SnapStream Blog

Before I worked for SnapStream, I was actively involved in building plug-ins for Beyond Media. As a former community developer, I’m very happy to announce the opening of a new SnapStream website, http://code.snapstream.com. The site is designed to be a central resource for developers working on Beyond TV and Beyond Media plugins or skins. However, that isn’t the really cool part.

The part that is most exciting is that it is a completely open wiki system.  For those not familiar with a wiki, it is a web site that is editable by the visitors of that site.  The changes are immediately visible, and other users can add, edit, or enhance content as they see fit.  We have left it open for editing by anyone because we believe this is the best way to get the information that developers need as quickly as possible.  This really boils down to the following three things:

1.      If you are creating something and have a question there is a central location to look it up.

2.      If you can’t find the answer then you can leave a note asking for someone to write an article about it.

3.      If you know the answer to a question or if you found something really cool then you can write about it and share it with the community.

To give you a few ideas of items already on the site, there are

• the APIs for Beyond Media and Beyond TV APIs
• the Beyond Media SDK
• an article about the best practices for updating the Beyond Media UI from a background thread and
• documentation for Beyond TV’s third party guide updates.

If you have questions, someone has answers, so go check it out, and happy coding.

About the author: Jason Baumeister has been a Software Engineer for SnapStream Media for a little over six months. Before he started working here, he actively developed multiple plugins with the Beyond Media and Beyond TV SDKs. The extremely popular DVD Library plug-in, for example, is one of his creations.

Percy’s 11-tuner Godzilla PVR has been generating a lot of buzz lately. His blog post got Slashdot’ed and Dugg and also showed up on Engadget and the PVRblog. Sure, it may be a little overkill for the average user, but by building PVRs like this, we continue to fully exercise the software and stress-test its reliability and performance. If Beyond TV can handle Percy’s 11 tuners, I know that it’s going to run rock solid on my 2 tuner system at home.

Hey, how did Percy get SmartSkip for an HD recording?
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Of course to keep up with Percy, we have to keep improving the software. Beyond TV 4 has been our most popular release so far, and today we’re releasing Beyond TV 4.1 with a handful of bug fixes, support for a couple of new cards, and a few new features. As some perceptive users noted, Percy’s HD recordings have SmartSkip chapters, Beyond TV 4.1 now supports SmartSkip for HD content. So just because commercials look better in HD doesn’t mean that you have to watch them if you don’t want to. Of course with the Super Bowl just weeks away, maybe you’ll be skipping to the commercials.

Click here for the full Beyond TV 4.1 Release Notes.

The King of all Monster PVRs
Powered by SnapStream Beyond TV 4

Introduction:

With the third installment of our Monster PVR series, we here at SnapStream asked ourselves, “How can we beat the Medusa PVR, our 6 tuner beast, and our Hydra PVR, our 10 tuner monster?”

Why, by making an 11 tuner system with HDTV support, of course! This is when the Godzilla PVR system, king of all monsters was born. How do we top the Hydra PVR? This system is an ultra high end HTPC showcasing Beyond TV 4 and capable of recording 11 shows, 4 high definition and 7 standard definition, at once. With Beyond TV 4’s HDTV support and with its unlimited tuners, you can create your own monster system.

(Interested in using SnapStream at your company or organization? Learn more about SnapStream’s turnkey enterprise TV solutions. http://www.snapstream.com/enterprise)

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One of the frustrations of buying things online is having to wait to receive your order by mail. Who hasn’t imagined a buying experience with the convenience of online shopping and the instant gratification of physical stores? (OK, maybe I’m the only one who spends time imagining such things ). Anyways, we’ve been hard at work with our fulfillment partner for the SnapStream Store so you have to wait a little bit less. Starting today, any order you place before 1pm central time will ship out on the same day. And with all items in the SnapStream Store in-stock, that makes our store the home of SnapStream HTPC instant gratification goodness.

Joel, our fearless Graphic Designer, is embarking on a journey. On this trek, he will face exhaustion, dangerous competitors, and dehydration. This Sunday, Joel will be participating in the Chevron Houston Marathon, which weaves a path from downtown Houston south to Rice University, west to the Galleria shopping center, and back again. If you know Houston, you know that’s one long run.

Joel has been training for five months, and during that time, has faced several injuries and setbacks…but we’re sure he’ll do great!

Good luck Joel! Run fast!

We just switched all the file downloads on www.snapstream.com over to Akamai (www.akamai.com). If you have positive (”WOW !@# I downloaded Beyond TV 50x faster with Akamai!”) or negative (”Help! I can’t download anymore ”) feedback, please send it to us. We’ll be kind of trying the service out over the next few months to see what it does for us.