SnapStream Blog

What a night for college hoops! This has been the most excited I’ve been for the NCAA tournament since leaving college. Who picked LSU (without Shaq) to beat Duke? How did UCLA overcome a nine point deficit in three and a half minutes to beat Gonzaga? Oh, and what a three for UT! Go horns!!! (Sorry, I went to UT.)

With all of the great basketball it’s a perfect time to launch a new version of Beyond TV 4. Just in time to setup for this weekend’s games.

Beyond TV 4.2 rolls out today with the ability to schedule recordings across channels. We added this feature in response to customer requests. It’s perfect for giving you even more show coverage when you have conflicts – such as when you’re watching hours and hours of basketball. Basically, it allows you to setup a show to record on any channel that it airs. So that gives Beyond TV even more options to find a show at a different time. So it doesn’t matter that the basketball games are killing all of your prime time recordings!

To make it work, simply schedule a recording from the program guide on the channel that you would prefer to have Beyond TV use (this way, you can give first preference to your HD channels). Then select the same show again. The menu that pops up will give you an option to edit the recording details. From this screen, you can change all of the recording options for the show including SmartSkip settings, ShowSqueeze settings, and the record across channels option. By default, Beyond TV will work as it does today – meaning it will not record across channels unless you set the option.

Also, if you’re having trouble finding new shows to record, check out our new statistics page (login required). This page gives you info about the most popular shows in the BTV community. To login, use your SnapStream.Net login info. If you don’t have a SnapStream.Net account, you can rerun the Setup Wizard to signup. To have your recording votes counted, choose to “Enable advanced features” in the installer or “SnapsStream.NET Settings-> Enable Advanced Featuresâ€? in the Web Admin. I encourage everyone to signup, have your vote counted, help generate more accurate stats, and save other BTV users from bad TV!

Right now, the data includes the show data from our beta testers and also everyone at SnapStream. For a while “Reba” was winning because pbmax had scheduled it on every box in the test lab. It will be interesting to see how these stats change as more people start using the new release and opt in to have their preferences uploaded.

Of course Beyond TV 4.2 also includes a normal slew of improvements and bug fixes. We’ve completely rewritten the guide updater to make it more reliable and improve performance. To see the complete list, check out the release notes.

As always, Beyond TV 4 point upgrades are free to all Beyond TV 4 users. So go grab it and get ready for more basketball action!

Several of us will be heading up to Austin this weekend to check out SXSW — a music, film, and interactive media festival. If you will be there and would like to meet up, just send me an email at soham AT snapstream DOT com with your cell number and I’ll give you a call.

SnapStream Media officially launched Firefly Mini today! The remote is now available for $29.99 in the SnapStream Store. You can read all about Mini, see a comparison chart with Firefly, and also see some great pictures on the Firefly Mini Product Pages.

Here are some of the cool things about Firefly Mini:

1) Smaller, sleaker, simpler, and maybe even sexier…

2) IR Based Technology. Check out Zack’s posting to see how you can now control your PC using a universal IR remote control.

3) No special drivers or software needed. Since Firefly Mini is a HID compliant device, you can just plug it in and start using it.

4) Supports a lot of applications right out of the box! Of course, we wanted Firefly Mini to work great with Beyond TV, Beyond TV Link, and Beyond Media, and it definitely does. However, we also wanted to offer a remote control that would work with other applications to maximize the value. Since Firefly Mini uses standard HID commands, you can use it to control any application that supports HID — a steadily growing list.

Here’s the button mapping.

Additionally, some keys are special to SnapStream products. Here they are:

Firefly - Launches Beyond Media, Beyond TV, or Beyond TV Link (can also be configured to launch any application).
Guide - Navigates Beyond TV to the Program Guide Screen.
Last - While watching Live TV, changes channels to the previous channel.
Menu - While watching a DVD in Beyond Media, launches the DVD menu. Otherwise, navigates to the main menu.
Option - Brings up the context-sensitive options menu.

That’s it. If you’re interested, you can also check out Chrissy’s official press release.

Introduction
Have you every wished you could add a remote control to your HTPC without actually having another remote to use (and lose)? With the Firefly Mini and a Universal Learning Remote control, you can do just that. There are a number of very inexpensive remote controls that have learning capacity that will allow you to integrate all of your Infrared Remote Controls into a single unit. For this article, I chose one that I already had, the Sony RM-VL700S, a $25 5-Device learning remote. I pulled up a PDF of the long since misplaced manual from sony.com.

The Training Process
The training process on the Sony Remote (and most others) is very straightforward. First, set the two remotes with their IR eyes facing each other about 1�-2� apart. By holding the “Set� button on the Sony to enter programming and then the component button (I chose CBL/SAT) it was ready to train. Making a quick mental game plan of how you want to match the buttons up and what order you will do them in as to not forget one. Then, start by pressing the button on the Learning Remote that you want to train first. When it flashes to indicate it’s ready, hold down the corresponding button on the Firefly Mini until the training light goes off. It’s key to train the full cycle, not just press and release the button quickly on the Mini. Rinse and repeat for all of the buttons on the learning remote and then finish the process by ending the training, in this case, pressing the “Set� button once more.

Problems and Pitfalls
In the process of doing this, I ran into a few pitfalls you will want to avoid.

- The Buttons on the new remote didn’t exactly match up with the buttons on the Mini. Other than having to give up FF and RR so I could have Skip Forward and Skip Back, all I had to do was be a little creative in naming.

Firefly Mini Button = Sony Button
Last = Recall
Firefly Button = TV/Video
Option = Display
Close = Sleep
Exit = Menu

- As mentioned above the Learning Remote must learn the full code from the Mini, not just a burst. This means you must hold the button on the Mini until the Learning Remote indicates it learned the code (5-10 seconds in some cases).
- Your mileage may very, but the distance between the remotes that worked for me was about 2�. You may need to experiment with the distance to get proper learning.
- On the Sony Remote I chose, once a button was learned, it couldn’t be retrained without first clearing it out. This process took me a minute to figure out. I wish I had avoided all of that nonsense by training right in the first place.
- When training, since the remote are facing each other, the left and right are reversed. Make sure to not train the right button to go left or vice versa.

Other Options
The Sony remote used in this article (picked up a few months ago at Fry’s) is only one of many options. Just looking quickly on the web I saw the Phillips PM625S for $20 and the Zenith ZN5DSS for $23. While I haven’t used them myself, they both advertise the “learning� capacity needed to be trained by a Firefly Mini.

Conclusion
Integrating the Firefly Mini into your “all in one� remote really helps clean up the clutter and make it easier to use all of your devices. The particular remote I chose actually had a slightly better range than the (already good distance) Firefly Mini and really makes my HTPC setup work well.

So here are some “shots” of the new Firefly Mini remote. The first thumbnail links to a larger image for a close-up view.