Latest SnapStream PVR App Reviewed

martensitic writes "Yahoo! posted this positive AP review of the newest version of a third-party PC app designed to compete with TiVo and Microsoft's Media Center. SnapStream 's 'Beyond TV 3' (sounds like something Fox would produce) allows streaming to standard web browsers for watching on other computers in your home, and promotes automatic commercial break recognition that has been downplayed in other products. (Previously mentioned here.)"

Comments

Cool

[TypoNAM]

Well it's good to know we have another Tivo alternative out there. Hey does it easily allow you to copy your recorded shows to your PC too? :)

Re:Cool

[TheApocalypse]

does it easily allow you to copy your recorded shows to your PC too? :)

At first it probably will. Until studios start complaining about it and how it takes away from the sales of the Anna Nicole Show on dvd. It may be just me, but i feel that recording shows onto your computer is no different than recording them on vhs. We pay for cable and the channels, should we not be allowed to make a backup for our enjoyment?

But something like this has probably been debated just like downloading music. It's really a no win situation in both subjects, and for everyone invovled.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh... you run it ON your PC. They're already there in MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 format.

Note: PC Not Included. Some Restrictions May Apply. Ask your doctor if Beyond TV is right for you.

Re:Cool

[ZoneGray]

Considering that what it does is record the shows to an MPEG or WMV file, the answer here would be yes. Even better, it can use third-party capture/encoding cards (WinTV-PVR), so it doesn't even touch the program stream (although it can use software encoding too).

If you record in MPEG2, you can use something like TMPEG to drop it onto a DVD without re-encoding.

What's funny is that the review didn't mention the coolest feature, which is the remote scheduling through snapstream.net. It's just a regular TV listings page, and a free account comes with the software. You can click to record a show, and the PVR checks in every ten minutes or so for additions, and adds them to the schedule. It's just an outbound HTTP connection, so it works through a firewall without exposing anything.

The net result is that if I'm away from home and hear about a show I want to record, I can set it up it in seconds from any web browser on the 'net. Try that with your Tivo.

This was a fairly shaky product in early versions, but it's really developed into something useful. I'd never go back to a VCR.

Re:Cool

[orenmnero]

ummm... ok

Re:Cool

[ZoneGray]

I should have known better than to say that.

Re:Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a free windows alternative. I've been using GB-PVR from http://www.gbpvr.com and have found it much better than snapstream.

It also supports hardware decoders such as the PVR350 and XCard and the Hauppauge MediaMVP client.

If you're trying to setup a Windows based PVR, I strongly recommend you take a look!

Re:Cool

[__aaltii7299]

You could waste your time with a beta build of snapstream. Or even go through installation hell with MythTV.

Or you could just get the excellent Windows based free alternative MyHTPC. MyHTPC is modular and it works, its is also incredibly customizeable.

two questions.

[k_head]

If anybody has one of these I have two questions.

1) Does your PC have to be in the same room as your TV.
2) Does your PC have to have somebody logged in? In other words can it run as a service under W2K.

Thanks is advance.

Re:two questions.

[pineapples10]

1. As long as the PC was a cable connection coming into it, it can record, it requires no TV. If you wanted to, you could put the PC, lets say in the basement, and run cables for video, and one for the IR remote (most IR remotes use common 1/8th audio jacks, so you could get an extension cord rather easily).

2. BTV3 CAN be run as a service. It can also be run in a window, or fullscreen, and can be configured to open on startup as such.

Re:two questions.

[The Slashdotted]

From the article: The software streams to Web browsers, so you don't have to buy another copy for remote viewing. It's fairly simple to enable security so strangers don't have access to your television signal or recordings.

IMHO, this appears to not be for TV sets. It requires a PC for recording, and a PC for viewing. As shareware, it has a 45-day trial, so if you are someone with a capture card and Win, you can see for yourself..Exciting indeed.

OMG!!!1! I karma-whored by RTFA!

Re:two questions.

[Cylix]

In addition, files that have been compressed into divx or some other supported compression screen can be viewed from any pc via a web interface. Yes, you could share the folders out.

The divx compression is nice, as you can /cron/ recorded files to be automatically compressed over night. There are many options for quality of encode as well.

I've been using snapstream trial for a few weeks now. If I manage to get my ide transfer rates up on this godforsaken nforce board I can start working with mythtv.

So, yes due to a lock in currently, I've been happy with snapstream.

Re:two questions.

[Anonymous Coward]

most IR remotes use common 1/8th audio jacks, so you could get an extension cord rather easily

Sorry to AC on you like this, but I've been using IR remotes for 20 or so years, and I've never seen an 1/8th " audio jack on one, nor could I find one on Google. Has anyone else heard of this?

Re:two questions.

[pineapples10]

most people who use this software buy a Hauppauge PVR 250. The IR sensor for this card uses 1/8th connections. I found an image here

http://www.bit-tech.net/images/review/117/3.jpg and here

http://www.bit-tech.net/images/review/117/6.jpg

Re:two questions.

[NanoGator]

Thought I should chime in, here. I used to use Snapstream for capturing shows I wanted to watch. Eventually I replaced it with a Replay. No regrets really, but it was a different animal.

"1) Does your PC have to be in the same room as your TV."

Only if you want to watch on the TV. Watching on the computer was fine for me, though. I went on several business trips, each time I had a bunch of shows queued up ready to watch.

"2) Does your PC have to have somebody logged in? In other words can it run as a service under W2K."

Actually I don't remember. I think it does run as a service, but I wouldn't swear on my soul over it. I had a dedicated machine for it. It's not something you want running while you have a game or something playing. (Maybe if I had a dual proc machine for it...)

Frankly, I think there is room for both a TiVo and a Snapstream (or similar) system. The TiVo is great for catching those shows you definitely want to watch within a few days of capturing it. The Snapstream system, though, was much better for archival of shows. I don't expect many would find that all that interesting, but boy I sure did. When I first got the itch to try it, I found out that Quantum Leap was on at 4pm. DOH! I'm at the office at 4! A couple of weeks after I found that out, I noticed that the reruns would be starting over again from season 1. SWEET. So I set up the machine to record at a respectable data rate, then just let it record. When time permitted, I started watching the episodes in order from the beginning. Could I do that with the Replay? Eh maybe. The thing is, though, I don't have a whole heck of a lot of control over how small the files end up being. With the Snapstream, though, I had it doing roughly 300kbits a second at 320 by 240. A little blocky? Sure. A little blurry? Sure. Worse than VHS? Yeah somewhat. You'd be surprised how quick you get used to it, though, especially when the story's so engaging. I could fit approximately four eps per CD. I had a large hard drive so that wasn't an issue. Before long, I had something like 12 gigs of ALMOST every single episode of Quantum Leap. (Got a hell of a lot of MST3K and Enterprise for a while, too..)

The machine was Win2k. Make all the jokes you like about the stability of Windows, but that thing stayed up an average of 3 months, capturing video all the time. Eventually, though, the sound-driver gave up, and I'd have to reboot the machine. Oh well. Linux it is not, but it was more than acceptable, and I had to do very little fiddling to make everything work.

I wish I still had it today. Unfortunately, I just haven't had time to tinker with it. It'll probably be resurrected before too long, though. I'm finding more and more shows I'd like to watch.

Sorry for rambling here. Just brought up some fond memories here. I hope I can figure out how to get a PC talking to the Digital Cable box so I can enjoy the broader content.

Re:two questions.

[herulach]

I had problems with transfer rates on my Nforce board, (Epox 8RDA+) when i first put gentoo on there. Couldnt get hdparm to turn on DMA access. Turns out id forgotten to compile in support for the right controllers, which i only noticed recently when i changed to kernel 2.6.3

Re:two questions.

[Cylix]

I've been over the kernel configs a thousand times as well.

I simply can't get the damn thing to enable udma.

Trust me, I was good enough to get the sucker to a command prompt. Everyone else whines and complains as it crashes into oblivion /seemingly/ random on boot.

I'm going to go another round with the box here in a few days... wish me luck ;)

Re:two questions.

[herulach]

Digging around in the old kernel configs seems to suggest this as the likely change that got me it working:
Device Drivers ->
ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL Support ->
PCI IDE Chipset Support ->
Generic PCI bus-master DMA Support ->
AMD and Nvidia IDE Support.
THats in the 2.6 Menu config, also, theres an option to turn dma off in my bios, dont know if it would be the same for you. I assume it defaults to on though, be cause windows has never had trouble with using dma on disks.

Re:two questions.

[wolf-]

1) Does your PC have to be in the same room as your TV.

I have the PVR in my office. TV out into a modulator into house antenna wiring allows the PVR to show up as a TV channel on any other tv in the house. Most modulators are around $20 or so at best buy or radio shack. Mine were a bit more, as I wanted to dictate more than channel 3 or 4 as the output.

2) Does your PC have to have somebody logged in? In other words can it run as a service under W2K.

In short, yes.
http://www.snapstream.com/Community/articles /pvs_s ervice/ -- slashdot sucks, fix the space in the link.

Re:two questions.

[wolf-]

Clarify that.
In short, no you dont have to be logged in.

In short, yes it can run as a service.

Re:two questions.

[zirback]

>1) Does your PC have to be in the same room as your TV. No, if you have some tye of networked media device (e.g., MediaMVP or PlayStation2 w/ ethernet adapter and the right software(sold separately)). >2) Does your PC have to have somebody logged in? In other words can it run as a service under W2K. I'm not at home to check this, but I believe the answer is "No". You can run it as a service.

Re:two questions.

[k_head]

Do you know what the range on the IR is? I need it to go far so I am figuring I might need to make my own cable.

Not a direct TiVo competitor

[Anonymous Coward]

You need a pretty good PC to run it, and most people would find a standalone TiVo easier to use.

Re:Not a direct TiVo competitor

[pineapples10]

Anything above 1ghz should run it fine, so long as they have a TV tuner card that supports hardware mpeg 2 encoding. A very popular card is the Hauppauge PVR 250. It retails for about $150. Just to give it some credibility here at /. this card is reccommended by the people at MythTV.

Re:Not a direct TiVo competitor

[_Shorty-dammit]

there's at least one person on the BTV forums that is using a p2-400 or p2-450 in conjunction with a Hauppauge PVR-250 hardware mpeg2 encoder card for recording with. Naturally a faster PC will chew through some of the optional work a lot quicker, but a fairly old machine can still do fine if you have a hardware encoder card. I bought this software because it was the only one with Canadian TV listings, but came to find out it has a wealth of cool features. I love it. I personally have an XP 1700+ in mine, and it takes about 40 minutes to scan a one hour episode for commercial breaks, or SmartChapters as it calls them. And IIRC it takes about 45 minutes to convert the 8Mbps mpeg2 data to 1GB/hour divx. The next version will sport multiple tuner support, so you can record two things at once or watch a live broadcast while recording something else. That'll be nice, I'll be buying a second, if not a third, PVR-250 just to make it a little nicer to use. When v3.5 comes I doubt the thing will ever not be in BTV mode.

