I have had an Eye TV Diversity now for a week I bought this unit to run free to air Digital TV and record programs.
I have contacted Elgato but they will not respond with an answer but i would have to say its the worst product ive EVER used.
I will define why i say this and maybe it will help some users decide if they really want to buy one and go through this hell..
Also if Elgato is reading this my Ticket Number is BAM-841208 you could respond even with just a Hi would be nice.

OK I started with buying a new Mac Mini Duo 1.8 I though its well over spec'd for what the site said you needed.
1.)The Mac Mini only had a small Hard Drive so i said to use an external one but that wont work as the Live TV and Recorded programs are recorded the external drive what you end up getting is a choppy picture and the unit says No Signal randomly this is caused by using an external Hard Drive.
Also the signal Level section in the Eye TV app will keep going from 90% down to 10% as far as i can work out the stream is dumped to the Disk of the Eye TV Archive location specified for Recordings it then plays it on the fly if the disk cant keep up its counted as signal loss.
This was a USB 2.0 Disk Chassis with a SATA Hard Drive in it, the site said you can do this it is very wrong the amount of data being accessed is 24Mb/sec for each TV program plus live TV data of another 24Mb/sec, an external SATA disk using a Mac Mini can only 45Mb/sec thats the best i can get with Mac OSX Disk Speed Application i believe you may get faster results with Firewire but USB 2.0 the writeing is very slow VS the reading.
When I changed the Archive location to the Mac Mini Internal SATA disk wow it sat at 90% solid.
It only did it to start at Night time and because at Day Standard Def was being aired at 10Mb/sec it never created a problem but when a 24Mb/sec HD program was running at Night it started doing this

2.) If you keep changing channels as i did for a few days, im a channel flicker you can loose channels.
What i mean by this is I mysteriously lost ABC, for people who dont have Digital ABC have Channels 2 and 22.
When i play Channel 2 i get Channel 10 when I play Channel 22 i get "this channel is not avaliable".
The only way to fix it i could fine was delete all the Eye TV plist files and reinstall all the settings from scratch.
It has done this twice now.

3.) What happens when your in Frontrow ?
When you press the Menu button on your Apple Remote and your machine enters FrontRow the Eye TV Channel you are on is paused to which is starts recording the live tv for a few seconds.
When you click on Video's in Frontrow it starts playing the channel you are were watching on Eye TV in the background of Frontrow you cant see it, but it uses up 37% of the CPU time of my Mac Mini it also uses up Disk Access resulting in a grinding slow FrontRow you also from time to time hear the audio of the Eye TV Channel and the little GUI Eye TV Remote appears on the screen for a second or two.
This happens usally jumping through menus in FrontRow and its annoying.
I worked this out by SSH to my Mac Mini then running "top" and watching what it does.
Elgato have not included an option to just stop playig all Channels in the Menu you have to leave it playing Live TV, you also cannot enter Frontrow with the Apple Remote from the EyeTV Menu the menu button on the Remote control with control the Eye TV menu so you just be watching TV to beable to launch Front Row.
The other option is you close down Eye TV all together using your mouse but for a Home Theater setup this sucks.
Also Elgato have Deleted the "start frontrow" from their EyeTV menu so you cant do that anymore.

4.) Frontrow Quirks when running Eye TV.
because of what is listed above from time to time when you enter Front Row you will hear no noise while launching Front Row this is because the Eye TV applcation has stolen the Audio Output.
You need to back out of Front Row change the Channel in Eye TV you must or if you launch Front Row again it will still have no Audio.
Changing the channel in Eye TV then launching Front Row seems to correct the problem 100% of the time.
When you have no Audio in Front Row this also happens for any Movie you play in your Video's Section.

What does work fantasic is the Program Guide and Ice TV intergration works seemless and I really love the online ability to remote record.
Its to bad its talking to the worst program ever written.

As my partner put it after i pulled out the USB stick from the back its running so fast now in Front Row "you finally removed that infection from the system".
My Front Row i kid you not increased in speed by about 60% its now pretty much instant scrolling.
This didnt happen with Eye TV running, I also dropped the Live TV buffer down to 10MB this causes the unit to start going all choppy in Video Playback it also makes the application Crash with an error 600.
This means you need to get your mouse and reopen the Eye TV application.

I tried this on my Macbook Pro it did the same just incase someone says its Hardware, it is not..

I really hope Elgato release some software update to fix the issues above I would love this Media Center if it worked properly.

I want my money back i feel like i was Conned

Woah...huge post there. Sorry to here of the troubles you are having with your eyeTV diversity. I have one and can say I haven't had any of those issues you describe. Im running it on a Powerbook G4 1.5Ghz.

The only problem I have (and its a (frustrating one at that) is when viewing live TV it will often freeze before going to the 'This channel is currently not available' message. I then have to reopen the viewing window and it works until ... it happens again! It becomes very annoying when it happens at the critical moment of viewing, eg when wathcing sport.

Anyway, that's my only annoyance with the diversity - unfortunately its a regular one and a frustrating one which I hope they can rectify with a future release.

I havent had that one yet
It may be an intel compatablity issue or lack of

that's no good mate...

i assume eyetv 2.3.3 and are you using the included arials? are you using diversity mode or single tuner mode?

your first 2 points look like signal issues even though you think it might be the external HD...

haven't seen your Frontrow issues on a iMac C2D i did for a friend a week back...

