TVSquad

I got a chance to check out Elgato's EyeTV 2.5.1 last night, and it looks pretty sweet. The Leopard integration is slick, and cover flow for recorded programs looks awesome, as you can tell from the video above.

As I pointed out last week, you can also share videos with friends over iChat and play back videos using Leopard's new Spaces feature.

But one thing I hadn't realized about EyeTV is that the electronic program guide is practically non-existent. Without a doubt, EyeTV is the most popular PVR application for the Mac. But it's missing a feature that's found in pretty much every Windows, Linux, or set top box-based PVR: the ability to record every new episode of a TV series. Right now you can't create a "season pass" for, say, The Simpsons. You have to search for individual episodes and schedule recordings.

That's something the Elgato folks say they plan to address in version 3.0. There are also plans to add place-shifting. Right now you can stream video from your Mac to other devices on your home network. If you've got an iPhone or iPod Touch, for example, you can watch movies over WiFi. But right now there's no way to watch live or recorded TV over the internet with EyeTV. For that, you'd need a Slingbox or other place-shifting piece of hardware.

With EyeTV 2.5.1 fresh out the door, nobody's saying how long it will be before we see EyeTV 3.0. But it looks like the next major release will make EyeTV a killer app. You know, if you have a Mac and a TV tuner.