Re:Not a direct TiVo competitor

[Thing 1]

And IIRC it takes about 45 minutes to convert the 8Mbps mpeg2 data to 1GB/hour divx.

Are you sure you have your figures right? I own a ReplayTV 2020 (very old, it doesn't even record captions!), and it records about 1 GB per hour. The 20 GB drive it came with was good for 20 hours, and I swapped in an 80 GB drive a few years ago and can now record 80 hours (I rarely need more than that, I've watched a lot less TV since about 2 years after owning it, which seems to be a fairly common occurrence).

Anyway, I'm curious: how many GB per hour are the shows prior to being compressed, if it's compressing them using DIVX to the same size that my ReplayTV stores them in MPEG-2? Are you able to choose the compression settings, and you intentionally set it to the least compression possible? My understanding is DIVX can get you to about 2 hours in half a GB at reasonable quality (that quality being similar to ReplayTV's lowest setting, which is what I save it at, perhaps that's the answer to the above?).

I like that it will be able to support dual tuners, though, as that's something that I've wished the ReplayTV had (sometimes I have to go to Suprnova.org to get the other show when 2 are at the same time; it's a real pain, but it's rare these days because there isn't enough on that I care about).

ATi

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this software different from the ware in ATi all in wonder stuff?

How does this compete with Tivo, I mean it's just software. The hardware still needs to be supplied.

Re:ATi

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty similar to All In Wonder's EAZYLOOK stuff. It has a few more home user type features like commercial skipping, but I found it a bit harder to configure in different ways. ATI's software also lets you use things like MultiView.

Re:ATi

[Asterisk]

ATI's software is only compatible with ATI hardware -- You can't use the Media Center and Eazylook without an All-in-Wonder or a TV wonder card.

And the AIW doesn't have hardware MPEG encoding. I presume you could use SnapStream with an All-in-Wonder card, but the hardware requirements for the PC would be much higher since it'd be using software encoding.

If if I were going to set up an HTPC with SnapStream, I'd probably get a Hauppauge PVR card for video capture and get a cheap 8MB AGP card for VGA.

or you could

[xeeno]

use mythtv for free and install the windows frontend.

Re:or you could

[pineapples10]

yeah, and spend 16 hours just to get fucking XMLtv working right. MYthTV is only designed for uberLinux geeks, its the Holy Grail of impossible installations. Even with KnoppMyth I couldn't get it working...

Re:or you could

[Anonymous Coward]

noob

Re:or you could

[The Vulture]

MythTV used to be a major b*tch to setup, I remember compiling the tarballs, pulling in all of the dependencies by hand, etc. It was quite painful (this was back around 0.9, when I started using it).

However, now that Jarod has put up his excellent website on setting up MythTV with Fedora Core 1, and Axel builds RPMs, it's a no-brainer. And, at least for me in the United States (California), XMLTV hasn't broken in months. And, thanks to the crack programmers, there's an option to check on the status of the last XMLTV grab (and MythTV e-mails you also).

Now of course, if your hardware deviates from the website, then you might have a problem. But, for the most part, it's still pretty easy.

-- Joe

Re:or you could

[Ed Avis]

'apt-get install xmltv' if you use Debian or Red Hat with Axel Thimm's RPMs...

Re:or you could

[rnd()]

do you have any links to the windows frontend? does it require cygwin?

Re:or you could

[geckofiend]

Then you're an idiot. One cab only guess that you never read documentation and never bother searching the mailing list archives.

There's an EXTREMLY detailed walkthrough available at http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/

Re:or you could

[enrico_suave]

did you try a KnoppMyth install or did you roll your own MythTV install?

*shrug* if you haven't tried KnoppMyth, it might help you (if you aren't an uberLinux geek) get over the initial install/dependencies/setup hump... YMMV

e.

Re:or you could

[ncc74656]

yeah, and spend 16 hours just to get fucking XMLtv working right.

16 hours? I'm sure it doesn't take anywhere near that long to emerge xmltv and answer a few simple questions. (Been there, done that.)

Re:or you could

[pineapples10]

a slight exageration, but it was still troublesome...

Re:or you could

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical Linux cop-out. Something doesn't work? Why, just switch to a different distro (a different OS essentially, what with the install, package manager, software availiability, hardware support, interface, management tools, etc), that'll sort you out.

Re:or you could

[wolf-]

Yes, yes. Insult the possible linux convert. Call him names. Show him your maturity...

He at least TRIED it...

Okay this is cool...

[LamerX]

I mean seriously. When you're shitfaced like me, and you s till can understand whats going on on Slashdot, whatever you're readinga bout has to be cool . I mean hell, these guys really know what theya re doing. they've kinda realized the kind of g33k market that wants to buy something like this. i mean it beats the hell out of hte golf channel. but if you do like the golf channel then you can record it on this bitch

.net? fuck that

[way2trivial]

Sorry, went to download the demo- and it started putting .net on my computer.. I'll pass for now.

Beyond TV

[acherrington]

First off, I think that this is a bad post, seems like another slashdot ad.

Second, I have beyond tv 3 and have really enjoy it. I am never home and it records all my tv shows. That way, when I do have time to watch tv, I can skip the commercials (it dog ears the commercials so you can skip forward) and watch only what matters to you.

Even when I am unable to get to my computer, I can break out my treo 600 and program to record any tv show.

The only problem with it is the security model is a bit lax. You can always find people who have their setups wide open (port 8129) on google thanks to the web interface. People really need to starrt locking that down.

Re:Beyond TV

[Cylix]

Shhhhhh...

I want to watch what everyone else is watching...

Re:Beyond TV

[Anonymous Coward]

I forsee another t-shirt making the rounds, "I watch your television."

Re:Beyond TV

[jp10558]

Ok, I'm trying out this beyond TV 3 - and I wondered if this was just my machine or what. Has anyone using it noticed that it tends to jerk every couple of minutes or so?

Or that when timeshifting(pausing live tv) after 30-40 out(with maybe a 15min original difference - to skip commercials) it just locks up on playback?

Also - can you/how do you have it skip commericals on timeshifted live tv? Or does that only work if you record the whole show and watch it later?

Also - if you've paused live tv with it, and then come back and are watching the timeshifted show, and decide you want to save part of it - record what you are currently watching - can you do that?

The record interface seems a little confusing to me, when I tried to record what I was watching instead of just recording from where I pressed the record button until I pressed stop, it popped up a box asking how long I wanted to record for.

Overall, the pausing live TV is great - and it's way more stable than my ASUS DVR 2.5 software that came with my video card, but so far it's no replacement for my VCR for quality or ease of use.

Oh, well, off to buy more VHS tapes.

Re:Beyond TV

[winsk]

You can always find people who have their setups wide open (port 8129)

Dammit, they're all slashdotted!

Re:Beyond TV

[Bobman1235]

First off, I think that this is a bad post, seems like another slashdot ad.

I know this is slightly oftopic, but folks really need to come to terms with what slashdot REALLY is. I know the tagline is "news for nerds. stuff that matters". But it's just a discussion site. It's a forum for people to discuss news, topics, and PRODUCTS which are of interest to nerds. And obviously, with the number of PVR stories on Slashdot and the number of meaningful posts they all get, people are interested. I read slashdot every day because it provides some news, sure, but it also informs me of a lot of products that I would not hear about otherwise. While this may seem like "just another ad," I'm sure a lot of the slashdot community finds it helpful and useful. And if you don't - skip it.

Better yet, it saves shows in a standard format

[deranged unix nut]

I really enjoy my Beyond TV version 3 setup:
WinPVR card, 200 GB hard drive, a DVD burner, and Beyond TV.

It saves the shows in a standard file format, and I can use other software to convert to a more compressed format and archive to DVD. :)

At one point, I had problems with it frequently crashing, but downloading the newest update solved that problem.

I still use my TiVo, but I am slowly switching my TV viewing to the Beyond TV system.

Re:.net? fuck that

[normal_guy]

Do you know what .net is? Why are you afraid of it? It's part of WindowsUpdate, perhaps you'd feel more comfortable getting the framework from that site. Think of it as the newer VB runtimes.

Too bad it sucks

[ninti]

By some amazing coincedence, I tried it today before this story came up in an attempt to find a better alternative than the software that comes with ATI All-in-wonder cards. I deleted it soon after, it is slow and buggy and just doesn't work right. It is even worse than the piece of junk that comes with my ATI card, which I didn't think was possible. Reading the forums on their site makes it clear that unless you have a clean system you have no chance of really getting it working, and even then your odds are low and you are looking at a lot of work.

It is a damn shame, but this is not the Tivo you are looking for.

Re:Too bad it sucks

[Total_Wimp]

By some amazing coincedence I downloaded it earlier in the week. I got everything working alright, but I considered the quality of the video to be quite low.

Then I started playing with the settings...

Bottom line: Mikey likes it. I haven't played with everything yet, but on a very high setting grabbing a recent movie on HBO from my digital cable box the video quality is nearly as good as a DVD. Certainly much better than sending the S-Video directly into my monitor (I have a high-end Mitsubishi).

It's definately worth fiddling with if you want a high-quality feed. It was not and is not pain free, but if you're willing to endure then I believe it will pay off for you.

TW

Re:Too bad it sucks

[pineapples10]

lots of people say that it "runs slow" or "sucks", but in my experience, its usually that people dont have adequate hardware. A lot of people use ATI's All In Wonder cards with this program. While they are great cards, they offer no kind of hardware encoding. thus, anytime you are recording a show, cpu usage skyrockets. Combine this with the fact that people are often VIEWING the show while it is being encoded, you can understand why the cpu gets bogged down and the recording "sucks". A hardware encoding card fixes most peoples problems. The Hauppauge PVR 250 is a common choice, and retails for about $125. It brings cpu usage (while recording) down to about 5% on my 1.2ghz machine.

Re:Too bad it sucks

[ninti]

Well, I do not think that to be true in my case, considering I have 3ghz processor. And it is slow in everything for me; from changing the channel to going from one screen to the next to skipping video. And all of this is without even getting to the recording functions. The program that came with ATI is a lot better on all counts. And considering how bad ATI's software really is compared to a real PVR, that is a very pathetic statement.

