Nothing on the fly. The way I have been doing the h.264 encoding has been via the built in iPod option. The other problem that introduces is that on my Mini with a 1.6 Core Duo, it spends too much CPU time trying to do the encoding and will impact HDTV playback. It needs to set the priority on the encoding to a better level. I'd be happy with an option to just encode in the early hours of the night.

EyeTV does have a bunch of AppleScript commands, so I may tinker with Automater and see what I can do. I haven't poked much at the raw EyeTV files yet, but they seem to be containers with info for the program, then the .mpg file as well. Context clicking them gives you the "show package contents" option.

On the plus side, the program has been properly waking my mac to record when needed. Holding the menu button on the Apple Remote on the Front Row screen will manually sleep it, and I have mine set to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. It does wake up at 5am to backup to my server, and also quit and restart iTunes to trigger it to download new shows from the store or new podcasts.

Overall, the Mini as a PVR seems to be about the same as any other PC solution, it has some rough edges, but can work in the end. The Front Row bonjour sharing of video files works smoothly to my laptop, so I can watch most anything across that. Only thing I don't have is live TV streaming, but I don't mind since I always want to skip commercials anyhow.