Beyond TV 4, coming to a website near you…November 10th
November 5th, 2005 at 10:44 pm by rkuo
We like TV.
We like you, our customers.
Which is why, right now, we’re really excited. It’s been a long time in the making. But the wait is almost over.
The gold bits have been sent for duplication. Some developers are sleeping regular hours again. In 5 days, you’ll finally be able to get your hands on the next version of Beyond TV.
The major highlights of version 4:
- Support for High Definition OTA (over the air) capture cards
- Support for DivX capture and ShowSqueeze
- New “Browse by category” screens let you find the kind of shows you like to watch.
- Support for cards with FM Radio tuners
- A huge number of tweaks and adjustments to refine the overall experience
- And a fresh new look and feel to top it all off!
The addition of high definition support is something we’re very excited about. Read our first HDTV article to see the difference for your own eyes. If you haven’t noticed yet, virtually every major manufacturer of HDTV cards has partnered with us to deliver HDTV support. When these companies wanted to deliver the best HDTV experience for their customers, they knew who to go to.
So if you want the best HDTV experience on your PC, then you should know what everyone else knows. You need to run Beyond TV 4, hands down.
There’s quite a bit more that can be said, but I’ll leave the detailed list of changes for the new website. The above list represents the top items our customers asked for over the past year. You asked, so we delivered. Change is great, and new things are fun, but keeping our development in sync with our customers as much as possible is a philosophy we keep the same year after year.
Beyond TV 4 will be $69.99. For existing owners of Beyond TV 3, we’ll be offering special limited time upgrade pricing at $29.99. Incidentally, if you don’t already have the needed hardware for HDTV, we’ll be offering some really great packages of HDTV hardware starting at only $99.99. These packages include TV cards from DVICO and special HDTV antennas. Is it worth it? Totally.
So mark the date. Put a big red X on your calendar. Create a task in Outlook to remind you when November 10th rolls around. Beyond TV 4 is your ticket to building the best PVR you possibly can. If these new features sound exciting to you, then do yourself a favor.
1. Visit http://www.snapstream.com on November 10th.
2. Pick up a copy of Beyond TV 4 and whatever cool gadgets you need to round out the experience.
3. Install and start enjoying the goodness that is Beyond TV.
4. Show all your friends how much better their shows look in high definition. (Optional, but all of us here at SnapStream highly recommend it)
If you like TV, then you’ll love Beyond TV 4. November 10th, folks. We’ll see you then.
November 6th, 2005 at 1:05 am
Great news regarding V4. Can hardly wait!!
I’m confused though. As I recall, you previously stated that those who purchased V3x since June would get V4 free. Have you changed that policy?
Thanks,
Gerry
November 6th, 2005 at 5:33 am
Yeah… I was wondering about that too
November 6th, 2005 at 8:52 am
Gerry, Nope, nothing has changed. You will receive an e-mail with instructions on getting your free upgrade if you purchase from our online store. And customers who purchased from one of our retailers or e-tailers should look for instructions on the website.
November 6th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Can’t wait to get the update – it looks fantatsic.
Could you comment on on the outlook for HDTV support for cable broadcast? Where I live I have 10 HDTV channels over cable and can tune only 1 over the air.
Thanks for a great update!
November 6th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Few questions:
What will be the upgrade price, after the limited time offer of $29.99 for existing BTV3 users expires?
Will the EPG in the digital OTA channels come from the internet or from the data that is broadcasted with the channel? Could we choose which EPG to use?
Will there be a free trial version of BTV4 for BTV3 users?
Thanks
November 6th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
Will the program guide change at all?
Currently, I have no use for HDTV support and most of the other BTV4 features.
If I do not upgrade to 4 and keep 3.7.4, what should I expect?
November 6th, 2005 at 5:23 pm
HDTV is not a feature for me. Sell me on the Features and enhancements from BTV 3.7.4 to 4.0 for traditional Cable prodcasts, and mayb e I’ll upgrade. How does Behond media fit into this?
Also, please define a limited time offer for the upgrade price, how long do I have to upgrade at this price. Or at least confirm for me that before the offer expires, I will be given a last chance email to upgrade.
November 6th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
about t e email for the free upgrade. i did purchas it over the web and dont know what email i used. but when i purchased a BTV link i do know were to login and view my purchase history. but the link softwarr is the onley thing that shows up. no BTV 3.xx. what do i do? contacting support takes foreve!