I have no doubt some people get it working, but it is far from a commercial grade program from everything I have seen and read. Maybe in another couple of versions, but not now.

Re:Too bad it sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hauppauge PVR is definitely better at encoding with less hiccups while recording. However, this on-board encoding does have a downside: a delay between your live feed and the screen. Now for most people, having to wait a second to change channels is not a big whoop. I find it annoying. What's the worst though is video games. Set up your PS2 to your VCR, which is connected to the card, and your controls are a second ahead of what's going on on the screen. Makes it impossible to play. Hook the audio up to the line-in, and you'll hear exactly how far behind the processing is from the live feed. Or just split the cable to a real TV and put both the computer and the TV on the same channel.

The ATI's software crashed randomly, but the card was on the same level as the live feed. While it sucks for recording, it did have its advantages. Scanning all of my channels in less than a minute is an appreciation only a man can understand. :)

Now I have two cards in my computer for watching TV. :P

Re:Too bad it sucks

[caluml]

By some amazing coincedence you both managed to spell coincidence wrong :)

Commment 1003

Re:Too bad it sucks

[Rob Simpson]

Just out of curiosity, what do you dislike so much about ATI's software? It is a bit cludgy - the guide is a completely separate program, and the default skins for the apps suck. But the only thing that really pisses me off about it is that I can't find a way of using it as a true PVR because a)the guide is extremely difficult to read on a TV at any resolution (though it's great on a monitor) and b)activating the guide while the remote is plugged in brings up Easylook, so all you can see is the TV. So it actually requires a mouse to use.

Re:Too bad it sucks

[garymcg]

If you have a card that does not support hardware encoding and you are previewing the video, simply alter your desktop settings to 16 bit color instead of 32. You'll be amazed at the load it takes off the processor! I was having capture problems until I tried this, now I can capture large Huffyuv files with no problem.

Re:Too bad it sucks

[jp10558]

Does anyone know if the ASUS V9560 Videosuite card does hardware encoding? I can't find any information on their website to indicate whether it does or does not. Also - would it be better to have the temp video files be on the system drive which is ATA 133 7200rpm 2mb cache or to my 7200rpm 8mb cache ATA100 drive that is on an IDE Expander card channel?

Re:Too bad it sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The guide is partially integrated. You can watch TV in the little window while using it, and you do see current program titles while watching the TV.

Re:Too bad it sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't suck! Your fucking ATI videocard is what sucks! Try it with a PVR250 and then try to bitch about it!

Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[pla]

I have to give these guys credit, they have come up with a wonderful idea...

I realize that stable PC-based PVR software has existed for a few years now. But nothing designed for your typical non-geek Windows user. Snapstream has managed to take the idea of "I already have a PC, why should I but a TiVo that basically contains a PC, rather than using what I have" to the mainstream masses.

For anyone who says "just use Myth", you've totally missed the point. I agree, and personally would recommend any geeks use it. But for those who have only heard of Linux from IBM's ads, and who need their nephew to come over every time they accidently change their homepage... This product has a LOT of potential.

And kudos to them for sticking to the idea of end-user rights (at least those comparable to a standard VCR)... Not wavering on the "skip a commercial" feature by calling it something like "30 second advance" or making you activate it by a special hack, they put it right out there as a selling point. And sending the encoded media to any PC on your LAN, rather than requiring you to physically swap out your HDD to get the content off a semi-proprietary box. I sincerely wish them well in their impending string of lawsuits from the MPAA.

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[gabebear]

I think the barrier for the average joe is going to be getting their TV-input cards setup correctly. By the amount of comments here of people who "just couldn't get it working", I'd say I'm right.

I see that SnapStream sells TV-input stuff bundled with their software, but a $160 usb TV-tuner is steep, most people are gonna be using cheapola cards. Requiring a hardware based video compressor would also make sense, not being able to play Doom III because your wife's soap is getting recorded sucks.

Elgato only bundles it's EyeTV(Mac only) software with their hardware. I think EyeTV is better targeted at what an average user can handle and use.

I am a MythTV user

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[SphynxSR]

I will be a mythTV user once I get my TV card to work. I'd blame it on gentoo, but it is mostly my fault it hasn't.

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[TwinkieStix]

Even worse, is the average user trying to get the computer to output to the TV set. Very few people really want to have the family gathered around the computer to watch "The Simpsons". Normally, the computer is in another room, or in a position where running a wire from the TV to the computer would be less that aesthetically pleasing. I know my wife wouldn't have it.

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[pla]

Even worse, is the average user trying to get the computer to output to the TV set.

My livingroom PC goes out to the TV - Really simple setup. I literally just plugged the TV-out into the SVideo port on the TV, and enabled TwinView in the video setup. Nothing more, and it just worked.

Now, I really only use that for dumping Flash content to the TV. But it works just as well for playing DVDs. Though, unless you have a pure DVI card-to-TV connection (currently still fairly rare), only an idiot would use such a setup over a standalone DVD player due to the loss of quality. But for recorded standard TV-quality material, SVideo works just fine, with no noticeable image degradation.

As my biggest annoyance, I have a widescreen HDTV (16:9 480p/720i), but the video card will only send a 4:3 picture. Still, I consider that relatively minor, since virtually everything (other than widescreen DVDs, which I already addressed) uses 4:3 anyway.


Oh, and a free tip to anyone trying to use S-Video based TV-out... Look online for "SVHS" cables, rather than trying to find an actual S-Video cable. Same thing, except you'll pay around $50 for a 12-foot doubly-shielded S-Video cable, compared with $7 (or less... I found one place for $3, but since they only did assorted cables, I didn't need anything else to meet the minimum order) for the same thing under the different name.

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[AO]

I convert the output from the computer to a TV output feed into a modulator, which feeds back into the video stream in the house. DVD, cable box, and VHS are done the same way. Tune any TV in the house to 88 for the computer, 90 for the DVD, 92 for the Cable box, and 94 for the VHS.

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[geckofiend]

With Twinview the card syncs to the refresh rate of the monitor NOT the TV which results in horrid video quality.

I'm curious about the loss of quality you mention in DVDs. I watch DVDs through my Myth box and have zero loss of quality. If you're using HDTV the videos can be upsampled and you can get an even better picture...

As for HDTV, you must be something wrong if you're stuck with a 4:3 picture. If you're in Linux land it's time to learn about modelines. If you're in Widnows land try "Powerstrip".

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[wolf-]

Exactly what we did here.
No reason to buy 3 DVD players, 3 vcrs.

Tried the wireless video distro systems, about 4 of them, none of them were good enough to leave installed here.

By broadcasting back into the antenna wire, we already have an infrastructure for distribution.

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[pla]

I'm curious about the loss of quality you mention in DVDs.

Nothing really bad, but for example, you can't do progressive scan video over anything less than component (which my video card lacks, though I'll admit I really should upgrade to one with DVI), so you'd have to drop the quality to 480i. Still good, I'll grant, but particularly for action sequences or small text, you can easily spot the difference once you know what to look for.


As for HDTV, you must be something wrong if you're stuck with a 4:3 picture. If you're in Linux land it's time to learn about modelines. If you're in Widnows land try "Powerstrip".

Ah, thanks for the tip (my livingroom PC runs Windows) on Powerview. I still don't have 16:9 out, but thanks to Powerview, I at least know the problem involves how Twinview on a GeForce 2 handles the second monitor. The system itself doesn't see the second head, because the card doesn't consider it an actual monitor, just a section of a single display that it maps to the TV-out port. Looks like I have no choice but to upgrade my video card, if I want 16:9 480p out. :-(

Re:Great idea, wish *I'd* thought of it...

[gabebear]

only an idiot would use such a setup over a standalone DVD player due to the loss of quality.

Actually Linux has some very nice solutions to this problem. The loss of quality on most video cards is caused by a number of factors, but mainly it's just because they use cheap hacks to get a NTSC signal from the VGA signal.

Matrox G200/G400 cards are pretty inexpensive and have really nice TV-Out. I have a Geforce4MX and a G200 in my system, both have TV-Out and it's night and day with the picture quality.

A cheap hardware DVD PCI card can get picture quality to rival most anything, although this will cost you a bunch of CPU time. I know a lot of FreeVO people use these cards.

Re:.net? fuck that

[pla]

Think of it as the newer VB runtimes.

Mod parent up. Seriously.

People seem to have all these spooked-out misconceptions about .Net, most of which have no basis in reality.

As the parent (basically) said, you can consider it just a new API for windows, comparable to the VB runtimes or, more accurately, an extention to the idea of "Win32", which includes (as the name would suggest, thought not entirely based on) quite a lot more inbuilt support for network-oriented tasks.

Re:.net? fuck that

[PacoTaco]

I found this cool program the other day, but it needed the C standard library... I'll pass for now.

Re:There's a reason to watch TV on televisions.

[Gsus411]

Which is why you have a video card that can output to a TV. :-)

Re:.net? fuck that

[Phosphor3k]

Makes me wonder if people realize you can get Microsoft's command line C# compiler and all the associated headers and libraries for free(beer, not speech). All you have to do is download the .NET Framework SDK and Platform SDK from http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/. Comes with lots of documentation too.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Cylix]

I had the same gut reaction to .net. Didn't need it for anything else, so why should I be forced to install it now. I'm sure they could do it some other way, but whatever their reasoning... it is what they used.

I'm old at heart and I just got used to VB ;)

The feeling wears off after a few days. Don't worry, it will pass.

Pretty soon, you will crave .net... you needs it... you wants the precious.

Another good one...

[SisyphusShrugged]

I was reading in Maximum PC about Personal Video Station 3, another alternative to Tivo et al. One of the interesting properties of PVS3 was the ability to stream pre-recorded shows over the internet if you wanted to watch your shows on the road, also you could change your programming choices over the internet from the office or otherwise.

It did not mention any automatic advert skipping, although I wonder how efficiently such a feature could be implemented (how would it detect the difference between adverts and shows?)

Re:Another good one...

[_Shorty-dammit]

BTV is PVS actually, v3.4 brought the name change to BeyondTV. After the recording finishes it scans the audio and video looking for coinciding silence and black screens. It works pretty well for me, depends on your signal quality I would imagine. Some report it doesn't work very well for them at all. I've no complaints.

Re:Another good one...

[glitch23]

(how would it detect the difference between adverts and shows?)

Probably the same as anything else does: by noticing the difference in the picture (fade to black when a commercial is coming). Some may even detect a volume change (since commercials come on louder) but that may not happen with all commercials, but you do always get the fade to black though.

Re:Another good one...

