MIKEEVANGELIST  Mike Evangelist from Elgato here.

Version 3.1 has not gone live yet.

I suspect there's some confusion because the new Hybrid which we started selling at Macworld included a special version of 3.1 to support its new hardware. It will be a few more days before the general release is rolled out for auto-updates.  
(Version 3.1)

JEFF H.  The software is awesome. I've been using it for years now and its only gotten better, for the most part. That is until the TVGuide EPG came along...ITS TERRIBLE!

Today it decided to just not download an EPG at all so now I have nothing...just a blank section where the EPG used to be saying that " no data to display, finish setup guide".

Did that, fixed nothing!

Hate TVGuide...go back to TitanTV!  
(Version 3.1.1)

HIPPEMAN  There's still this bug with the Eye-TV Quicktime plug-in installed into the main library folder which causes a green poster frame for MP4 files in the Finder and in iWeb! :-(

Only when you delete this plug-in the problem is solved, but Eye-TV keeps on putting in it back in by relaunching the app.   
(Version 3.1)

SIR GADABOUT  In brief: Disappointing.

To expand: EyeTV lacks too many basic features to be considered exemplary. It's currently impossible to schedule a reminder for a TV show, or edit a recording whilst hearing audio from a Live TV window. Furthermore, twin-tuner devices (such as the Nova-TD I have) are very poorly implemented and reveal a whole host of problems, ranging from poor scheduling-conflict handling to poor management of Live TV windows. I'm also not convinced it produces that great a picture, compared with WinTV on XP (which I run on the same machine)—the latter seems sharper with less blockiness.

It's also a glitchy app. For example, even at this late stage in development it isn't multi-user compatible, so some minor changes to channel lists (for example) require administrative authentication. The app can fail to receive available channels if you "flick" too quickly, and the sometimes loses them altogether—I've been inexplicably missing more than three channels for weeks now despite using the same software on the same machine with the same aerial connection. More annoyingly, the app has a habit of pausing playback (Live or a recording) for no apparent reason—I used to think I was nudging the mouse or whatever, but it happens when I'm across the room too!

Finally, the company seems to be slow to react or innovate. There have been a whole host of bug reports (over and above those I've mentioned) and feature requests in the forums for a considerable amount of time that have yet to be actioned. For example, Growl support is available, but was scripted by a forum user and not the company.

At the end of the day, though, and to quote from Demolition Man: "It's what we got."  
(Version 3.2)

SJK  Re: TV Guide EPG transition. Recommended topics on the EyeTV Lounge forum:

• Why is there a fee for the EyeTV Program Guide?

• Why is TitanTV being phased out?  
(Version 3.1)

DRDUL  The one thing that's been driving me nuts with EyeTV 3.0.1 is the constant prompts to authenticate as an administrator (I run EyeTV from a standard account, as I do with all apps).

I tried changing permissions on the com.elgato.* prefs files, and on a few other files I found in the Application Support folder, but with no luck. I contacted Elgato's tech support, and received the following answer:

Thank you for contacting Elgato Systems.

We are aware of a problem with non-admin accounts and EyeTV 3.0.1. There is a problem with saving a setting to our global preference when quitting out of EyeTV. Hopefully our Engineers will fix the problem soon.

Some of my customers have been able to click Cancel and bypass the admin password entry. Another changed permissions for ~/Library/Preferences so the non-admin accounts had Read/Write permissions.  
(Version 3.0.1)

JON HALL  2.5 caused some problems, but was a workable solution. But the new 3.0 is rubbish.

This is the first time I have been moved to comment negatively on a piece of Mac software: I paid for the upgrade, but it's been nothing but restart, restart, restart because of instability.

Five reasons not to upgrade:

1. DVD Player and EyeTV 3.0 fight for some reason (when EyeTV is recording during DVD Player playback), leading to kernel panics. Duh, restart machine.

2. USB driver code appears to lead to kernel panics all by itself. Duh, restart machine.

3. web access (iPhone) is so flakey as to be useless. Duh, restart EyeTV.

4. export is painfully slow (many days to export some stuff, it might even be that the export function is broken) Duh, restart encoding.

5. many, many spinning beachballs (unbelievable). Duh, restart EyeTV.

Sleak, slow and unworkably poor. EyeEyeEyeTV: stick with 2.5...  
(Version 3.0)

SCOTT4  We have been using EyeTV for about a year know and this has replaced our ReplayTV unit. Although it isn't the perfect DVR solution it is quite well done. Once the computer is up and running, we can do everything from the remote and it is pretty self intuitive. The export to iTunes and/or AppleTV is great and speedy (when you use the Turbo H.264 HD stick).

The new EyeTV iPhone app is wonderful. I can stream live TV, record shows, check schedules and watch recorded shows all from my iPod Touch. I was able to get rid of my Slingbox, thank to the EyeTV app.

My parents have switched their DVR unit over to EyeTV and they have found it very easy to use.  
(Version 3.2.1)

LEO SPILL  I use this app a lot, and have been using it for a long time now.

My only compliant would be that since version three was released,

there has been an annoying USB bug.

On unplugging any attached USB device,

EyeTV closes and I get the channel unavailable notice.

Have to quit and restart EyeTV - Which means I can't use that

pesky USB for anything while recording.

A very frustrating little bug, in what is a very useful Mac tool.  
(Version 3.1.1)

JEAN-DENIS  EyeTV 3.1.1 is now getting better and better. I has almost replaced VLC for watching and recording TV.

The only missing feature now is to support separate settings for aspect ratio and anamorphic video/cropping.

Indeed when you choose for example a 16:9 aspect ratio, it assumes the video is anamorphic. This means there is no way to correctly full screen a letterboxed movie for example.

VLC allows for separate settings there.

But cheers for the Freebox support: it works really well, including support for advanced features such as dual audio channels, and teletext as subtitles, even in recordings.  
(Version 3.1.1)