November 6th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
What’s the upgrade process for BTV 3.7 SE users? I got it with my capture card (VisionTek Xtasy Theater 550 Pro) in September, and have paid for a lifetime subscription. Will I get a free upgrade?
November 7th, 2005 at 9:32 am
G has very good question that should be addressed for BTV 3.x users.
“What will be the upgrade price, after the limited time offer of $29.99 for existing BTV3 users expires?”
And I also would like to know the answer to Me’s question regarding people who don’t care about HDTV but want improvements for the product they paid for (BTV 3.x). There is a difference between bug fixes and upgrades of course, but ethically, bug fixes should be free and we shouldn’t be forced to pay for an upgrade to BTV 4 for them.
November 7th, 2005 at 10:32 am
These are all excellent questions. Maybe they should be asked in the support forums?
November 7th, 2005 at 10:32 am
As a side note, there should be a link back to the snapstream home page from this blog, bad web design.
November 7th, 2005 at 10:40 am
I too would like to know how BTV 4 fits into the hopefully upcomming Beyond Media package… will purchases of BTV 4 get Beyond Media package later?, free bundle, discounted price, etc… If BTV 4 is $70, where does BM fit in??
I also am very curious to hear about the continuted support for BTV 3.x as I am guessing from responces that a LOT of users do not care for Fm Radio support or HDTV yet (or cant get HDTV) but care about existing performance, bugs, and other items related to the existing BTV 3 product. when will a BTV 3.8 be released, if ever (what is status of existing 3.x code base)
November 7th, 2005 at 11:46 am
This sounds great. I have been a BTV customer since 2.x and will gladly upgrade. The category browsing sounds great, along with all the little tweaks. Divx support sounds great too.
November 7th, 2005 at 1:50 pm
one more thing:
“- Support for cards with FM Radio tuners”
what does that realy mean??? my card has a FM radio tuner and it works… (the TV portion of it). There is no FM radio option (i judge from the images above) in the main meniu… shouldn’t that be a feature of beyond media, anyway, not Beyond TV?
i don’t understand how this will benefit BTV users.
also, how much will the BTV LINK v4 upgrade will cost?
would be nice to get some answers to the questions asked above.
or could someone please write a link to a forum where these questions should be asked?
thanks
November 7th, 2005 at 4:08 pm
I had read in the past that BM and BTV would be merged at some point (easier to support one codebase I guess), and that people who owned both BM and BTV would get a free upgrade to the unified product.
Is BTV4 this product? If so, how will the upgrade process go?
Also, why is the “free upgrade” only for recent purchases of BTV? This punishes those of us who have been long-time snapstream customers! What happened to loyalty to ones customers?
November 7th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
No QAM support? Booo!
November 7th, 2005 at 7:26 pm
Now that BeyondTV has OTA support, let’s talk about when QAM will be available!
November 8th, 2005 at 9:29 am
[...] ov 2005 10:26 am
Snapstream, one of my favorite apps, gets a major upgrade
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November 8th, 2005 at 7:44 pm
The blog post says for will come with Divx + ShowSqueeze support but will it also have Divx + Smartskip support?
I don’t have use for hdtv but look to upgrade to version 4 because of Divx support since I use a divx player to watch recorded shows on my living room tv.
November 9th, 2005 at 1:21 am
One feature I would like in BTV4 is the ability to browse through upcoming shows and movies like I do on Snapstream.net. There I always go to “At a Glance” and search the type of show I want to see. The new “Browse by categoryâ€? function sounds like it will be similar. Hopefully it works at least as good as that on Snapstream.net.
November 9th, 2005 at 9:43 am
Wondering if Closed Captioning is now supported in BTV 4.0. Haven’t seen it on the list and I know that 3.7.4 had *some* support mainly for the PVR 250. Any hope of supporting it for cards like the eHome Wonder?
November 9th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Still missing from V4 are 1) closed captioning, 2) the continuation of video (either in a window or in the background) when browsing to other screens after leaving tv/playback mode, and 3) a “back” mode (like the back button on a browser) that lets you retrace where ever you were previously, not just back you up one level in the menu system.
November 9th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
I for one am glad to see HDTV support. There are plenty of good TV shows OTA, and all the channels here (Seattle) broadcast in digital, if not HDTV. I don’t have an analog tuner at all. The Snapstream software is WAY, WAY better than anything else that supports HDTV.