[geckofiend]

MythTV does automatic commercial detection and skipping. It uses blank frame and scene change detection, and there's currently a logo detetion mode in the CVS tree. You have the option to automaticly skip marked commcerials, or just notify you of them (so you can hit a button and skip over them). It works suprisingly well on the show I record.

With the built in editor you can convert marked commercials to "cut points" that are honored when you convert your recording to MPEG4 thus saving even more space.

Digital TV? When, dear god, when?

[Op7imus_Prim3]

Why the hell are people not supporting digital TV? It's a veritable goldmine!
The first company to produce decent software that works with all current digital TV cards, even if it's only the dvb-t standard used in Australia, will make a fucking mint.
At the moment people are waiting with baited breath for some decent windows software to come out, and are willing to pay money for it. So why the fuck isn't anybody writing the software?
I'd happily buy this if it supported digital TV, but like most of the other crap on the market, it only works in the US, and only for analogue TV. Somebody please, if you're out there, write some decent software for Australian digital TV tuners!

Re:Digital TV? When, dear god, when?

[The Vulture]

The problem with supporting digital TV is that there is no particular standard for it (at least not in the United States anyway). Secondly, the signal is usually encrypted, and only the digital cable box is meant to descramble it.

MythTV has a half-decent solution, which is to allow you to send a command to your digital cable box, either by serial port (if your digital cable box supports such a thing), or by using an IRBlaster (the solution that TiVo uses, if I understand correctly). Then again, I use two PVR-x50's (one PVR-250, one PVR-350) with analog cable, so this isn't an area that I'm all too familiar with.

Seeing as the software houses that write this software are in the United States, they're most likely to cater to the U.S. audience. Testing non-U.S. equipment would certainly be a challenge (although not impossible).

-- Joe

Re:Digital TV? When, dear god, when?

[gabebear]

EyeTV(Mac only) has a package specifically for DVB-T

http://www.elgato.com/products/eyetv400.html

Re:Digital TV? When, dear god, when?

[Op7imus_Prim3]

It would appear that the american digital TV standard is ATSC's 8VSB . But that may change to DVB-T anyway, which is the standard in Australia and the UK. As for encryption, that only comes into effect if you choose to get your digital from a cable or satellite company which requires the use of a smart card. There is no reason that a PC card can't descramble over the air broadcasts of digital TV. Look here for examples of US digital TV cards.

How you got rated +4 informative is beyond me.

It's amazing how the US still see's itself as the centre of the world and is still bent on adopting a different standard to everyone else when it comes to pretty much anything. Mobile phones, power systems, etc.
There is some perfectly good software being written in Australia but it just happens that it doesn't yet support digital TV either.

Showshifter seems to be the major one thats going with DVB at the moment, and once it supports my card, is probably the one I'll go with.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Joe Tie.]

Think of it as the newer VB runtimes

I thought you were trying to make him less scared :)

Tried it, no-go

[Jafafa Hots]

Tried it with my all-in-wonder radeon 7500...

Very slow and sluggish, glitches while watching tv, and while wathing live TV the sound was totally out of sync.

On top of that the installation fried my ATI TV software so I had to reinstall that. :(

Re:Tried it, no-go

[pineapples10]

how fast was is your processor? You should be able to get it running OK on anything above 1ghz.

Re:Tried it, no-go

[mrjohnson]

Heh. I'm using freevo on a 300Mhz Blue and White Mac. Of course, I'm using a hardware VGA to Composite converter... But hey, my setup uses 0% CPU for watching TV.

If you're looking for an ATI MMC replacement...

[antdude]

then please be sure to read this existing thread for a discussion. For me, I haven't found the best one yet. Even Beyond TV didn't fit my needs. It's getting there, but no payment from me. You can read the posts by me, antdude.

I am currently using ATI's buggy MMC v8.9 for now for my Radeon 9800 All-In-Wonder card. Please post a reply if you know any other PVR software that you know will work with these requirements:

1. Can I install this program with ATI MultiMedia Center (MMC) v8.9 installed? Or do I have to uninstall MMC due to conflicts?

2. Can I watch scheduled TV shows in Timeshifting mode? Basically, I have the recorder program record an hour TV show from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM. I come home, and I already missed the first 15 minutes. I want to be able to jump into the TV show from the beginning (recorded already) and catch up to the live TV feed (include skipping commercials). This is like TiVo. I don't have to wait until the program finishes recording. MMC is annoying without this method.

3. Can I record with captions? ATI's MMC VCR video format can, but not DivX, MPEG-2, etc.

4. Can I watch my recorded shows and Timeshift recordings (in progress) on my TV (TV out fullscreen overlay) and still use my computer on primary screen (monitor)? If so, then can it show captions if available?

5. Is the low volume a problem since I have a SB Live! card? MMC's recording result very low audio volume.

I hope this helps for other ATI Radeon AIW users who are looking for a MMC replacement.

Re:If you're looking for an ATI MMC replacement...

[itsnotme]

I have to ask, but by captions, you mean the closed captioning? I'm not aware of any PVR that can record closed captioning along with the show?

If the MMC v8.9 can do that, then it's up on almost all PVR's I know of.

Re:If you're looking for an ATI MMC replacement...

[antdude]

Sorry, I forgot to say "Closed". Yes. However, MMC only can do that with its format (.VCR).

Re:If you're looking for an ATI MMC replacement...

[itsnotme]

How good is the .VCR format? does the video look any good and how big is the file for a 30 minute show?

Re:If you're looking for an ATI MMC replacement...

[antdude]

I use the high default preset recording setting and record about 1.5 GB at good quality (640x480). It beats VCRs and VHS tapes in terms of quality and colors. I watch most of my recordings on TV and they are very good! Note that I do not have cable TV, satellite TV, and HDTV. I only use local basic channels and rabbit ears. You can customize settings. You can recording in SVCD and DivX formats.

I hope that answers your questions.

Re:If you're looking for an ATI MMC replacement...

[Asterisk]

ATI's VCR format is in fact MPEG2 in a proprietary wrapper, with the closed captions in a text stream.

You can demux the VCR file with the Media Library component of MMC, and get a text file with the captions, which can in turn be used with VobSub to create DVD-style subtitles.

I've managed to capture a few TV shows to VCR format with the captions and convert them to DivX with a subtitles stream.

If you use Graphedit, you can manually stream the Line21 output from your capture card to the DriectShow Line21 decoder and get the closed captions that way.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Jafafa Hots]

Seems to be the latest thing.
Ati's latest TV software also requires it.

And so far they both seem buggy as shit. I reverted back to an old ATI version after no end of trouble.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Anonymous Coward]

I found this cool program the other day, but it needed the C standard library... I'll pass for now.

Hah! King of the One Liners!

Junk.

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen a PC TV card can can output a signal to a television that was worth pissing on.

Re:Junk.

[Gsus411]

Well, that's because the TV has such a crappy resolution. Computer monitors have a much higher resolution. If you are watching video, things look fine. If you are using something like MythTV which is designed to work at TV resolutions, things look good as well.

Great product but some limitations

[seismic]

I've been using the Beyond TV 3 trial version for a week now, it works well and I really like the web interface.

However although it advertises that it can also 'stream live tv' this functionality doesn't work with some very popular PVR cards (the WinTV 250/350 series) that do mpeg2 encoding in hardware.

This functionality is promised for a future version, but its something to consider if you own one of these cards.

Re:Great product but some limitations

[wilpig]

It will stream it if you allow it to transcode over to wmv format. It can't stream the mpeg2 files for now but they are working on it.

Re:Great product but some limitations

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumours abound that when the MPEG-2 streaming is added to BeyondTV, they will also add support for the amazingly cool MediaMVP system. I must say, I hope the rumours are true.

MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[pineapples10]

Many people argue that MythTV is better, but I say to them "How many hours did you spend installing and configuring it?" MythTV could effectively ruin companies like SageTV and Snapstream if they A.) Made it very easy to instal...and I mean easier than KnoppMyth (still a pain in the ass) or B.) GASP ported it to windows!

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[_Shorty-dammit]

the machine I use as my PVR box is still used actively by the significant other, as well as visitors, and consequently will always be a windows box. So that's one strike against MythTV for me. With BTV and a PVR250, and the subsequent 1% CPU usage while recording, the machine still gets used for everything from email to counterstrike while still recording any shows we've set to record. I never gave MythTV a chance for various reasons, but the fact that it would no longer be a functioning windows box for its other uses was a big no go factor.

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[sumdumass]

there are some linux distros out there (like mandrake) that have made the enviroment as easy as windows. you won't be able to run some of the games but with work most of them you can. also for the email and webbrowsing, mandrake is more than suficient along with a host of other availible amusment (cards and board games) myth tv could be something still withing your grasp.

i never used mythtv or this other software so i wouldn't know wich was better. i just wanted to let you know that some linux desktops have matured enough that average users can use it pretty easily. some uses might even like the change if you tell them it is microsofts new buisiness operating system. (amazingly this works).

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[ian mills]

As Issac, the Mythtv maitainer, has stated many times, he has little interest in ruining companies, or indeed increasing mythTV use. He's interested in developing it for his own use, and if other people have useful stuff to add then all the better.

Mythtv is better, but it is also very hard to use, and there is a very good reason for that, it is still in development. Isaac and the rest of the mythtv guys are interested in people using it and providing useful feedback and bug reports, but they have very little interest in people being unable to figure it out and then saying "This software needs to be easier to use."

There is however work being done on windows frontends, however the backend will never be ported, as there is no point, and it would involve a complete rewrite.

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[gabebear]

Odd, when I was looking for PVR software, I only considered Linux based solutions.

I've probably spent way to much time setting up MythTV, but I have some odd requirements. I live on ETSU's campus and getting channel listings was pretty hard, but probably would have been impossible with any other PVR software. Also, I have the frontend running on the TV-out of my video card controlled by a remote while still having a totally seperate monitor for the computer.

MythTV has the slickest web interface I've seen and has a REALLLY nice interface for using on a TV you can navigate easily with a remote.

It's not that difficult to install MythTV as long as you have prepackaged binaries for the distro. The hardest thing you will run into is if your TV-card isn't auto-detected, it's about as idiot proof as it's going to get. I started using it at version 0.9 and it's come a long way since then.

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[geckofiend]

Well it took me around 1.5 hours last install I did. But then again I'm on dialup and had to download a few dependancies that had upgraded since I last buyrnt my apt cache to CD.

A) It's not all that difficult if you use apt-get. If you can't type "apt-get install mythtv-suite" then I guess you're SOL.

B) What would that gain other than pointing and clicking at an icon?

