Beyond TV 4 eye candy
October 18th, 2005 at 10:55 am by Rakesh
We got slashdot’ed last week and while Richard, one of our developers, was going through the comments he posted a couple of preview screenshots of Beyond TV 4. The screenshots were picked up by a couple of sites so we decided we’d cross-post them here too. The screenshots are not final but they’ll give you a good enough feel for the new UI in Beyond TV 4… Enjoy.
And for those of you wondering when Beyond TV 4 is coming out, watch this blog for a release date.
Beyond TV 4 main menu (larger)
Beyond TV 4 program information page (larger)
Other Beyond TV 4 related postings:
* Announcing Beyond TV 4 (July 26, 2005)
* SnapStream Q&A #2 (September 12, 2005)
Reminder: any purchase of Beyond TV 3.x right now comes with a free upgrade to Beyond TV 4.
October 18th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
And the reason why I should be excited about these screenshots is …? I see no difference between the UI for BTV 3.x and 4.
October 18th, 2005 at 2:20 pm
Tommy, Hey, what can I say, if you aren’t excited about them, then, well, you aren’t excited about them.
We’ve gotten pretty positive feedback on the new skin from beta testers so at least *some* people are excited about it.
October 18th, 2005 at 3:28 pm
I’m also a beta tester and really the only thing I really like so far is the ability to back record a show from the time I started watching it. Great feature! I just feel that the phrase “eye candy” for what you are showing really doesn’t show that the product looks better than the previous, obviously IMO. But regardless, good luck with the BTV 4 progress. Hope it turns out to be one h*ll of a package! (yeah, I’m hoping for a package with BM).
October 18th, 2005 at 4:58 pm
Tommy is right, it’s kind of underwhelming. Thanks for sharing in any case!!
October 18th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
Well I like the new screens. Color is needed! The red is nice. I have 3 tuners running around the clock and record as much as 100 episodes a week. I have finally gotten all episodes of Becker, Bonanza, smallville, etc. I read that you now cannot manually download the program updates. This must stay as I still have no choice but dial-up! I also wish that the tuner used to record the show was on the discription of the file to help find issues with one tuner. At least have the option in the setup. One last thing, allow more on the channel lineup display! We are all using high resolution displays and can accomidate this. At least have an option in case some are looking at the lineup from their tv set as I imagine this was why it is the way it is.
Keep us posted as to the features and keep working!
October 18th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
Tell me the background is animated and I’ll call it eye candy!!
October 18th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
I have to agree with Tommy. It’s underwhelming. An improvement yes, but still underwhelming. I expected eye candy, not a theme.
Glenn, where did you read that manual guide data updates were no longer going to be possible? I sometimes have huge errors in my guide data (several hours of guide data across several channels being marked as unknown) that I’ve only been able to fix with a manual update. Typically those shows are truely unknown at the time of the original guide data update but are updated later. The interim update isn’t catching them. It happens often enough that’s I’ve gotten into the habit of doing a full update roughly once a week.
Also, as Glenn mentions, with the push to high def it would be very nice to be able to see more guide data both in number of channels and total time shown as well. Plus, with BTV 3 the guide shows the past 30 minutes of shows. It would be nice to see a full hour and half (or more) of guide data from “now”. 99% of the time I don’t care what was showing half a hour ago.
October 18th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
The screens look very similar besides the color and background change. Like Mike says, it would interesting to see new ideas in the guide. How about, for instance, letting the user define a subset of channels as a favorite grid? You could toss in the basic 3 or 4 networks plus Sci-Fi or Cartoon channel or something. It’s a little tiring to start down at 2 and then page, page, page down until landing in a certain section of the higher cables channels.
Hey, what about this:
http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/10/18/pci-hdtv-tuner-for-your-non-mce-pc/
It looks like you guys are bundling a version that supports digital tuners with this product. That means that you’ve started packaging version 4?
October 18th, 2005 at 11:35 pm
ADS Tech’s HDTV board ships with a special version of Beyond TV 3 that includes HDTV PVR capabilities (the same technology that will be present in Beyond TV 4). So, yes, we’re already shipping this technology.
October 19th, 2005 at 9:06 am
Does the Beyond TV 3 that ships with the ADS Tech’s HDTV board qualify for the free upgrade to BTV4?
October 20th, 2005 at 7:50 am
“Reminder: any purchase of Beyond TV 3.x right now comes with a free upgrade to Beyond TV 4.”
This makes it sound like Beyond TV users who already own the software will not be eligible for the free upgrade. Is everyone with Beyond TV 3.x going to be able to upgrade to Beyond TV 4 for free?
