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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.)"
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.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
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.
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?)
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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.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...over simply just buying a Tivo.
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.
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.
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
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.
- n. wmv
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
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.
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.
I investigated the alternatives a few months ago, and picked Frey Technologies' SageTV ( http://www.sage.tv ) over Snapstream's BeyondTV.
.Net
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
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.
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.
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