SnapStream Blog

I saw this question today from a user about Vista support in Beyond TV:

I am considering purchasing Beyond TV 4.5, but would really rather wait until you have a version that is compatible with Windows Vista. Do you know when this will be? Is there anyway I can purchase the product now and get a free upgrade when a Vista compatible version is released?

Since Microsoft’s Vista was launched earlier this week, some of you (33.23% percent of you if our survey is correct) may have the same question.

Beyond TV 4.6, the successor to Beyond TV 4.5, will begin shipping very soon now and, among other things, it will contain a broad set of fixes that make Beyond TV fully compatible with Microsoft Vista. And like other point releases, it will be a free upgrade for existing Beyond TV 4.x users. Keep checking back here for a more definitive Beyond TV 4.6 schedule!

I was disappointed rto read yesterday that AOL made the decision to shutdown the PVRWire blog. PVRWire, we’ll miss you! A few of PVRWire’s recent posts that linked to the SnapStream blog:

Beyond TV Skins – Customize the look of Beyond TV with themes

Hauppauge adding IR blasters to USB TV tuners

Fun with multiple TV Tuners

Getting a Slingbox to work with BeyondTV

PVR Wire Podcast 12 — 11/16/06

Two more ways to transfer video to an iPod

Expect a new version of Beyond TV this week

Custom search engine for building a PC-based PVR

BeyondTV looking for beta testers

How you can help BeyondTV

Using BeyondTV with Hauppauge’s MediaMVP

In a recent post over in the SnapStream forums, I invited people to add themselves to a map of our community (an idea I borrowed from the excellent byopvr.com website). A couple of days later, more than 100 people have added themselves:

So join in the fun and drop a pin on the map. There are some lonely states out there that need some SnapStream representation.

I’m always delighted and surprised by the SnapStream Community. They do an amazing job helping one another in the SnapStream Forums, they’re an endless supply of new feature ideas, and they create some pretty cool add-ons to our products.

The other day I realized that while we weren’t looking, the community had gone and created a bunch of extremely cool skins for Beyond TV. Here’s a sampling:

Take a swim with the dolphins:

…or enjoy a nice sunset:

Any Matrix fans out there? You’ll appreciate these two Beyond TV skins:

And, finally, you can really never be ready early enough for “Talk Like a Pirate Day” so get your Beyond TV Pirates skins now, complete with a skull and crossbones icon for the “delete file” action in Beyond TV :

Browse through more Beyond TV skins here in the Beyond TV Downloads section of the SnapStream Forums.

Finally, are you wondering how to change your Beyond TV skin? Each skin has its own specific set of directions, but generally, it involves replacing the FSMEDIA directory in the \Program Files\SnapStream Media\Beyond TV directory.

Hauppauge announced a few new TV tuner cards last week and during a brief meeting I had with Ken Plotkin, Hauppauge’s CEO, in Las Vegas at CES, I got the inside track on their new cards.

First and foremost (at least for those of us in the United States), Hauppauge announced the HVR-1600 at CES. The HVR-1600 is Hauppauge’s second recent TV tuner card to support over-the-air HDTV. Their first TV tuner card with over-the-air HDTV support was the HVR-950 (which we wrote about here in October 2006).

The retail box for Hauppauge’s new HVR-1600

Like many cards, the new HVR-1600 supports both over-the-air HDTV and analog TV. But, there are a few very cool things that set the HVR-1600 apart from any other TV tuner card on the market in the United States:

1. First of all, the HVR-1600 has an IR blaster and code library — the same one that Hauppauge includes with all of their PVR-150 TV tuner cards. Hauppauge’s PC TV tuners are the only ones in the United States to include IR blasters and code libraries, making them the only TV tuners that you can use if you want to record TV on your non-media center edition PC from your satellite or digital cable set-top box without any additional cost add-on products.

Hauppauge’s new HVR-1600 with IR blaster and code library

The connector plate for Hauppauge’s new HVR-1600 (note all-important IR emitter port)

2. Second of all, the HVR-1600 has a hardware MPEG-2 encoder for analog TV — this means that, like the ATI Theater 650, you can not only record analog TV, but you can record it in consistently high quality without putting much load on your PC’s CPU. We’ve always recommended analog TV tuner cards with hardware encoding. This makes the HVR-1600 one of the few over-the-air HDTV cards that we can recommend you use to also record analog TV.

3. Finally, and this a subtlety, the HVR-1600 is supposed to be a true dual tuner card, which means you can use both the digital tuner and the analog tuner at the same time. You can record an over-the-air HDTV show while you simultaneously record an analog TV show. This sets the HVR-1600 apart from the only other over-the-air HDTV card with hardware-encoding analog TV support, the ATI Theater 650.

From what Ken told me, the HVR-1600 should already be on the shelves at CompUSAs around the country. And, while we haven’t tested these new Hauppauge cards yet, the HVR-1600 should work just fine in Beyond TV. Look for another blog posting confirming HVR-1600 support in Beyond TV and announcing availability in the SnapStream Store.

The second important piece of news that I picked up during my meeting with Hauppauge at CES (that wasn’t in their press release) is that Hauppauge will soon quietly begin shipping all of their PVR-USB2s with the same IR blaster and code library that the Hauppauge PVR-150 cards have always shipped with.

The retail box for the PVR-USB2 — they’ve added an IR blaster, but the retail box hasn’t changed.

This is great news for digital cable and satellite users who either have a laptop and aren’t technical enough to open up their PCs and install a PCI TV tuner card. We used to have to direct these folks to over to the expensive ($49.99) USB-UIRT cable pack, but once these new Hauppauge PVR-USB2 devices are in circulation, the Hauppauge PVR-USB2 will be a one-stop USB TV tuner solution for not only regular cable and antenna users, but for digital cable and satellite users as well. The new Hauppauge PVR-USB2s with IR blaster should be widely available shortly. Look for another blog posting when we start shipping these new TV cards in the SnapStream Store.

The new Hauppauge PVR-USB2 with IR blaster and code library — note the newly added IR emitter port.

UPDATE: It seems that the Hauppauge HVR-1600 is NOT a true dual tuner card. It’s a hybrid card just like the ATI Theater 650, which you can use either the analog tuner or the digital tuner but not both at the same time. We’re verifying our tests and checking with Hauppauge, but meanwhile we’ve gone ahead and updated this post to reflect what we saw in our tests (1/22/2007).

UPDATE 2: The Hauppauge HVR-1600 IS a true dual tuner card after all. Beyond TV 4.5 treats it like a hybrid card but Beyond TV 4.6 will fix this. (1/24/2007).