SnapStream Blog

Hauppauge HD-PVR shipping delayed to mid-May – 04/30/08
The Hauppauge website it still tells us that the HD-PVR will begin shipping on May 1st, 2008, but there is new information that says that isn’t the case. Instead, the earliest, expected shipment dates are mid-May 2008. via BrentEvans Blog

Sezmi looks to provide alternative for cable/satellite – 05/01/08
The box will fetch content from a number of places: the built-in OTA receiver will grab locals, and it will use the owner’s broadband internet connection to snag IPTV material and web-based content (YouTube, Hulu, etc.). via Zats Not Funny

ZeeVee’s Box brings the PC to TV – 05/01/08
ZeeVee has an interesting solution that uses the existing cable wiring in your home to display what’s on your PC on an empty channel on your TV dial. Instead of requiring an additional receiver, it uses the HD tuner in your TV. No new-fangled wireless HD or old-fangled screen-scraping required. via NewTeeVee

DViCO FusionHDTV7 Dual Expres – 05/02/08
The FusionHDTV7 Dual Express, which is the world first dual HD (Digital or QAM) reception PCI express card, has been released. via ehomeupgrade

If you’re at the National Association of Broadcaster’s 2008 tradeshow in Las Vegas next week, be sure and come by our booth in the South Upper Hall (Booth #SU6008). And just to make sure you don’t get lost on the way there, we’ve put together some maps and directions.

See you there!

Since there’s been some excitement about the upcoming Hauppauge HD PVR product, I thought I’d share some photographs of Hauppauge’s new product “in the lab” here at SnapStream:

Here’s a photograph of the Hauppauge HD PVR prototype board itself — everyone had to be careful to ground themselves before handling it.

Here’s another pic of the HD PVR all wired up to a digital source via component video cables (those are the blue, green and red cables).

This one shows the HD PVR in action — the red light means Beyond TV is busy making a recording off this thing when the photograph was taken.

The final product — some good ‘ol baseball recorded on the Hauppauge HD PVR in Beyond TV

A close-up of the same frame (I took it without a flash, holding the camera in my hand, so there might be a slight blur)

The latest version of Beyond TV added a feature that some people have asked me questions about. The release notes listed this line item:

- DirecTV Pay Per View Guide Data

With Beyond TV 4.8.1, we’ve added enhanced program guide data for DirecTV users. Before we added this feature, those of you using Beyond TV to record from DirecTV may have noticed that large portions of DirecTV’s pay-per-view channels would show up as just a continuous stream of “Pay-Per-View” entries. For example, this is what a portion of your DirecTV program guide might have looked like before:

Now, with our new DirecTV data feed, you’ll get actual program information with more accurate start and stop times. For example, NBA League Pass subscribers will get information about which teams are playing. Same thing for most other sports packages on DirecTV. And pay-per-view movies now show up correctly in the program guide. Here’s the same chunk of the program guide after we deployed the enhanced DirecTV data:

It’s nine days and counting until the 2008 NAB Show and we’ve all been feeling the stress of getting everything in order before we head out to Las Vegas. To let off some steam, I came up with an idea to re-energize the troops. By incorporating the competitive spirit of SnapStream with baked goods, the 2008 Oven Mitt Extreme Throw Down Challenge was created. The task was simple, bring your best baked good along with your A-game on Friday, then we would do a tasting and judge each one. There would be three smaller awards (Most Original, Best Tasting, and Best Presentation) and one big award (Best in Show). The idea was received with enthusiasm and we had seven participants:

Zack - homemade pecan pie, homemade whip cream, and homemade sugar doodads

Melissa - homemade million dollar cake

Michael - some random pastry filled with pork (it was actually pretty good)

Mark - Chocolate Velvet Volcano Cake

Joel - Sweat Breads (Filipino pastry called Ensaymada)

Rob - Apple Cake

Rakesh - 7 layer dream bar (basically tons of sugar and butter)

Tom - Kroger store bought Coffee Cake with Pecans (cost $5.99 tax-free)

Joel cuts his dessert

Zack is putting together his pie presentation.

After we tasted all the baked goods. We cast our votes.

And the winners were:

Best in Show - Mark
Best Tasting - Rakesh (Once again sugar prevails.)
Most Original - Michael (Pork. Who’d of thought?)
Best Presentation - Zack (He spent way too much time… )

All in all I would have to say that the 2008 Oven Mitt Extreme Throw Down Challenge was a success!

[cross-posted from the SnapStream Enterprise Blog]

Background: SnapStream’s Enterprise TV Server is currently be used by television stations for “airchecks”. An aircheck is the process by which a television station records and searches past television broadcasts for the purposes of competitive intelligence, research, and FCC compliance. Today, April 1, 2008, SnapStream is announcing an exciting new addition to its television search technologies!

Embed this video in your blog.

SnapStream Media Launches Enterprise TV with BearCheck™ Technology
Remove the fear of watching TV by automatically being alerted to bears on the screen.

Houston, April 1, 2008- SnapStream Media, Inc. announced today the addition of the patented BearCheck™ technology to its Enterprise TV Server solution. In addition to recording and searching over 3000 hours of television across 10 tuners, the Enterprise Server can now detect and alert the viewer to the presence of bears on the screen. Handy for organizations that have an unusual aversion to the pictures of bears, BearCheck™ takes all of the worry out of the TV viewing experience.

Available as a free upgrade to all Enterprise TV servers, BearCheck™ may be available for download in the future.

To embed this video in your blog, use this html code:

In the latest Beyond TV 4.8 release users will enjoy new features such as saved guide searches, frame-by-frame playback, access control, and warning e-mail notifications.