QAM HDTV support (cable) would be nice, but there are many problems blocking QAM support and most of these problems are in the hands of the cable companies or the tuner manufacturers, not Snapstream and the other PVR software houses. At the very least we’ll need tuners with cablecard support or everything will be encrypted anyway, so QAM support won’t mean a thing without cablecard tuners.
November 9th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
I get all the major networks unencrypted via QAM and my LG HDTV tuner. I think if you look at a forum like on http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/ you’ll see that this is common. There was going to be a law requiring cable companies to rebroadcast local stations in unencrypted QAM, but for the meantime, many cable companies do this voluntarily. So the ability to record these local clear channels is what I and several other posters are interested in. We don’t want to put up antennas to receive the channels, just plug into our regular cable outlets.
I agree the problem is with the tuner manufacturers, especially when companies like DVICo are producing unstable software to go with their Fusion tuners. However, I did hear a rumor that someone would be working on a “BDA proxy” to allow Sage TV to work with the Fusion QAM tuning software — don’t know if that is going somewhere.
Would like to see the QAM support!
November 9th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
Well it is the 10th of November, I have been checking this website for the version 4 download, and NADA, Nothing, ZIP, WADABINGBANG….
Pretty sad seeing I have been waiting over 12 months for the beyond tv to finally support DVB cards, and now nothing…
When will Americans realise that they are a DAY BEHIND THE REST OF THE WORLD?
When you set a release date… um, follow it up????
Stu
November 9th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Stu,
We Americans may be a day behind the rest of the world time wise but years ahead in terms of technology and innovation. Anyone who knows where SnapStream is located knows that the November 10th date was based on Houston, TX time, not GMT. Relax, it’ll be here soon…
(and yes, I am an “ugly” American)
Charlie
November 9th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
After reading Anony Mous’ reply, I wonder why they put the effort into FM radio and not into something like Closed Captioning. It can’t be that FM radio support was a higher priority than CC. If you’re competing with MCE 2005, they offer both.
November 10th, 2005 at 5:05 am
[...] look at news, events and technology at SnapStream.
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November 10th, 2005 at 7:53 am
What about people who buy BTV3.xx now from e-tailers? Will they get a free upgrade to v4? I’d like to get v4, but nobody seems to have it yet. Amazon has v3 and I’d be happy getting that if i was going to get an upgrade to 4.0 for free.
November 24th, 2005 at 4:48 am
Stu says”Pretty sad seeing I have been waiting over 12 months for the beyond tv to finally support DVB cards, and now nothing…”
Stu, I share you feelings. I’ve used snapstream since version 2 and have been very happy with it. Lately it has really been a pain have it working since Sweden where I live are going totally digital tv, abandoning analog totally. Which means boxes, boxes and boxes that needs to be controlled somehow. DBV support is the logical solution. It’s totally ridicilous first getting the signal digital in super-quality and then take it into the computer from the box in an analog way in order to again convert it to digital. It’s crazy.
But I’ve liked alot about snapstream in order to hang in there with half-crappy solutions since dvb-support has been promised, as I remember, with ver. 4
And now… Huge disappointment. Not only that it was released without dvb-support but also the poor information around the issue.
It’s been lovely to use SS but now I say;
Sayonara! and good luck with your software for americans only.
Thank you
Pete
November 25th, 2005 at 6:37 pm
The great feature on V 4.0 is the divx support. The shows get recorded in mpeg2-as i have hard mode card- the commerical breaks are put in and they then get compressed to divx.
i delete the orginal recording and save big time on hard drive space..
with all the great tv shows on it doesnt take long to get a hard drive full of shows waiting to be watched, with BTV 4 i figure ill save another 200gig hard drive to store the unwatched shows by saving them in Divx.
December 4th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Please email me to let me know when are you working on closed captioning.
December 18th, 2005 at 6:39 am
Thank you very much , I hope to watch TV. with you from countries over most of the worled through net clearly,,,
April 22nd, 2006 at 12:36 am
Thx for this fantastic info
April 22nd, 2006 at 12:36 am
Pretty sad seeing I have been waiting over 12 months for the beyond tv to finally support DVB cards, and now nothing…
April 25th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Glad to see other hams into model railroading. I operate on all the ham bands 160 – 10 meters. As for the model railroading, it’s all N-scale. See ya a bit later maybe on the radio.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
I love your blog. KarlaX
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:40 pm
I need CC so I can watch TV at night without waking up everyone else around me.. please email me when this is available.
April 13th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Alison
The Directv HDTV receiver is a great idea when it comes to television.