October 20th, 2005 at 7:55 am
Brendan, that’s right, Beyond TV 4 will be a paid upgrade for (most) existing Beyond TV 3 users. How much? The upgrade will be priced at $29.99 for existing Beyond TV 3 users.
October 20th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
Those main screen icons are FUGLY, bland, look like windows (not a compliment) and do not easily indicate their meaning. I am evaluating 3.5 for possible purchase and notice you still havent improved them. Why not do a 3d rotating circle or at least the focused icon/text blown up like apple does? Some of us sit far back you know.
I hope 4.0 fixes guide updates working. My log indicates they happen successfully every night but they dont add any days to my guide unless I do it manually!
October 20th, 2005 at 5:17 pm
Nice job on the btv4 interface … and the btv3 … I don’t want to be entertained by the interface, just what I’m watching. Anyone who needs 3d animated graphics in their interface should read a book once in a while.
October 20th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
hum… this skin reminds me of Nero SmartStart..
http://www.theskinsfactory.com/sfadmin/files/135view1.gif
October 20th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
I assume the upgrade will be available to anyone who purchased within the previous 12 months – most software these days comes with 12 month free upgrade unless there is an offer to protect against upgrade costs with a maintenance plan. Iassume your professionalism with regard to this important customer service question I assume, will not be dictated by greed.
October 20th, 2005 at 8:55 pm
It’s *just* a skin. Nothing to get exicted about. Nothing to even bother posting. Show some *new functionality* in your screenshots. Since I already paid good money for BeyondTV and Beyond Media, as well as Sage, *show me* why I should pay yet more money for an “upgrade” that so far is nothing more than a new skin. An ugly skin, at that. There are much better skins created by users. Functionality is what counts and you’re not demonstrating it here.
There’s *still* no indication that this will ever be a complete media center app – there’s no way I’m going to pay all over again for Beyond Media.
You guys pretend you have no competition, Rakesh – you’re going to be in for a surprise when Sage 3 ships.
October 20th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
Hi,
What I think they should add is the ability to search for “Seinfeld” for example and when it comes up have it give you the option to record all shows / new shows etc … but also have an option so it will record it from any channel. Thus if Seinfeld plays on 8 different channels during the day I don’t have to create jobs for each one of those channels , I’ll just say record Seinfeld and I don’t care what channel it’s on. Let the BeyondTV box worry about that.
Just my 2cents
Jason
October 20th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
What I would really like is the ability to say “don’t record this episode”. When I have a show set to “record all” because I’m trying to catch up on repeats, I spend a lot of time canceling individual recordings. This isn’t a problem when the same episode is only shown once a week, but on chanels like discovery, they sometimes show the same episode 8 times a week.
October 23rd, 2005 at 12:23 am
My main complaint with the interface is that it is not scalable at all, why can I only see 4-5 channels at a time and a few hours at a time in the schedule when I have a large monitor and the interface is huge on my PC? I understand that this is optimal for many TVs, but being able to view more of the guide, and see more in the menu system if we chose a higher resolution is by biggest request.
October 23rd, 2005 at 8:04 am
How ’bout being able to enable/disable the time shifting buffer on input sources?
October 23rd, 2005 at 9:54 am
Pete, Beyond TV 4 will add the ability to configure the program guide to display x channels by y hours.
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:21 pm
Actually, I think the red bar is brutally ugly. The 3.x blue tint is quite attractive to me. I hope I will be able to stay with that…
Paid upgrade? Sure – it *should* be (presuming there’s new functionality – and for some there is; HDTV support is prized by many, for one) Software costs money to develop – why do you expect to get it for free? (new purchasers are a separate case – they get the new version to avoid the problem of “everyone stops buying when a new version is due”)
I too hope manual updates are still available – I need them occasionally also.
I still want parental controls, better control over multiple tuners (which one is showing the bad picture? gee… I dunno… how do I figure it out without turning tuners on&off or disconnecting wires – let me see each tuner on the same channel (if possible) and flip-flip-flip between tuners – aha! it’s tuner 3 and that’s which card… gee, I’d like that…)
I also archive a lot of shows – and would also like to be able to say “don’t record this episode *ever*” (and a way to turn turn it back on, of course) I have Stargate seasons 1-6 on DVD – annoying to have to go and every week tell it “don’t record this… or this… or this…” just to get the new episode or a couple I’m missing. (and no, I’ll not disable the “record all” and do the wanted shows manually – guaranteed I’ll forget and miss something I want)
Yeah, there’s still warts and missing features in BTV – hell, there’ll still be a big wish list when it gets to version 7, or 77! But I still find it’s indispensable – I can’t *stand* watching regular tv any more!
