Table of Contents

  1. My Setup
  2. VLC EyeTV Plugin
  3. Starting your VLC Server
  4. Receiving the Stream on Desktop Computers
  5. Receiving the Stream on AppleTV 4
  6. Summary
  7. Requirements and Downloads

My Setup

Terratec S7

I own a USB Terratec S7 satellite receiver, which is connected to my iMac and I use it to record TV shows and interesting documentaries with the EyeTV application from Elgato. So basically everything that is interesting but not available on streaming platforms or download. EyeTV is the most comfortable TV recorder I’ve ever had. It’s easier and faster to record, cut and export than on any receiver connected to a TV. I mostly never watch LiveTV, except for a few sport events (Skiing and Football). After recording I convert the recordings to a MPEG-4 file with Handbreak and put it on my PLEX server. I then watch it on my AppleTV 4 connected to my 55-inch Samsung TV. The place where the TV is located has only LAN access and no cable. (I would have to buy a sat splitter and lay a cable through the rooms and I don’t think it’s worth it)
But sometimes you want Live TV on your TV. I’ve always asked myself what’s so complicated in just streaming the signal over the network? It’s even included in EyeTV, but it’s highly unintuitive and the quality is terrible. (SD and a very limited bandwith) Why is there no Air Play function in EyeTV?
As all of my local channels in Austria encrypt their signal, just buying a Sat>IP receiver wouldn’t solve the problem. It would be very expensive, require a separate receiver conntected to the TV and a separate CI module + card to decrypt the signal.

VLC EyeTV Plugin

That’s when I came across the VLC EyeTV plugin. I’ve had heard about it a few times but I’ve always found it to be very buggy. It often crashes so that’s why I’ve never used it. But basically it allows you to stream your LiveTV signal over the network (for example via HTTP)

EyeTV Plugin in VLCEyeTV Plugin in VLC
Streaming options in VLCStreaming options in VLC

I experimented a bit with it in the last days and I found out that the plugin suddenly becomes very stable when it in command line mode. No crashing at all.

Starting your VLC Server

Open EyeTV and select the channel you’d like to stream. You should see the LiveTV window.
Open the terminal in OSX and browse to your VLC executable folder and start your server by coping the following command. As VLC on the AppleTV doesn’t support AC3 with 6 channels, you can also use the command in line 5 which transcodes the audio to mpeg audio with 2 channels.

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$ cd /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/
$ ./VLC -I rc -vvv eyetv:// --sout '#standard{access=http,mux=ts,dst=:1234}'

#AC3 -> MpegAudio and 2 Channels 
$ ./VLC -I rc -vvv eyetv:// --sout '#transcode{acodec=mpga,channels=2}:standard{access=http,mux=ts,dst=:1234}'

The terminal window should look like this and the LiveTV window in EyeTV should not be visible anymore. This could last up to 30 seconds until the stream is ready

Receiving the Stream on Desktop Computers

You can now receive the HTTP stream from desktop clients on other devices in your network. I’ve tested it with VLC and MplayerX. Open App, go to File > Open Network and use the URL http://youreyetvstreamingserver.local.:1234

File > Open Network dialog in VLCFile > Open Network dialog in VLC



Live Stream in VLCLive Stream in VLC

Receiving the Stream on AppleTV 4

Go to the App Store and Download the VLC app

Live Stream on TVLive Stream on TV

Summary

We have set up a stream of LiveTV from EyeTV over VLC to the TV. It’s 1080p, almost no delay and absolutely stable in my test via LAN cable. I’m happy and I didn’t have to lay a cable or invest into a receiver. I can also receive encrypted channels, as the decryption is done locally by EyeTV on my iMac. You can also receive this stream simultaneously on various devices. As I haven’t found any other blog entry out there describing this method, I wanted to share this with you.

Requirements and Downloads

On the server:

On the desktop:

  • VLC
  • MplayerX (http://mplayerx.org/)
  • or any other player that is capable of receiving MPEG-2/4 AVC streams

On AppleTV 4 or other other devices