Bugs & Fixes: Getting EyeTV Live 3G to work

The major problem you are likely to have with EyeTV Live 3G is getting it set up. The number of options that must be correctly configured is daunting. Making matters worse, the needed documentation is either hard to find or (in a couple of cases) non-existent. The good news is that, after you have everything properly in place, subsequent attempts to use EyeTV Live 3G will go smoothly. Here is a check list of what you need to do:

At this point, you are ready to give EyeTV Live 3G a try. The initial screen asks for an e-mail address and password. Here is where you enter the address and password of your EyeTV account. If all goes well, you at last connect and can stream video from the EyeTV application on your Mac.

In my case, all did not go well. Instead, I was unexpectedly presented with a second Secure Website Log In screen, requesting yet another name and password. My EyeTV account info did not work here. Neither did anything else I tried. I was stumped. I contacted Elgato Technical Support for help. They had the (as yet undocumented) answer:

Back at EyeTV's iPhone Preferences screen, there is a "More Options" button at the bottom. If you click it, a screen drops down. It includes an option to "Require a passcode." As it turned out, I had enabled this option back when I first set up the separate EyeTV iPhone app. It was this passcode that the Secure Log In screen was requesting. The required name is "EyeTV."

After entering the correct name and passcode, I successfully navigated past the Secure Log In. However, ultimate success remained elusive. In what appears to be a bug, I remained stuck at the final "Connecting to" stage. The only way I could avoid this was to disable the passcode option altogether--and try to connect again. This time everything worked.