Ghost in the Machine

For any of you using an EyeTV, be wary of its automatic recording checking. This feature will check your TitanTV account for any remote scheduling you’ve done. That sounds well and good. It even works as advertised.

The problem is how persistent it is in trying connect to the site. Current EyeTV users are familiar with a feature that allows one to wake or start up the computer to record a show. Unfortunately, the TitanTV account checking function also uses this mechanism. You may wonder why I would warn about such a thing. Well, if you turn it on to do it hourly, it will start up every hour if it is off. My computer has been keeping me up at night, freaking me out for several nights now.

Any sane, normal person would not consider this correct behavior. Further, even if you set the checking to daily, the time it chooses to check is random, translating into another startup in the middle of the night, even if it was on all day. Obnoxious to say the least.

I wanted to use this feature. I even wrote about it before. Now I’m going to have to turn it on manually when I really want the computer on and checking, turning it off again after, instead of being able to leave it on all the time simply check when I purposely left the computer on. Very poor El Gato! Very poor!