On the back of EyeHome you will find from left to right, three connectors for Component video out, an S-Video connector, the normal analog RCA video and audio L-R connectors, an optical out for digital audio, a 10/100 ethernet port and a DC 5 volt power connector. You can only use one video connector at a time or your video quality will suffer. However, you can use the analog and the optical audio outs simultaneously if you want the analog RCAs to go to the TV for instance and the optical audio out to power your home theatre.



Setup
EyeHome is amazingly easy to setup. Once you have attached it to your network and your TV or home theatre, install the EyeHome software on the Macintosh(s) you wish to provide content to your TV room. Now open your system preferences and turn on EyeHome "Media Sharing" and "Personal Web Sharing" in the Sharing preferences. If you are running an OS X firewall open port 8000 to allow EyeHome to communicate with your Macintosh. Next, turn on EyeHome using the remote control and select the Macintosh you wish to display media from. When the computer displays a green button on the TV screen the computer is available. A red button indicates media sharing is not turned on or the computer is unavailable for EyeHome use.



To gain access simply push the "OK" button in the center of the remote. This will take you to the EyeHome main screen.



Using the Remote
From the EyeHome main screen you can select any of the five categories of media you have stored on your Macintosh. Pushing the color coded buttons on the remote will automatically take you to the designated areas as well. It takes some practice getting use to the remote but in a short time you will see how it works. Pushing keys that are not available during certain screens will print an "inactive" to the TV screen. In addition, EyeHome creates an index for fast forwarding of AVI video the first time you push fast forward. You will see the index build in percentage numbers. Fast forwarding with EyeHome is not an exact science as you do not see the footage as you go forward. After a FF you may find you have to hold the PLAY button a few seconds to get it to engage. A 30 second FF button would really be helpful in this situation like Replay and TiVo have. I have also found that the "OK" button is used to start a movie, photo or music playing. You would think the play button would do it but it only works after coming back from pause, FF or rewind. Once you get use to the few quirks of using the remote, you will find the opportunity to play all of your Macintosh media on the TV or Home Theatre a wonderful feature.

EyeHome Preferences
Pushing the little wrench on the lower right side of the remote brings up a tool screen. Press the right button until you get to the wrench on the far right of your lower screen and then press "OK" to get to the EyeHome hardware preferences. You can select to use AC3 5:1 audio with the optical audio out and various screen resolutions. You can also download new firmware updates, set the IP address manually, turn on system sounds, set the time server data and more. With firmware update capability the EyeHome unit has room to grow at the push of a button.

Performance
Several of the media players AMUG has tested in the past have used significant CPU time to accomplish their tasks. I was surprised how little CPU time was used by the EyeHome software to deliver all of the various media types to the TV. The EyeHome was tested using a G5 Dual 2.0 GHz Power Macintosh. The Mac OS X 10.3.2 Activity monitor reported using less than 1% of the processor when the EyeHome media sharing was on but not serving. When playing EyeTV recordings 3% of the CPU was used. When playing .VOB DVD video files up to 4% of the processor was utilized. Playing AIFF audio utilized 3% of the processor. Playing an iPhoto Library with music used as much as 10% of the processor. A 128K stream of internet radio uses 3% of the processor. Internet services take less than 2% of the processor. It appears that Photos streamed with music is the largest processor draw by the EyeHome software. When you consider that "Activity Monitor" uses 2-3% of the processor just to report what usage is being made of the processor, EyeHome performance is amazing. We further tested playing a Movie with EyeHome while we used the same Macintosh Dual G5 for playing all out war running Halo. EyeHome played the movie without Interruption. The small amount of CPU time needed by EyeHome is a very nice feature.

Pros

EyeHome gets 5 AMUGs out of 5!
EyeHome is the product Macintosh users have been waiting for. It allows you to play almost all of your Macintosh computer media on the home theatre and retrieves the files from any Macintosh you designate on the network. The unit is reasonably priced at $250. 10/100 ethernet connections just got a new client. Your Home Theatre. While I have listed several cons above, they would simply be a great update to an already awesome product.

Contact Information:
Elgato Systems LLC
900 Kearny Street Suite 750
San Francisco CA 94133-5145
Phone (415) 391-0310
http://www.elgato.com/

Copyright 2004
Arizona Macintosh Users Group, Inc. (AMUG)
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