Heck my Wife is capable of following Jarrods guide and installing and she's never used anything BUT windows.

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[horza]

Rather than making me wade through that long paragraph, couldn't you have just written "I run Windows"?

Phillip.

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[pineapples10]

maybe I should be clearer, its not the install of the software that was the biggest pain, it was configuring everything to work with my hardware (1.2ghz Athlon on an Epox 8KTA3+, GeForce MX440 for video out and a Hauppauge 250)

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[Anonymous Coward]

A free windows alternative can be downloaded from http://www.gbpvr.com. I found it much easier to get going than MythTV.

Its still in development, but seems to be progressing very quickly. It even supports hardware decoders like the Hauppauge PVR350 and MediaMVP.

Re:MythTV IS better, but try installing it....

[cesman]

How is KnoppMyth a pain in the ass to install? Did you check the forum out to see it someone else had the same problem(s) you had and how it was solved? Saying it was a pain in the ass without offering examples isn't saying much and does help future releases.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is .net and VB runtimes?

Snapstream?

[ColaMan]

I'll pass, having installed their previous efforts.

And besides, my (here we go again) MythTV box does the same... and also lets me:

- Play my giant MP3/Ogg collection
- Have a slideshow of all the digital photos I've ever taken.
- watch DVD's and rip them if they're any good.
- play about 40G of movies on command,and share them on my local network.
- Have a nice auto-updating weather display, with forecasts and satellite photos.
- Read a bunch of RSS newsfeeds

All of which is accessible from my remote.... and free, if your time is worth nothing ;-)

Seriously, first person who makes a 'standard' mythTV box for under a grand (AUD) will make a killing.

Re:Snapstream?

[pineapples10]

First person who succesfully installs MythTV with full functionality in under 16 hours gets the Nobel prize. Note: Contest excludes KnoppMyth (still a pain in the ass though)

Re:Snapstream?

[ColaMan]

welllll.... I can do a compile/install from CVS now in about an hour... does that count?

What? Dependencies? Databases? ah,crap :-)

Re:Snapstream?

[The Vulture]

Using Jarod's guide (URL in another post), I can setup MythTV from scratch in less than eight hours (assuming the supported hardware from the guide), although I think my last clean installation was four hours. (In fact, I recently did this, as I replaced the hard drive in the MythTV machine).

Then again, I have 3Mbps downstream on my cable modem (thank you, Comcast!), so the downloading doesn't take that long. Using apt-get handles all of the dependencies, and the RPMs are setup with most of the default paths. Also, my hardware is very similar to that of Jarod's.

Where do I collect my Nobel prize?

-- Joe

Re:Snapstream?

[pineapples10]

you say that you've installed it...but how well does it work? Personally, I had a horrible time trying to get everything to work right, it wasn't worth the effort. Tinkering is only fun for so long, after a while you realize that while Open Source may be good in many respects, often for immediate, reliable functionality, with minimal set up time, it is a bad choice. BUT MythTV does make things a helluva lot easier, but still too many problems.

Re:Snapstream?

[ozric99]

And besides, my (here we go again) MythTV box does the same... and also lets me:

- Play my giant MP3/Ogg collection
My Xbox does that.

- Have a slideshow of all the digital photos I've ever taken.
My Xbox does that.

- watch DVD's and rip them if they're any good.
My Xbox does that.

- play about 40G of movies on command,and share them on my local network.
My Xbox does that.

- Have a nice auto-updating weather display, with forecasts and satellite photos.
My Xbox does that.

- Read a bunch of RSS newsfeeds
My Xbox does that.

All of which is accessible from my remote....
My Xbox does that.

and free, if your time is worth nothing ;-)

My Xbox doesn't do that, but it does play Xbox, PSX, Amiga, SNES, N64, Genesis, Arcade, NES etc games... ;-)

Re:Snapstream?

[caluml]

How about an SMS interface so you can program your box remotely? How about live on-demand encoding over GPRS to your phone handset? The next step is all about using your phone to program it, and watch it if you're away.

Re:Snapstream?

[Pig Hogger]

My Xbox does that.
My Xbox does that.
...
My Xbox does that.
My Xbox does that.

For the time being only. But just wait until it's "upgraded"...

Re:Snapstream?

[The Vulture]

My apologies for sounding like a jackass in my previous response... But I must say that my MythTV installation works great.

Now, granted, I don't use all of the features of MythTV, but I use the TV/recording, DVD/VCD playback (MythDVD), weather (MythWeather) and MythGame (for MAME only) modules on a regular basis only, but I have in the past tried out the music and video modules as well.

Like I said in another post, setting up MythTV used to be a real pain, but if you have hardware similar to that which Jarod uses (PVR-x50 for video capture and Nvidia GeForce 4 for TV-out), then you should have very few problems with the setup. Note that I didn't buy hardware that matches his list because he wrote it, but I did lots of research in the mailing list archives. I originally started out with a Matrox G400 for TV-out, and a pair of BT878 capture cards. As I decided I wanted a better picture and better performance, I started replacing hardware. My MythTV machine was basically built from scratch (but that's because the only other CPU I had here wasn't fast enough for software encoding, and the motherboard is a KT133A - known DMA problems with PVR-250 cards).

On the Windows side, you might find that it's easier to build a PVR, due to better driver support, but I think that you'll still run into trouble if you try to just use spare parts and slap something together (unless those spare parts are really good spare parts).

-- Joe

Re:Snapstream?

[Anonymous Coward]

Install MyHTPC or BeyondMedia alongside your BeyondTV install, and you can get all of those functions, so it's not really a big win for MythTV.

MythTV wins at running on slower hardware, though. You need a pretty beefy system to run BeyondTV.

And enjoy the extra cost in utility bills...

[Anonymous Coward]

...over simply just buying a Tivo.

Re:And enjoy the extra cost in utility bills...

[Anonymous Coward]

wtf are you talking about? How would having 1 computer on all the time use up more energy than have 1 computer on and 1 tivo on all the time? Sounds to me like you were just looking for a reason to bash PC based PVRs, and failed miserably.

You may not be too happy

[_Shorty-dammit]

If you are using anything but a hardware mpeg encoder you may not be too happy with its performance. The software mpeg encoder they used isn't that great. The output looks much worse than captures done with, say, virtualdub. Doesn't look like it even comes from the same card. But if you don't mind spending a few bucks (I hear they've been on sale a lot lately for $99US) on a Hauppauge PVR-250 hardware mpeg encoder card I think you'll be very happy with BTV. The encoder it has is definitely its weak point.

Re:You may not be too happy

[pineapples10]

i'll second this...PVR 250 all the way. You can buy the PVR 250 bundled with BTV3 for $170..pretty good deal when you consider the software is usually $80 and the PVR250 usualt goes for around $150.

Re:You may not be too happy

[ZoneGray]

I'll second that emotion. When I finally got a PVR 250, CPU usage during recordings went from 100% to about 5%. (P4-1.7/256MB RAM)

Also, Happauge's MPEG2 streams drop straight onto DVD, whereas ATI's had some compatibility issues.

Re:.net? fuck that

[NanoGator]

"Sorry, went to download the demo- and it started putting .net on my computer.. I'll pass for now. "

Yeah! Billy's getting his tentacles everywhere! Well not HERE!!

There, that should recover some of my karma lost for that untimely Mac joke I made earlier.

Cutting ads out...

[innerweb]

My only thought is about cutting the advertisements out. Having worked with marketing so much, and having a small amount of experience working with a cable franchise and how marketing revenues lowers people's monthly costs... What will the users of these products do when the content providers start raising the prices of the content to cover the cost no longer covered by marketing companies that see these as lost advertising dollars.

Seriously, the numbers are not high enough now to have that effect, but can you imagine having to pay for every channel the same way you do for HBO and Showtime? Or, maybe the marketing people will become more savvy and include marketing in a way we can not skip over. Like web pages with embedded marketing (product placement)...

This is more interesting to me than the ability to save the movies in the first place. The question in the end for the business, is where does the money come from. These machines change that dynamic. What are /.s willing to put up with in terms of advertising that would not be deletable to continue to have TV that is "end-viewer" discounted. Since the reality is that the ad dollars are paid for when you purchase the products, could the masses have the vision to see moving those dollars from product purchases to content and delivery fees?

InnerWeb

Re:Cutting ads out...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to pay more for cable because there are fewer commercials, you will also pay less for everything you buy. Marketing isn't cheap. It takes big bucks to pull off an ad campaign and it is you who ends up paying for the creation of ads. The money has to come from somewhere-- it's subsidized by additional costs added to goods you buy. Fewer ads means fewer hidden costs, which means lower price, and that is a good thing.

Re:Cutting ads out...

[Libraryman]

Seriously, the numbers are not high enough now to have that effect, but can you imagine having to pay for every channel the same way you do for HBO and Showtime?

That would be FANTASTIC!! I don't want HGTV. I don't want Spike TV. I don't want Fox News. AND I DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR THEM!

I want to subscribe to the fewer than 10 channels I actually watch, and pay only for them. Instead I have to pay for 150 channels of garbage to get the 10 I want, and then program my TV to skip all the rest.

Tivo is a step toward video-on-demand, but paying for channels ala carte would be too.

Re:Cutting ads out...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all nice and altrustic but when was the last time a company lowered their product prices because their costs went down? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Re:Cutting ads out...

[ml10422]

TV commercials are mostly annoying, but they did contribute a bit to pop culture. I've noticed that jokes and other conversational references to TV commercials go right over the heads of my friends who have a Tivo. Their (admittedly minor) loss.

Re:Cutting ads out...

[Bitsy Boffin]

Ahahahahahahahaha, ahahahahahahahaha, hahahahahahaha, bwahahahahahahahaa, oh man, companies lowering prices, ahahahahahahaha... I havn't laughed so hard in years.

Re:Cutting ads out...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah! We see the so-far unproven theory of deregulation...

Thanks a lot, conservatives.

Re:Cutting ads out...

[innerweb]

I would love to be able to agree with you, but I can not. Problem is that marketing is a nescesary cost of business. If people do not know about your product, they can not buy it. So, until we all can know about all products all the time, there is not a chance that marketing will go away or get cheaper. Even then, I doubt marketing will go away since the companies need spin control on the products they sell.

InnerWeb

Free solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know about myth tv and similar software but i am in search of free software that like beyond tv would allow me to stream live video to other computers while allowing me to change channels. I have yet to find any solution. I checked out the now dead(?) VideoLAN but couldnt find anything about the remote(computer) changing of channels in the docs. Help please.
David

TUNER .... UR the weakest link

[Anonymous Coward]

A good IR blaster would replace the tuner. I looked a few months ago and couldn't find a IR Blaster compatible with DISH TV.

