EyeTV and TitanTV

For my last birthday, I got an EyeTV from Elgato Systems. For those of you not familiar with the product, it’s essentially a TiVo type device for one’s computer. You can record TV shows to watch later, watch live TV (with a small time delay for encoding), and pause live TV (the feature I use most by far).

In order to efficiently use the EyeTV, it’s necessary to have access to some type of TV guide in your computer that allows for channel selection and selection of shows to be recorded. Elgato provided this with an account at TitanTV. This had two limitations: it’s a web based interface and you had to use IE with it. Both of which are something I’m not interested in.

My solution was to use Watson made by Karelia. Instead of some weak web interface, Watson provides a normal application interface to TV Guide. It works perfectly. Using TitanTV drifted from my mind.

Enter EyeTV 1.3.7. This new version of Elgato’s software for the EyeTV adds support for scheduling through TitanTV. What does this mean? It means that you can set up EyeTV to check your set TV recording schedule at TitanTV (hourly, every couple hours, or daily) and record what you’ve chosen. You may wonder why that’s important, particularly because I’m so satisfied with Watson’s handling of this. The point is, TitanTV can be accessed anywhere because it’s got a web interface. You could be looking through the schedule at work, or at a friend’s house, see something you’re going to want to watch and set you EyeTV to record it for you, all without going home! You simply add it to your recording schedule in TitanTV, the EyeTV software will pull in this data, and set itself up to record it for you. Meanwhile, you’re still sitting at your desk. How cool is that?

This may seem completely unimportant for Windows users and for now it is. However, TitanTV’s compatability page makes it seem as though it may just be a matter of time before other PVR (personal video recorder) manufacturers begin to adopt “remote scheduling” and we can all make sure we get to watch the TV we want while still maintaining a healthy social life.