Saved Guide Searches: Love Will Ferrell movies? Want to make sure you catch them on TV? Now you can input keywords of your favorite actors, sports team, or TV show genre and have Beyond TV e-mail you the next time they appear on TV, or simply have it auto record. (In case you’re wondering how conflicts are handled, auto-recordings from saved guide searches are added at the lowest priority to your recording schedule.)

Saved Guide Search results e-mail (this one is on Will Ferrell)

Saved Guide Search results automatically added to Upcoming Recordings.

Warning Notifications via E-mail: Configure your Beyond TV to notify you via e-mail whenever an error has occurred to your machine. Avoid missed recordings, by instantaneously solving computer hiccups as they occur.


Warning Notifications E-mail

Frame-By-Frame Playback: Paused recordings can be advanced by single frame with the arrow keys for a more detailed review. Now you can watch in amazement as the Mythbuster’s gang explode their contraptions frame-by-frame.

Access Control: Beyond TV now supports the creation of user accounts with restricted privileges. Activities like watching recordings, watching live TV, scheduling recordings, and changing settings can be access-controlled on a user-by-user basis. Using access controls, you can monitor what and how much TV your kids watch, by restricting Live TV and allowing them only to watch recorded shows recorded by you.


Beyond TV’s new access control makes it so you can give different users, different levels of permissions.


Here’s what the web admin looks like to a user who only has permission to watch recordings.

Recording Stats: Better manage your storage capacity with at-a-glance recording stats, including average hours per day of recordings, based on your recording schedule.


Recording Stats in Beyond TV

In addition to the new features, we’ve made the following improvements to make recording and watching television more manageable.

Sort Recorded Library: Simply hit the O button on your keyboard while viewing Recorded Shows in Viewscape and sort all recorded shows by name, original air date, or date recorded in ascending or descending order. This improved feature is useful when trying to watch past seasons in release order.


Sort Recorded Library

Way Faster Scheduler: The recording scheduler is now 10 to 20 times faster than before. Any use of the program guide such as scrolling, deleting/adding new jobs, forcing/blocking recordings, and changing job priorities will result in a smoother and quicker output.

For a complete list of new features, bug fixes, and improvements check out the release notes.

[cross-posted from the SnapStream Enterprise Blog]

I’ve already had several people ask me if we’ll be at NAB 2008 — the answer is, yes! We’ll be in the South Upper Hall, not too far from the entrance. Our booth number is South Upper Hall 6008 (SU6008).

If you’d like to schedule a meeting, drop us an e-mail at enterprise at snapstream dot com or just stop on by. Several members of our team will be there and we’ll be showing off the latest version of SnapStream Enterprise.

Hope to see you there!

Update: Here’s are directions on how to get to our booth at NAB

A few months ago, we added a new plug-in into Beyond TV that allows you to pretty easily move anything playing on television onto any video-capable Apple device (i.e. an iPhone, iPod, or an Apple TV).

Once you go through the initial setup, Beyond TV’s H.264 integration should make it simple and automatic to get your favorite TV shows onto your Apple device.

I created this video to show you how it all works, all the way from getting the right hardware for Beyond TV and setting up your PC through plugging your iPhone or iPod into your PC and having iTunes magically copy all of your latest TV shows onto it. Hope you enjoy the video and find it useful!

There’s been a groundswell of interest in the Hauppauge HD PVR device, ever since Hauppauge announced it at CES in early January. I first heard about the device from Hauppauge on a visit to their offices in Hauppauge, NY back in November 2007. Since then, I’ve learned quite a bit more about the device. We’re taking a lot of interest in this new device, but until we actual get a test unit, we can’t say whether or not we’ll support it.

For those of you who haven’t heard about the new device, I’ll briefly recap its capabilities: it’ll take in component video (you know, the red, green, and blue cables on the back of your cable or satellite set-top box — the ones that can carry an HD signal) and encode it to H.264 at up to 25 Mbit/s. And it includes Hauppauge’s standard IR blaster with code library.

Anyways, here is some of what I know about it:

• Hauppauge’s calling it the HD PVR — for now. The name may change before it’s released.
• It can accept component video in (see a picture) up to 1080p
• It can encode that component video to H.264 transport streams (in hardware)
• The hardware itself is basically done — Hauppauge’s just waiting on the final case design (and Chinese New Year has slowed this down)
• It includes the same Hauppauge IR blaster & code library included with other Hauppauge products
• It’s based on a chip from a company called Ambarella (http://www.ambarella.com/)
• It’s an all-in-one chip that has a digitizer and H.264 encoder
• A similar chip from Ambarella happens to be used in popular HD camcorders
• The compression data rates works between 1 Mbit/s and 25 Mbit/s
• The H.264 encoder outputs H.264 transport streams
• The Ambarella chip also has an H.264 decoder and the Hauppauge HD PVR will ship with a video out, but…
• The video out function will more than likely NOT be activated when the HD PVR ships (and possibly never, for reasons relating to the Ambarella driver)
• You’ll need a relatively powerful PC to playback these recordings
• Hauppauge is still making some tweaks to the HD PVR’s drivers as well
• Hauppauge expects for the product to be shipping before the end of this quarter (ie before March 31, 2008)

(Note: the image above is NOT the device — it’s just a set-top box with some component video cables. I’ve requested some photographs and will hopefully have some soon.)

(Note #2: All of the information above was posted *with* permission from Hauppauge — specifically, Ken Plotkin reviewed a draft and gave me the green light to post it.)