I can't imagine anyone with a PVR setup like this running a system off of rabbit ears. All the cable systems in our region are moving desired programming to channel numbers greater than 125 as a move to force those customers to convert to cable boxes.

I might try to build a universal button pusher out of Lego Mindstorms so i can finally take control of my sat dish system.

It just boggles my mind that I can buy a Universal Remote from Radio Shack for under $10 ATI doesn't provide one with their cards.

Re:.net? fuck that

[prockcore]

I found this cool TiVo replacement just 5 minutes ago, but it needed a computer... I'll pass for now.

strangers having access

[scubacuda]

From the article:

It's fairly simple to enable security so strangers don't have access to your television signal or recordings.

Oh dear, we mustn't let others have access to free media.

Warning for PowerVCR users

[X86Daddy]

I was using Cyberlink PowerVCR II for a while, as it came with my capture card... I had tried demos of Snapstream PVS in the past, and decided to have a look at BeyondTV...

It worked so-so with my capture card, but I wasn't too impressed with how it did MPEG formats. I decided to uninstall. From then onward, PowerVCR never worked again... it would begin a recording and freeze the entire machine within a minute. I've yet to bother re-imaging the machine, and just switched to WinDVR instead.

BeyondTV is the most polished PVR windows product I've seen, but something about it or its leftovers was dirty and didn't play well with PowerVCR. YMMV.

Tvtime + VCR

[xchino]

For those of us who use our desktops as a PVR instead of dedicating a machine to it, I highly recommend a TvTime and vcr combination under Linux. MythTV is a overkill for my needs. TvTime is hands down the best tv viewing program, IMO, and there are web frontends for vcr to make scheduling recordings as snap. There are some features lacking in this setup that a normal PVR system would have, such as live rewind and such, but I think there's alot of people going through way more trouble than they need to because they don't know there's any other way..

Re:.net? fuck that

[ColaMan]

something about a 22MB download vs a meg or so for VB6 runtimes worries me....

Re:.net? fuck that

[sumdumass]

Well one of the spooked feelings about .NET is all the open ended advertiseing microsoft has been doing. When .NET was first comming around it was this great, can do anythign better and more secure buzz, running around from the microsoft websites, advertisements, and even competitors. They even described it as a programing enviroment simular to java and then say it is so much more capable. (of doing what i'm not sure) It wasn't untill recently i discovered it was basically an extention of c# with security in mind (i know thats over simplifying it)

The point is that when microsoft talks about anythign new that seems unpopular they try to link it to .NET. from drm, rites management to aplications authenification and more. they touted >net for a while as being the new microsoft passport were you had on app with one password that stored all your information to make transactions, logins or secure whatever easier on the internet.

In short people are scared of .NET because it is supposed to be so many different things (as presented by microsoft) but know one actually know what. Most users won't be able to read thrru the hype they use to build stock prices up or talk a companie into bying it. instead they are left with this "i'm not sure what it does but sounds like it could cause problem" additude. some of these problem being with haveing only one cd of a game and playing it on more than one computrer in your house. we already know that most microsoft products phone home but don't know what is sent. so there is the reason people are scared about .NET

Re:.net? fuck that

[olderchurch]

I always compare the .Net to a Java virtual machine. I found that this page explains a lot about where the .Net environment fits into the operating system, especially the picture (i love pictures!).

Beyond Media in beta

[AIX-Hood]

I've been using Beyond TV for quite some time now and have been in their beta program for more than 2 years. It's truly amazing how far their product has come and it's inspiring to see how close a relationship they keep with their customers. It's true, software encoding mpeg will always be a dog because of it's nature. All of you without hardware encoding like the ATI boards, you're pretty much out of luck, be it with Beyond TV or Myth or whatever. These products only shine with 2-3% cpu usage when you start using PVR-250's etc. To even things up with Myth TV btw, Snapstream is now in beta mode for Beyond Media. This is a super slicked interface for all your music, photos, slideshows, 80 gazillion gigs of mp3's and movies.. you name it, it can do it with very nice graphics. So, to sum up, they're listening and making good at lightning speed on the wishes of their customers. I've paid a total of 90 bucks and have gotten more than 2 years worth of updates and new versions without any additional costs. In the last year, they got very serious about their product (probably got big investment capital) and people who didn't like old versions owe it to themselves to give it another try. It's a totally different product at this point.

Re:Beyond Media in beta

[cookiej]

OK. I really have to take issue with this. I've become somewhat embroiled a similar discussion in the BeyondTV forum.

" ... It's true, software encoding mpeg will always be a dog because of it's nature. ... "

Is it me, or is this total crap? The apparent thinking coming from the Beyond TV faction is pretty much summed up above. Well, the truth is that there are many software-based encoders that work JUST FINE and it's sad that Snapstream doesn't have one of them. To make the statement that hardware encoding will always be better just because Snapstream doesn't have the code chops (or the licensing $$) to pull it off is pathetic. Right now, I'd have to concede that real-time hardware-based encoding is superior. Let's see what happens when the 64-bit processors get some legs.

What I read from your statement is that a dedicated card for processing will always be better at encoding, regardless of RAM and processor power? So in two years, when I upgrade my motherboard to the 10Gz P7EE and .5T memory (pause... mmmm Terabytes...), you're saying that the PVR-250 I buy today will still outperform any software decoder I run on it??

I remember back in the day when people used to say the same crap about MPEG players -- that a hardware based decoder would always be faster than a software-based one. Usually it was someone who had a stake in my purchasing one. What's funny is that the DVB issue mentioned above is much more easily addressed via a software-based solution.

When you upgrade your PC, you gain overall improvement across the board, not just for a single app. I was using Showshifter with moderate quality running 1Ghz P4. I swapped out the motherboard on my HTPC and am now running an AMD 2800+ with 1Ghz RAM. Then I tuned Showshifter to record at a higher quality.

My point is that this song has been heard before -- don't listen. And as for Snapstream, quit the crap and write (or rewrite) what you have to to at least come close to the PQ of comparable products. Maybe buy-out|merge|be-purchased-by the guys at Showshifter. If you could take your interface and features with their backend support for encoding/decoding (minus the vice-grip it likes to take with the system), you guys would kill the market.

Re:Beyond Media in beta

[AIX-Hood]

"you're saying that the PVR-250 I buy today will still outperform any software decoder I run on it??" Actually, yes. Hell, once we get those 3 billion gigaflops chips, we'll REALLY be able to do 3D gaming like no tomorrow! Notice how Tivo also has entirely hardware chip based encoding and decoding? Sometimes the most efficient way of doing something is just having a dedicated piece of hardware who's sole purpose is that task By your mentality nobody would have 3d graphics accelerators either. The biggest problem here is not mpeg encoding, but _realtime_ mpeg encoding. If you hang around the PVR boards long enough, you'll see that everyone's always using their old spare machine as their PVR, not their new 8ghz 64-bit processor machine like you're mentioning. Using a PVR-250 etc makes otherwise feeble machines into a tv recording powerhouse. I still can't believe that people gripe and complain so much over a part that you can get on ebay for 70 bucks, and that gives stellar and reliable performance no matter what application drives it. No matter how much CPU power I've got, I want it doing my primary tasks; not being whittled away at doing background stuff like recording tv.

Re:Beyond Media in beta

[cookiej]

I'll definitely give you one point here -- if you indeed only use it to record TV, then use a crappy machine for your TIVO and move on.

But. For those of use who use our machines for Home-theater type applications (a main market for Snapstream, I believe) we'd like it to multifunction. Hell, if I felt the way you do, I'd just BUY that TIVO and be done with it. I mean, if I've got to buy dedicated hardware anyway, why waste all the configuration time and energy? The tradeoffs (not having to pay monthly.. yet) begin to outweigh the benefits.

And my primary argument stands. There are other very reasonable software alternatives that may not be up to dedicated hardware standards but are excellent for casual viewing of NTSC programming. And since my machine is dedicated to HT stuff, I don't mind it spending a few cycles on recording when necessary.

Now. BTV is $79 for the software. The "deal" from Snapstream is $179 for software and hardware. You wanna talk Ebay? I just watched moments ago when a 60 hour Tivo went for $170.

They've got others out there with Lifetime Subscription for $300.

It's one thing to install and configure new software that I can update and improve as time goes on. It's another to have to crack the case and install a new piece of hardware, effectively dropping anchor on the technology.

I've got a good sound card that is showing its age. I've got a decent video card that is showing its age. My MB and processor are showing their age. I upgrade those things like, maybe once every two-three years (different parts at different times) depending on fiscal realities and application needs (i.e. games I want to play.) The key is that they all contribute across the board to all the applications I run on the HTPC. I upgrade software much more than that. I went to XP. I upgraded Showshitter. I recently got (bartered for some interface coding) a new Pronto. I've gone through several WinDVD upgrades and have one pending.

Maybe it's just me, but I find it much harder to achieve hardware balance than software balance. I mean, getting everything to work together requires rebooting repeatedly -- making sure BIOS settings are correct.

And please -- don't bring 3D accelerators into this. They aren't dedicated to a single app -- they perform a basic function within the system. You're asking me to buy hardware to support a single application, which just seems wrong when there is so much out there that can do a great job of it.

Re:Beyond Media in beta

[AIX-Hood]

"It's another to have to crack the case and install a new piece of hardware..." Your above statement begs the question, WTF are you doing on slashdot?

Re:Beyond Media in beta

[cookiej]

Heh. Some of us are software engineers and do the building as a hobby. My issue is that my HTPC is no longer my hobby machine and used by my wife as well--she's just not as enthused as I am when I take it down to install a new piece of hardware...

(insert "You insensitive clod!" wherever appropriate)

Showshifter does DVB on Windows

[milkki]

I understand you are not willing to go with Linux and VDR, the ultimate DVB set-top-box software, but don't loose hope. Showshifter is very similar to Snapstream and supports DVB. I did a quick search on the bulletin board and it seems that there are people using Showshifter on DVB-T in Australia. With a Technotrend (or similar) card you should be set.

-milkki

Record programming

[Desdinova_NJ]

I have been palying with for a week or so now. Works pretty well, what really sold me on it is when you selecta show to record you can set it to record new shows but skip reruns

bill...

[BlackShirt]

... so how much do you pay for electricity?

tivo vs ordinary pc running beyond tv vs linux PVR? is it significant?