I know the features *I* want aren’t necessarily wanted by the majority – and that’s true for all features! (I couldn’t care less about HDTV right now – I don’t have it, and I’m not going to for a few more years, unless I hit the lottery…) I’m confident that BTV will evolve and improve, and over time will include the majority of what I want – uh, it already does… I mean of what’s left on my wish-list…
- Al -
October 23rd, 2005 at 5:38 pm
The red bar is actually one part of this skin that’s being changed in the final release. But there will be a number of options that you’ll have as far as skins go, including using the old skin if you’d like.
And manual updates aren’t going anywhere, that’s still going to be there in Beyond TV 4.
October 24th, 2005 at 1:23 am
I am a 3.4 user and pretty happy with it.
The feature that I want to see (and would pay for) is the ability to archive more than 1 show to a DVD (and have it automatically create the DVD Menu based on show titles.) I don’t need to edit the content but want to at least fit 4 shows per disc…)
Any comments….
October 24th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
What about those of us who very recently purchased BeyondTV as a package deal with a tuner and the firefly?
I purchased the Diamond’s XtremeTV PVR 550 package, at a higher price than the plain 550, specifically because it came with BeyondTV, Beyond Media and a Firefly remote. I purchased the package less than 60 days ago. Will I be able to upgrade for free or am I screwed because this is one of your “partnering” purchases?
October 24th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
While the pictures dont really seem to impress and as long as the interface is skinable i really dont care for how it ‘looks’ by default (hopefully new skins are MORE than simply graphic swapping, like REAL interface changes can be done, item placement, etc), the features sound interesting… any chance of posting some pics of some New screens/features??
and any ETA for BTV 4? like end of year, Q1 2006???
October 24th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Bo Wells, If you are talking about the bundle from our web store, you’ll get a free upgrade if it was purchased after the end of July. If it was Diamond’s OEM product with the subscription version of Beyond TV (Beyond TV SE), then you’ll have a couple of different options for upgrading (I don’t know exactly what they are… but I can tell you that it’s not free). Send an e-mail to orders@snapstream.com with more details and we’ll let you know your upgrade options.
Biff, Beyond TV 4 is definitely going to be out before the end of this year. The new couple of weeks give or take is what I’ve been telling people. We may have a more final release date soon.
October 24th, 2005 at 4:06 pm
Thanks for responding Rakesh.
In the future you guys should have your partners put a disclaimer or something on the package informing them that they are not, in fact, buying the full version as advertised and entitled to the same benefits they’d get if they spent the same amount of money on the retail BeyondTV software.
October 25th, 2005 at 7:39 pm
The one thing I think BTV 4 is missing that I hoped it would have is a mini TV screen when you’re looking through the menus. It’s annoying to have to miss your show because you want to set up a recording for another show, it seems like a fairly simple improvement that would make the interface a lot nicer. Either that or make the whole interface semitransparent and allow the audio to play through. Or make an option for how the user wants it to look, I know semitransparent menus can be taxing on system hardware, so if your system can’t handle it you should be able to turn it off, but if you’ve got a system that can do it, I think it would make sense to give us the option.
I also agree that the screenshots are a waste. It’s just a different theme. There is no difference in the UI from vers. 3 to 4. Same buttons, same program sounds, same menu hierarchy.
October 26th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
Rakesh,
Thank you for your response, but it is unsatisfactory. The R&D dollars for BTV4 came from me and others like me, your company’s early supporters. Should I just wait for BTV5? Will I have to pay for that one too?
October 26th, 2005 at 10:35 pm
Brendan, why are you complaining? Don’t you realize that as a company, Snapstream needs to charge for their products in order to continue to drive the time and investment that are put into them? When Microsoft releases a new operating system, you have to pay for it. When Adobe releases a new version of Photoshop, you have to pay (a lot) for it. What makes Snapstream different from these companies that allows for them to provide free upgrades for life? Nothing.
On another note, as much as I’m excited about BTV 4, this interface looks disappointing. I don’t even see an evolution of the interface. Rather, all I see is a new skin. Hopefully the final product will impress. : )
October 27th, 2005 at 1:13 am
Zack,
I like BTV, but I wouldn’t equate it with an operating system or a commercial graphics program. I’m complaining because I feel like if everyone who supported Snapstream with an early purchase had instead sat back and waited for BTV4 there wouldn’t be a BTV4. Anyway I originally addressed this to Rakesh and I would prefer you let him respond.