Cheers

i used 2.3.3, 2.3.2 anything before that doesnt have the drivers for this device, i've used the interal arials, the roof arial, one connected to the roof and one on the internal arial.
I've used it in diversity mode and dual tuner mode the more bandwidth used in the dual tuner mode makes it worse when it starts streaming two programs
my signal strength on a Sony HD box i have plugged into the same roof socket is a solid 96% signal, its not the signal.
Thats why i though its something else when it was jumping all over the place i though change the location of these recordings it started working properly instantly.

I will also add that its in a living room config so im only using an apple remote to do all this, it would be easier on a desktop machine in agree

would be interesting to try a firewire drive and yes my friend was solely using the apple remote as well...

Maticks, is your external drive formatted as HFS+ or FAT32?

I've been using EyeTV for DTT (stick) for quite a while until I got the EyeTV Diversity last week. So far, both perform well for me. EyeTV Diversity does provide much better reception in my new place (as I no longer have access to roof top antenna).

For me, I use external HDD as buffer space and for recording TV shows, I do not experience such problem at all. Watching live TV or recorded programmes looks good.
However I did notice one thing when I use it on my 24-inch iMac, which should not be EyeTV related. If I use Firewire connection for external HDD, EyeTV might hang from time to time, and I don't experience such problem when I use USB2 connection. Firewire connection works well if I connect to PowerBook G4 instead of iMac (Intel).

This happens to set top box as well.

I've also recently bought a Mac Mini 1.8 and using a Miglia TVDuo.

I'm using a Firewire 400 HDD with good results.. I thought about using a USB one but thought that having the HD and the Tuner both on USB would not be ideal.

I suggest Remote Buddy will allow you to configure some of the options you want to use.. I use a Logitech Harmony Remote to allow me to use 1 remote ( with keys mapped for the FrontRow as well as the EyeTV remote).

Seems to work pretty well but there are some glitches in EyeTV or it's use of OSX.

I've already had Tech Support from Miglia tell me to only use "System Sound Output" as your audio output because of a bug in OSX 10.4.8 that caused a few crashes for me.

I still have the occasional lock up of my Mac Mini.. so I'm still chasing those down. But it's working relatively well.

I must say after buying an Apple wireless keyboard and mouse, I've started using the Mac as a computer on my 50" plasma and it's quite handy ! but if you're trying to do everything via a remote control, it will require more fiddling around.

No out of box dual HD Tuner PVR with all functions yet, but it's a B+

I also have issues with my EyeTV Diversity. Although I found their support to be excellent (if ultimately unhelpful).

I do not have your problems, however I do have the following:

Setup: iMac C2D 2.16ghz, 2GB, 250GB. Using Apple Remote used EyeTV remote until its battery died. Roof antenna + indoor antenna with booster. Diversity mode only.

Problems:

- Only the first scheduled program records. The next in line, no matter what channel it is on, will get a "No Signal" and fail to record. Quitting the application and relaunching immediately makes this channel available and it can be recorded, if you're quick enough to re program the recording. This means I need to restart the application between recordings. No problem, unless they are back to back. But a huge pain in the butt none the less.

- I also have wild fluctuations in Signal Quality, even though Signal Strength stays around 97%. I am using a roof antenna, and a portable indoor antenna that has a signal booster on it, and am operating in Diversity mode. Again, this problem seems to be worse the longer the application has been open, and if for instance I am getting mini drop outs on ABC/ABC2/SBS (my worst stations), then quitting and re-launching the app often rectifies the problem.

Elgato asked for a bunch of plist files and my system profiler info and the numbers off the back of the EyeTV unit. They sent me a pre-release of a newer build of 2.3.3 and also older builds (which as noted do not have the device support). Nothing fixed the problem. They suggested that I return the unit as it may be faulty. However its Prime TV Season at the moment, and its my only TV so that is not an option.

Hopefully if more users contact them about their problems we will get a firmware update or a software fix or something in the future.

I have no problems with front row, or eyeTV's own full screen menu system, even when using the Apple remote. And I too think IceTV and PiMP and brilliant.

interesting i have mine set to digtal audio out so i can get dolby sound which is being aired when i select system sound output it just runs standard audio

interesting.. do you have any USB hard drives plugged in ?
im wondering with some comments about using firewire if maybe thats the source of these issues.
i remember back in the old 10.3 days i had two USB hard drives plugged in and i got all sorts of weird OSX issues when they were plugged in and turned on.
Im wondering if maybe this still happens under 10.4, i fixed it by moving my system to firewire.
anyone know if you can connect a mac mini via firewire to one of those macpower m8 devices they have a hard drive and 4 USB slots on the back and a firewire port.
I wonder if the mac mini is connected by firewire to one of those the seperation from the USB bus might stop my problem..

always HFS+

My feeling is that the USB interface may be the problem. It takes a lot more processing overhead to transfer data over USB than over FireWire. With that said, Intel based Macs should not have to much trouble. I have tested the Diversity with a Mac Mini Core Solo and it had no trouble with multiple HD channels being viewed and recorded using the internal drive.