SnapStream Blog

Hauppauge’s latest TV tuner, the HVR-950, is a little USB stick that supports recording over-the-air HDTV. We’re happy to say that we’ve tested it with Beyond TV 4.4 and it works like a charm. So if you have an HVR-950, go ahead and download the 21-day trial of Beyond TV. And if you are new to using your PC for HDTV, check out our HDTV Setup Center.

The HVR-950 is Hauppauge’s first ATSC TV tuner in a very long time and their very first to include BDA drivers (BDA stands for “broadcast driver architecture” and it’s the way you have to write your TV tuner drivers for it to work with Beyond TV or any other PVR software out there). We’re glad to see Hauppauge getting into the game on HDTV tuners!

UPDATE: I had missed it before, but there’s a thread on our forums where people have been discussing their experiences with HVR-950.

Working at SnapStream, I’ve found that we have a loyal following. So much so that we at SnapStream would like to introduce something new that we haven’t offered before. We’re opening a merchandise store. As of right now, we offer t-shirts but plan to expand on the selection in the near future. Some of the shirts were a direct result from conversations we had with users on our forums and I’d like to personally thank them for all their help. We have the new shirts up and more are on the way!

http://www.zazzle.com/snapstream

David Mohorn has written a Beyond TV plug-in using the Beyond TV SDK for Microsoft’s blog posting tool (Windows Live Writer). So now, while you are writing a blog post, the Beyond TV plug-in shows up in the sidebar:

And when you click on it, it adds information about your Beyond TV recordings to your current blog posting:

BeyondTV Active Recordings: Project Runway
BeyondTV Upcoming Recordings: Project Runway, Survivor: Cook Islands, Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy

Download the plug-in and learn more about it.

Thanks for the cool plug-in David!

Guest blog posting by Seth Miller (draven in the forums)

After years of yearning to bring the true theater experience home, I have finally succeeded. My home now boasts a theater that will engulf you in the movie experience, tower over you with special not meant for mere television and bring a library of over 175 movies no more than the push of a button away, a jukebox of movies from TV and DVD. This theater was built on a limited budget, but boasts all the features that I’ve been dreaming of since I first heard someone say, “home theater�.

Home theater, we’ve heard the term thrown around for years by every electronics store chain and every television manufacturer in the business, and they’ve applied it to every piece of equipment that could show a picture. But what does it mean? Are we talking about a 13� TV stuck in the corner of a living room, or are we talking about actually bringing the theater experience home? For me, I wanted a full blown theater in my home, and I think I’ve finally succeeded.

Years ago, the only way we could watch our favorite movies was to go buy some over-priced popcorn at our local cinema and pay an arm and a leg for a ticket in. Then came the VCR. This technological marvel opened up possibilities like we had never seen before. We could rent movies from the local Quick Stop for half of a theater ticket, and enjoy the movies in the comfort of our own living room. Sure, we all had to crowd around the TV and watch a cropped version of the original, but it was at home, and that made a difference. Later, DVDs brought us crisper images and the original widescreen format on a medium that we didn’t have to rewind. And surround sound systems brought us one step closer to the theater experience, but was it ever really the same as being in the theater?

Today I can proudly boast that I have found, or rather created, the true home theater. That’s right, a theater at home, not a TV masquerading as the famed silver screen, but an honest to goodness theater. “How?� you ask. Well here is the low-down.
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Since we started SnapStream more than five years ago, our community has been a big part of our company. The community has existed in a bunch of different places:

• our beta program
• our forums
• our company blog
• the digital living room showcase
• Beyond TV Buzz and
• our developer community

And the community has always been a valuable source of product feedback, 3rd party developer plug-ins for Beyond Media and Beyond TV, customer support and a lot more. So we’ve finally gotten around to recognizing the community more prominently on the SnapStream website, through the new community tab:

Clicking on the tab will take you to an table of contents for all the different places the SnapStream community exists.

And on a related note, 3rd party communities that focus on home theater PCs (HTPCs) have played an important role in raising awareness for people building their own PVRs — sites like htpcnews.com, byopvr.com and eHomeUpgrade. We’ve always been very supportive of these sites and we’re glad to see that there’s a new kid on the block: http://www.missingremote.com/. Check out this new site. And as an added bonus, we’re sponsoring a giveaway there right now so when you visit, enter to win a bunch of SnapStream software and hardware.