Thanks
October 29th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
I agree that BTV4 doesn’t target it’s new features at me since I have no substantial HD options here except a sporadic ABC station and fox OTA – however, even though that may keep me from buying an upgrade immediately, Snapstream has always impressed me with their advances in intermediate versions (like 3.4/3.5 so I expect to as soon as I can jsutify it.
Brendan, you aren’t giving fair credit to how commercial software works. Remember – it was *Unusual* when some of Snapstream’s earlier upgrades proceeded at no cost…
October 29th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
I’ve been using BTV3 for a little while now and I like it a lot. Great software! I am still not sure why is BTV4 being so glorified though. I’m afraid that I am on Brendan’s side, and I don’t think that we, who have bought this software should pay the upgrade fee (quite hefty too). Of course I may not know all the ins and outs so forgive me if I am wrong here. Some of you have compared this software to ms windows, for example, and how they also charge for the upgrade. Don’t forget that they actually support and release updates for their older windows versions for quite a while after the new version comes out. So my question is: is BTV3 going to be maintained, supported and bugs fixed for at least few years? Most of us, for example, don’t have a need for HDTV yet, especially since there are no HDTV tuner cards for cable and satellite, so is it fair for us to pay for the upgrades or bug fixes if we do not need the new features like HDTV, or radio support?
October 30th, 2005 at 7:41 am
G, “the upgrade fee” is “quite hefty too”??? All I can say is that you are nuts dude! Talk about trolls! $29.99 is nothing as far as upgrade goes.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:59 am
You missed my point Eric. $29.99 is half of what I paid for BTV3, so it is quite significant too, but my point is that except for the hdtv feature I do not see (that’s just based on what I have read and seen here, I have not seen he product itself, so correct me if I am wrong) anything worth to charge upgrade for. I do not have a good HDTV reception here, the cable or dish HDTV is not supported (due to the lack of cards I believe), so that 30$ upgrade for me is just a bug fix for BTV3. Tthe way I see it, I don’t think I should be charged for that. On the other hand if BTV3 is going to be maintained after release of BTV4 I would gladly stay with it. I think it would be fair to release BTV4 without HD support for free and charge for BTV4 HDTV version upgrade, because that is a significant upgrade (and I may indeed get it later when HDTV is available here, or I may wait for BTV5 or BTV6 which would support cable HDTV).
November 3rd, 2005 at 10:54 am
How about adding a feature that automatically downsizes the file to the 320×240 (or whatever is the default file size for the new apple video playing ipod) just like you do for smartskipping (determining the commercial locations). If this would run after the taping, it would help alot. You will probably get a few new users with this feature!
also, how come we still don’t have anything resolved with closed captions? my comcast digital tuner box has closed captions for 6 months already and i don’t. I need the CC for watching the stuff late at night when the fam is asleep.
also, can you fix the beyondmedia so that it recognizes the additional DVD codecs? I can’t use this program at all and i paid $50+ for it!.
thanks.
p.
November 11th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
Showsqueeze will allow you to convert the videos to any resolution in wmv and divx formats. Ipod does not support these formats though. Some people confuse divx and mpeg-4. They are similar, but not exactly the same and require different codecs to encode and play in those formats. To convert videos to work on ipod you would need to purchase Quicktime Pro from Apple. See their website for more info on the software. These are the formats ipod supports:
H.264 video
File formats: .m4v, .mp4 and .mov
Video: Up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per second,
Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3
Audio: AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, stereo audio
MPEG-4 video
File formats: .m4v, .mp4 and .mov
Video: Up to 2.5 Mbps, 480 x 480 pixels, 30 frames per second,
Simple Profile
Audio: AAC-LC up to 160 Kbps, 48 KHz, stereo audio
November 14th, 2005 at 12:45 am
I CAN NOT DOWNLOAD THE DARN PRODUCT?????
November 15th, 2005 at 12:24 am
I can not download Eather… I try to upgrade my pc or download the trial version and the download opens and hangs open not downloading anything… Very very frustrating!
November 30th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
“Showsqueeze will allow you to convert the videos to any resolution in wmv and divx formats.”
Can someone explain how to do this, I can’t figure out how to change the resolution anywhere in the trial version of BTV 4.
Thanks!
January 21st, 2006 at 11:18 am
i will not upgrade becuase when i got the program they said there will be free upgrades for life… now if they dont want to do this for new buyers thats fine but i was told free upgades… so goodbye… and there are lots of other people doing pvr software now so its not like im going to have a problem finding a diffent and better app…