg 

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10 minutes ago, eaglerock said:

As of 20:16 PDT on 30.07.2019, the download for (7528) is a dead link.

I was about to attempt this install, since it allegedly restores support for HDHomeRun hardware abandoned after Build (7520), and I've found OpenCable schedules an absolute nightmare to use. But it's gotten very hard to trust the competence or veracity of Geniatech, given the way they've behaved towards US and Mac users over the last several years. You'd think ElGato would have told Geniatech that the business was built on our backs...

http://file.geniatech.com/eyetv3/EyeTV3.6.9(7528)20190730.dmg 

Update: Apparently, whatever stupid content management system they're using imposes a current date in the filename, even if there's no file to match that date. The same URL with a change to "20190729" generates a downloaded installer. But why should an end user have to figure this nonsense out?

http://file.geniatech.com/eyetv3/EyeTV3.6.9(7528)20190730.dmg 

http://file.geniatech.com/eyetv3/EyeTV3.6.9%287528%2920190729.dmg

Oh, and BTW: I despise the fact that your Forum content management system won't permit me to de-bold text copied from a URL, once the system has force-bolded it. I'll bold/de-bold what I want, thank you very much.

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I'm digging deeper into the odd time thing,  I still can't figure it out,  but I do have hooked up to my mac mini, both an EyeTV HD and an eyetv Hybrid.  I use the HD to record things from my satellite, and the hybrid to record off air.  this time shift issue only seems to affect the HD.  

 

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Not sure if this helps but in order to get the new guide to be recognized rather than the few ATSC entries I had I had to "Clear EPG database", an option under the gear when the program guide is selected.  It then asked me for a zip code and type of connection (mine is over the air) and viola it started to populate.

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Maybe the wrong place to post,, but can anyone direct me to get information for Guide to appear in the EyeTV iPhone App? Other than that info, my guide info appears to be back to normal thanks to Angela, on my iMac. EyeTV 3 guide. Has anyone looked at Guide info on their iPad or iPhone? Would love to get that going also.  Or should uninstall my existing EyeTV mobile app, and reinstall

 

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