Your desire to change channels using the standard 'swipe' gesture is a logical one, but there are big benefits to doing it the way we do.

The EyeTV app uses the streaming architecture of iPhone OS 3.x. When you start playing a live TV stream, the player you see (and its controls) are part of the OS, not part of our app. Consequently, it's not possible, or desirable, for us to redefine its functionality.

The iPhone's the built-in player gives us these benefits:

• It is hardware accelerated on phones which support it, so you get better quality playback.

• This results in much better battery life compared to apps which implement their own proprietary players.

• As Apple improves the performance and features of the built-in player, EyeTV will automatically get those benefits.

Stewart,

The problems you've experienced aren't at all typical. There are already tens of thousands of people happily using EyeTV on their iPhones without any trouble, so I'm confident you should be able to as well!

Since you're getting bad streaming playback, or none at all, here's a few things to check. ( There is more info at www.elgato.com/iphonehelp )

• There is a known problem with the iPhones where having bluetooth enabled can significantly impair WiFi performance, so you should try it with bluetooth turned off.

• The download speeds of your network is largely irrelevant, it's the upload speed that matters.

• You may not have noticed that there is a setting in the Live TV panel of the iPhone app which lets you adjust the quality/bitrate of the live video, specifically to accommodate slower network connections.

• If you haven't already, you should close the live TV window on the Mac when you're streaming to the phone. This will reduce the amount of work the Mac has to do, especially if you're watching channels which broadcast in H.264 format.

• Also, if you're converting existing recordings at the same time as you're streaming, that could cause some stuttering, except on the fastest Macs (it is a huge load on the Mac, doing compression of two separate videos to H.264 format at once.)

Hope this helps. If not, please let us know. As I said, I'm sure it can work for you.

Mike Evangelist
Elgato

take PC, install TV card on PC, install orb on PC, configure orb to talk to TV card.

now able to stream TV over t'internet to anything that can connect to orb... like my old Nokia 6120c over 3G.

not only that, but orb transcodes video on the fly to accomodate the connection speed and screen size of whatever the attached device happens to be.

but. streaming live video over 3G eats my phone's battery in about 45mins.

even works hopping cells on the train. video pauses and chops up, but audio is rock solid - probably due to fat buffers.

yet again. because a custom application specifically designed to do this same thing - /for the iphone/ - has appeared. it is now the first time anyone has ever tried this? and the best thing since sliced bread?
and it only works over wifi?
and it costs money?

give me a break ffs