Yesterday, actually

[DSCreat]

Here is a not-so-short list of software for DVB cards (I guess some of those also support the DVB-T flavor and implement timeshifting). Some of those are free, and some cost money. It seems that the most popular one now is ProgDVB.

Re:.net? fuck that

[tftp]

anythign new that seems unpopular they try to link it to .NET. from drm, rites management

I can understand why rites management may be not welcomed in certain circles :-)

Re:.net? fuck that

[Anonymous Coward]

a tivo replacement that needs windows? i'll pass for now... or better, forever...

Recommended Settings

[Anonymous Coward]

Beyond TV requires a lot of fiddling in order for it to work properly. The settings which produce the clearest picture are not those you would guess. In order to stream you need to stay with WMV, which is software-based. So to reduce the CPU problem (video is like no load factor you have ever seen), the first thing to do is to reduce the number of dots and frames you are sending. This will actually result in a better encoding. An analog NTSC broadcast is rarely more than 320x200, usually it is much less than that. You'd be surprised how clear 320x200 or even 180x120 look full-screen. Also bear in mind that with cable or DSL you are unlikely to have more than 150Kbps of uplink capacity, so if you want to stream TV shows from home to your office at lunch hour, you have to settle for the maximum upload speed of your home connection.

Try this:

Windows Media V7 codec
180x120
15fps
50% quality
video 130Kbps
audio 20Kbps

Another suggestion is that in order to view streams on demand, all you need to do is construct a URL of the form:

mms://ipaddress/videofolder/showname-yyyy-mm-dd- n. wmv

I installed an FTP server on the Windows box then wrote a web page that made an FTP connection to the box to create a list of filename-based URLs for on-demand streaming. You get this for free from Windows Media after Beyond TV has created the WMV files in the video folder you specify during setup.

I encourage patience, video is a cruel mistress but the rewards of persistence are great.

here's a more compelling article

[The Lynxpro]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=17 38&ncid=1738&e=9&u=/zd/20040305/tc_zd/1209 74

Like the author of this pondering, I would prefer to see Apple make a media-centric Mac with the same footprint as most component consumer electronics items like DVD players and tuners. It would be awesome. Stack it and place it in your components cabinet (hopefully an open aired one for good ventilation). The machine would hook up to your plasma or HDTV. That's the problem with Windows Media Center PC's. They do not complement an audio/videophile's components. By using the plasma and/or the HDTV screen, the Media Mac would take charge of all the other devices yet it would still retain the media-ness of the whole system. To have iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD along with timeshifting in your living room with the help of a wireless mouse, keyboard, and friendly remote control would simply rock.

Re:There's a reason to watch TV on televisions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, Zenith and the ilk will still get my dollars.

Zenith?! The first big maker that comes to your mind is Zenith? Now who's living in 1974?

This looks great

[fatwreckfan]

I've wanted to get SnapStream's software for quite a while now, but unfortunately it seems that Leadtek the manufacturer of my tuner card (a Winfast 2000 XP) refuses to work with SnapStream to resolve compatability issues. The WinFast software is horribly buggy and generally poorly designed, so I'm frustrated, to say the least.

Once I have the money I'm going to buy one of the SnapStream bundles and get rid of this card for good. My recommendation is don't buy Leadtek.

All this work

[SomeOtherGuy]

I have recentlly gotten back into the "Record TV to PC" world lately. The most ironic thing is that I worked so long getting all the CAT5 cable to go away by creating a completlly wireless LAN...Just in time to have a big fat TV Cable sticking out of the back of all my machines.

This software is crap

[CG4279]

Snapstream, BTV, or whatever they want to call it this week is crap. After paying $60 for it, no less than FOUR times in the past two months, it has reverted to the 'trial' version (expired, of course), which in turn caused it to delete my recording schedule, and fail to record what I had set up.

Why did this happen? Because Snapstream's servers went offline. That's right, if the software can't 'phone home' (even when it's THEIR FAULT), you are automatically considered a pirate, and your BOUGHT AND PAID FOR software stops working.

Supposedly, they're 'fixing' it, but they've been doing that since the first time it happened back in December. It's not going to stop 'checking in', only that if it can't connect it won't revert to a useless expired trial.

And forget about 'official' support. They do have forums with some very knowledgeable people (users), but if you want to get a response from anyone officially connected with Snapstream, you'll be waiting forever (if you're lucky enough to get EVER get a response).

Putting all that behind for a minute, the software is buggy (sometime just forgets to record, blue-screens for no reason, jittery recording and playback). Of course, the first thing they'll blame is your hardware, or other software you have installed. The same, exact system (which exceeds their recommended hardware specs considerably) has no trouble running other apps like SageTV or myHTPC with the TV plugin.

Bottom line, there is VERY little positive to offset all of the bugs, and I have a serious problem paying for software that is rendered useless whenever their servers crash.

Re:This software is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

route add -p 64.9.150.134 mask 255.255.255.255 some.invalid.ip.address

It'll never unregister itself again.

SageTV -- an alternative to TIVO and BeyondTV

[dragon_imp]

I investigated the alternatives a few months ago, and picked Frey Technologies' SageTV ( http://www.sage.tv ) over Snapstream's BeyondTV.

Features I liked in SageTV:
1) uses TV cards with hardware encoding cards only. Cards using software encoding need not apply.
2) low CPU requirements, since the the encoding is done by the video card.
3) handles multiple TV tuner cards automatically -- I use two Hauppauge PVR-250 cards. BeyondTV supports only one card. (The wildest SageTV setup I've read about included two PVR-250s, one PVR-350, four of a USB variety and one ATI E-Home Wonder.)
4) free TV schedule/guide. They use Zap2It for those, and I was already using www.zap2it.com for my TV watching plans.
5) ability to use directories across the network for recording or serving shows
6) ability to stream mpeg2 video to a SageClient on another PC. (BeyondTV can't stream mpeg2 -- either record in a Windows Media format or spend your time decoding/re-encoding to make a copy you can stream!)
7) ability to watch live TV, effectively as if it was already a complete recording (start late, jump around, etc). BeyondTV does this if you record in mpeg2, but it can't stream that file to another machine!
8) ability to automatically control SageRecorder (optional related program) on another networked PC that has its own TV card.
9) full-featured, time-limited trial versions of SageTV, SageRecorder and SageClient.
10) does not require or use .Net
11) does not require DirectX9
12) open beta program -- beta installs over any registered copy.

The most commonly used card is the Hauppauge PVR-250. SageTV has out-of-the-box support for Hauppauge and another remote, and support for third-party IR receivers.

While I write this, I'm watching mpeg2 video streamed to a window to this 650MHz notebook. SageClient is the remote client version, which receives and displays the streamed mpeg2 shows and also lets you control the recording schedule remotely.

I'll stick to my DirecTiVo

[britrock]

Sounds like a decent product, but I think anyone who says it is better than tivo is just flat out wrong. First of all, its not a device. I don't want to sit in front of my PC to watch tv, and I don't want to have to run a wire from my PC to my TV. Also, because its not a device, it requires your PC to be running the stuff all the time. Thats fine if you buy a PC just for using as a PVR, but that takes away your argument that its cheaper. A tivio is MUCH cheaper than buying another PC. With my tivo, I went to the store, picked it up, came home, plugged in a few cables, and it just works. No fuss at all. I didn't have to bother with any hardware, and I didn't have to install any software. Its just ready to go. Thats a beautiful thing. Now, this "Skip ads" feature that is supposed to be so wonderful... I may be wrong, but after reading up on it, it sounds like it takes a long time for it to figure out what is a comercial and what isn't. Honestly, its pretty damn simple to hit fast forward on the tivo, and then to hit play again. I never watch commercials, but yes, I do have to push 2 buttons. There is one more reason that nothing will replace my DirecTiVo. Dual built in DirecTV receivers. With my tivo I can record 2 things at once, and I get FULL quality. NOTHING else does digital recording, and as far as I know the only other software that allows recording of multiple streams is MythTV. To do what I am doing with MythTV would require me to have two capture cards with hardware encoding, two directv receivers that can be controled via serial cable, and it would still not be digitial.

As a customer and user...mixed feelings...

[wolf-]

As a PAID customer of the 3.x series, I am impatiently waiting for fixes that will resolve the application crashing on some systems.

If you are thinking about buying, take the time to read the user forums on snapstream.com.

The end user helping end user support has been considerably better than the official answers in some cases.

I wanted the new features of 3.4.
I ended up reverting to 3.3 to have the system work. 3.3 runs with no problems. Love the program.

My concern is that currently a released version (3.4) filled with problems and the company's answer is "want to try the beta of 3.5?"

No, I do NOT want to try a beta on my dedicated video server to resolve the problems in your RELEASED application.

-------------

That all being said:

Athlon 1.4
1 GB RAM
Windows XP SP1
Nvidia FX 5200
ATI TV Wonder
200 gb of storage
Snapstream 3.3

The ATI does the capturing with the NVidia handling the TV/Out. The output is run into a modulator that allows me to feed the media server into any tv connected to the antenna wire on channel 4. I have ripped all of our DVDs to xvids, so the kids no longer get an opportunity to scratch them up. Drop them into one of the directories that Snapstream knows about, and they are available for the kids to watch on demand.

I really like the ability to set up recordings from the road. Using the web interface and coming back into the system from a remote location lets me check recordings, setup new recordings, and even download/watch recordings.

During the Womans World Cup last fall, my daughter and I were in DC for 6 games. We took a side trip to Philly for 2 games. At the time I was playing with the 3.1 or 3.2 trial version. We would hit a wifi hotspot in the evenings, eat some dinner while we downloaded games that we had recording from other venues.

System will also allow you to watch a live stream through the web interface. My father who is overseas, occasionally wants to watch sporting events or other shows. He comes in, sets up an event, and watches.

I'm not regretting buying the application. The version I thought I was buying didnt work as promised. The previous version DOES run as promised, so it is functioning quite well for me.

missed some things

[cosmol]

Your xbox can also run the frontend for myth.

My myth box can also play emulated games

Re:.net? funk dat

[lingenfr]

Just when it seems the world is going to hell in a handbasket and everything is changing.... Come to \. where any discussion topic migrates to M$ bashing. I love you guys.

Someone mentioned KnoppixMyth earlier and I went a googlin'. No such thing, but there is KnoppMyth and you can find it here.

My Experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I just installed Beyond TV 3 on my Windows XP machine last night after reading the /. review. At first the app seemed pretty cool, easy to install (except for having to install the .NET Framework). It automatically found my cheap-o $40 dollar capture card and scanned all the channels. One thing I did really like was the channel guide, and how easy it is (or appears to be) to record any program of your choice. Thats when the problems started happening. Right when I tried to record a TV show, the program crashed on me. So I try to reload, crashes twice. So I reboot, and it keeps on crashing before or when it gets to the main screen. So that was my experience with Beyond TV 3. Maybe I will try it again, maybe wait for a new version, I don't know. I just didn't feel like troubleshooting/reinstalling it all night when I feel it should work fine on its own.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Seek_1]

I honestly don't see what the hell people are complaining about.

From the end-user's perspective there really isn't all that much of a different between the .Net Framework and the Java Runtime Environment. (Note that I said from the user's perspective so don't go flaming me with tech-centric comments, I know what the differences are!!).

The .Net Framework is 22Mb.
Sun's JRE clocks in at 15Mb.

The JRE is bundled with most PCs in some form or another, or it's required for alot things normal users do (ie Applets etc). The framework itself may be 22Megs, but that's it. It's not like it's consuming massive amounts of PC resources. Once it's on you don't have to worry about it.

I really don't see what the big deal is with some people being 'scared' to simply install another framework for running applications.

Re:You may not be too happy...or you might

[edgezone]

Actually, I have an Athlon XP 2000+ w/ an AIW 7500 running in my living room 24/7. I'm quite happy with it (not too much worse then my PVR250 setup on my main computer). I record in close to good quality (it's nice how you can modify the bitrates and resolutions to maximize the capture quality to CPU utilization ratio). I use it ALL the time, having probably hundreds of things saved at any given time (even with deleting as I watch).

I had tried to get linux set up as a living room PC, but it was just taking too long compared to the Windows setup. Yeah, I know I could do it eventually, if I did the research into it, but considering BeyondTV did EVERYTHING I expected from it, I didn't feel it was worth the time. I'll figure out MythTV one of these days on my main PC now that I have a PVR250 instead of a Personal Cinema, but it's just a matter of time to get the drivers configured and all the other fun linux stuff.

Honestly, I think BeyondTV rocks. I have my Livingroom PC boot directly into a user account configured to start BTV in full screen mode. I use the ATI remote (awesome!) with girder (if you need the girder config for this, email me, and I can send it your way and explain the button configs I use). I don't need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, just the remote.

Strengths:
Effective use of size with it's showsqueeze functions (basically transcodes MPEG-2 into WindowsMedia OR DivX). For shows I don't care about slight artifacting, such as Quantum Leap, I can squeeze it down from 1901MB down to 998MB with only SLIGHT artifacts (I find it viewable).
Full Screen UI is an effective 10 foot interface that does most everything I need (although I do use the web interface to handle manual compression).
NON WEB based TV listing. VERY easy to navigate, and now they have a search feature.
Can watch a recording as it records (which addresses the person who commented about missing the first 15 minutes). It's pretty common for me to wait 20 minutes into a show to start watching it, so I can skip the commercials and just delete the file when I'm done (sometimes I time it nearly perfectly so that I finish watching as the show ends).
Responsive dev staff. I got into the beta program, and had directly input into the evolution of the software (I suggested that on the recorded program details screen to show the type of file) and have exchanged emails with the developers when addressing bugs.
It simply works.

Weaknesses:
Details not as good as TV when used without hardware encoder. This really only affects watching sports for me. Basketball for instance can move too fast, causing pixilation.
Additionally, w/o hardware encoding, it really SHOULD be a standalone machine, or have a very beefy processor.
Web Interface is basically IE only
Scheduled recordings are on a per channel basis (in other words, if something is on ABC and ABC Family, it requires 2 seperate recording schedules).

Overall, I've been very pleased with it. It's the first PVR software I've felt comfortable using for the long haul (have used ATI, WinDVR, PowerDVR, and ShowShifter, and also attempted to use MythTV and Freevo, but none met my needs as well as BTV). I'm totally amped about the upcoming BeyondMedia product (read the details on their site. It supports DVD playing, Audio, and Photos in addition to the Video/TV). God, I sound like such a shill, but all I really am is a happy customer.

Where's Support for the PVR350's with OSD?

[enrico_suave]

That's what I want to know... if you can't view the on screen display on the TV using arguably "the best" PVR card (consumer level) out there, that's pretty crappy and not useful for me.

From what I understand you can get this to work with MythTv but you have to find a X Driver for IVTV module and everything isn't a 100% stable yet (again from what I understand)

I guess I can only hope that the support of the OSS community continues and improves and makes a product that surpasses the propietary one...

e.

Re:Where's Support for the PVR350's with OSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

GB-PVR is a free windows alternative that does support full OSD on the PVR350 tv out. I've also seen a pre-release that supports the xcard. This application rocks. Take a look at http://www.gbpvr.com

Re:Where's Support for the PVR350's with OSD?

[enrico_suave]

AC said:
"GB-PVR is a free windows alternative that does support full OSD on the PVR350 tv out. I've also seen a pre-release that supports the xcard. This application rocks. Take a look at GB-PVR"

gb-pvr is very neat, but it is also very beta... I look forward to watching the progress develop on that project. Until then I still yearn for something more/better/stable and free (as in beer and as in speech)

e.

Satellite ?

[Bugmaster]

I've always wanted to set up my own PVR solution, but I have satellite. Will it work ? The site mentions something about some required IR blaster hardware (ugh) or a "serial cable" (sounds better, but huh ?). So, does anyone use BeyondTV with a satellite dish ? If so, what else would I have to buy and install ?

Re:Satellite ?

[enrico_suave]

The rub is that you need to somehow control when channels are changed on your satellite's set top box so that the PVR software can record shows/change channels without your intervention.

As you noted there are two main ways to do that. Hook up a serial cable between your PC and your satellite set top box and use a software widget to let the PVR software change channels that way. DirectTivo bundles with a serial cable to control DirectTV boxes this way.

OR

Use an IR blaster... an Ir blaster is nothing more than some IR led's that you orient towards your satellite set top box (and connect to your PC) and then your PC acts just like your DirectTV (or whatever) remote control to change the channels at will... This is what Tivo uses when you have a digital cable box that you need to control...

hope that helps a little...

good luck!

e.

Re:Satellite ?

[Bugmaster]

I think I'd prefer the serial cable... Is this a standard RS232 pinout ? Also, where can I get the custom software that controls the set top box through the cable ?

Re:Satellite ?

[enrico_suave]

well... here's a windoze utility to control directTV box via serial cable There probably is a linux version out there, but I had that link handy so uh.. there it is...

IF you do decide to build your own, may I humbly suggest checking out Build your own PVR community site and maybe joining in on the discussion(s)...

e.

Heh.

[Andy Dodd]

Pretty similar to my setup.

WinTV-PVR 350, 200GB HD, DVD burner, but for software I'm running MythTV instead.

I'm surprised Slashdot would mention Beyond TV without mentioning Myth, which is just as good (if not better) and runs under Linux.

Re:Heh.

[Rob Parkhill]

I wouldn't say MythTV is better overall. There are some things MythTV excels at, and some things Beyond TV excels at.

For example, MythTV is completely hamstrung by its dependance on XMLTV. There is simply no way to know if a show is a re-run or a first-run using XMLTV, which is a serious pain in the butt. BeyondTV wins here, as it licenses the Tribune TV data (the same data that TiVO uses, the same data that is used to create zap2it.com, but zap2it only displays about 1/3 of the available data.)

BeyondTV has some very specific video card requirements, but it's not documented very well. Don't even bother trying to run it on a PC with an integrated video chipset. MythTV will run on just about anything that will work under Linux.

MythTV has a great web interface that allows you to schedule recordings when you are away from your PC. But that requires you to set up your home system to allow http connections. BeyondTV has snapstream.net, that also allows you to schedule recordings, but it's a service run by Snapstream, so no local admin is required.

MythTV has a lot of nifty plugins available, like weather modules and MP3 players that BeyondTV doesn't have. But those things are easily added with MyHTPC or BeyondMedia.

I tried out both (along with several other systems, like SageTV), and ended up going with BeyondTV simply because the guide data was better (and available in Canada!) Even though I had to fork out some cash to upgrade my video card, it was worth it in the end.

Dude, what's wrong with your system? :)

[Andy Dodd]

During recording with my PVR-350, I cannot notice ANY visible CPU usage other than an occasional small "blip", with my 1.1 GHz Athlon TBird.

Avermedia M179s go for about $80, and OEM PVR-250s (somewhat different than the retail ones, it's the "Media Center" version) can be found for $88 on eBay pretty often.

My PVR-350 is some of the best money I've ever spent on my machine.

Watching Jessica Simpson in the sticks?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem with it is the security model is a bit lax. You can always find people who have their setups wide open (port 8129) on google thanks to the web interface. People really need to starrt locking that down.

Can you elaborate? Search keywords? Hopefully I'll be able to catch some news while I'm stuck in the mountains where the reception sucks (no problem getting 3 prayer channels on the weekend, but other than that and a lousy picture for a few carried football games, that's about it).

Help on this command line?

[Anonymous Coward]

I took a look at route --help and man route, but can't find a -p flag. Can someone explain what the parent post command line actually does?

The ip address resolves to Insync. If that is the parent company of snapstream, then I'm guessing that the command line adds the ip address of the manufacturer, but adds an invalid computer on a subnet unlikely to be used. I'm guessing that this would prevent a connect failure, allowing the software to continue working? Is this correct?

Or maybe the block is to a reliable connection that does some type of authentication that allows the software to keep working by some magic?

Should I keep this command line in my linux how-to directory for some possible other emergency, and if so, how else could it help me?

Thanks. Newbie learning the ropes, newly converted from the dark side.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to get all elitist on you, but you're surfing the wrong site if those questions are serious.

Re:.net? fuck that

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck people who can't spell "allot".

Re:.net? fuck that

[ColaMan]

it's more like :
"This 200kb program requires .NET to run"
OK, no problem, I'll go get .NET
".NET framework download is 22MB and will take approximately Umpteen Bumtillion minutes on a 28.8k modem to download"
Hmmm... 1 hour.... just to run program X to try out on a whim... 1 hour... nah.

I know, it's one off, but still the one-off stops a lot of non-broadband people in their tracks. And there's more poor modem saps out there than you think.

Even I go, "Hmmm. 5 minutes at 50K/s, to run program X .... nah." Goddamit , I want "teh interweb" NOW, not in 5 minutes!

Troll?

[ozric99]

haha

Only on slashdot would a lighthearted comparison between a Microsoft product and a linux product get modded down as Troll. Way to go, my ub3r-l337 brothers, how's life in your parents' basement treating you? Gotta go - I think I hear your mum calling for your laundry.