SnapStream Blog

Earlier this evening, we shipped release candidate 1 (RC1) of Beyond TV 4.6.1 over at the SnapStream Beta Program (if you aren’t a member, just sign-up; access is immediate).

In addition to a slew of bug fixes, this release sports a new feature: QAM support with the HDHomeRun. From the release notes:

The big news for this build is support for the HDHomeRun network based atsc/qam dual tuner. Read that sentence again, I’ll wait. Due to an interesting atsc mapping system unique to the Homerun, we were able to include support for the QAM side of its tuner. The setup is a little more difficult than your traditional tuner card, but the result is well worth it. For more information on setting it up, visit the Beyond TV beta section of forums.snapstream.com

Based on a user-created poll, this should make a lot of people happy. In fact, I just spotted this post in the beta forums:

wow, this is awesome!

*head explodes*

*headless body goes out and buys HDHomeRun*

Setup isn’t for the faint of heart, but what you get in the end is undeniably cool… access to the unencrypted digital TV channels on your cable feed!

DownloadSquad posts on using Couchville with the Nintendo Wii:

There have been a number of things you can do with the Wii browser (tabbed browsing, watch videos) and here’s another one to add to the list: TV listings. Sure it seems like a simple enough idea, but the trick is having a TV listing web site that is simple, easy to search, and is legible on a TV itself: enter Couchville.

I still don’t have a Wii (when are these things going to be generally available!?), but when I get one I’m definitely going to try this out.

Soham sent me a message earlier this month that read “This, you’ve got to see.” When I took a look, I saw what he was talking about. See for yourself:

So I immediately wrote to Ken to learn more. More on Ken’s setup:

My name is Ken and I’ve been a video game addict since my dad introduced me to the cocktail table version of Pong back in the mid-70’s. Growing up in the 80’s, I think I spent more time in arcades than I did in school! Sad, but true. I’ve always wanted to have my own “arcade.” Finally, after 30 years, I have achieved my dream.

With my wife’s permission :0) I converted our single-car garage into our game room. I incorporated as many aspects of home entertainment as I could fit in; coin-op arcade units, pinball, console video games, PC/LAN gaming, and a home theater system which incorporates BeyondTV 3 (of course).

The game room was designed to blend the old 80’s arcade aesthetic with modern style and comfort. The entire room is painted in a deep midnight blue, reminiscent of Tron’s world. The room also features UV reactive carpet and hand-cut classic arcade graphics on the walls. From the beginning, I really wanted the Space Invaders, Ms. Pac-Man and Galaxian graphics to *pop* and appear to be floating in space under black light. On the other walls, I have framed arcade marquees for Spy Hunter, Joust, Stargate, Space Duel, Hydro Thunder and others.

The game room took almost three years to complete. We added an access door to the interior of the house; custom wiring for power, sound, cable TV, LAN and lighting. We also added sound deadening material to the garage door, attic insulation, and the unsightly A/C unit affectionately known as “R2-D2,” which is underneath the projection screen.

BTW, thanks for making such a great product, and without the monthly fees and locked content! My wife and I love it so much, I recently purchased BeyondTV 4 as I’m building another HTPC soon.

See the whole SnapStream Game Room set on flickr.

Today, we’re officially launching the Couchville website. Couchville’s purpose is to be a simple TV listings website. In addition to being very usable and fast, there are a bunch of cool things about the site – one of them is the draggable program guide (kind of like Google Maps, but with your program guide) and easy to link to TV show pages for all of you bloggers (for example, a few of my favorite TV shows are Ugly Betty, How I Met Your Mother, (maybe I shouldn’t admit to this one…) Grey’s Anatomy, and, until last week’s episode, Lost).

Check out a few screenshots of Couchville:

Couchville’s draggable program guide

Simple search results

Couchville’s TV show pages are easy to link to

So head on over to Couchville and take the tour or just try the site out.

(other useful links: Press graphics and the FAQ)

Speaking about Couchville in the broader context of our company, SnapStream, Couchville represents a big step for us. We started this company 6 years ago and have spent most of our time focused on PC media center software. We’re best known for our Beyond TV product, a popular PC DVR among techies that does cool things like automatic commercial detection, compress TV shows to a bunch of different formats, stream TV around the home to other networked laptops and desktops, and advanced multi-tuner support. The only problem has been that the audience for PC DVR has been limited to early adopters willing to crack open their PCs and install a TV tuner card. So while we’ve built this really great, usable, simple TV experience, no one other than early adopters have been able to enjoy and appreciate it because of the work involved with setting it up (ie the work with installing a TV tuner card and then connecting your TV signal to your PC). That’s what brought us around to building Couchville. We wanted to build something that would be useful to almost anyone while applying the same usability principles and software development processes we used to build Beyond TV. And after looking at the other folks doing online TV guides, we decided Couchville would be a good place for us to go. We hope you enjoy it!

(and for all of our existing users that might wonder if this means we’re going to stop working on Beyond TV… two words: no way! PC DVR remains our focus and, who knows, at some point you might even see us try to blur the lines between Couchville and Beyond TV.)

Many of you browsing the SnapStream website have come across a new project of ours called Couchville. It’s a simple website for TV listings. A formal announcement will come later this week, but meanwhile, head on over and check it out.

From Jason’s update over on the developer wiki over at code.snapstream.com:

Beyond TV 4.6 API Available
March 2, 2007
The Beyond TV 4.6 API is now available online. Beyond TV 4.6 adds several new searching options to the web services a long with a batch method to reprioritize jobs.

Download the latest Beyond TV SDK here.

(for anyone that’s not familiar with the Beyond TV SDK, see “What you can do with our SDKs” and visit the Beyond TV Downloads forum)

For a long time now, we’ve been showcasing our user’s Beyond TV-powered living rooms in our digital living room showcase. Today, I have two more setups to share.

Brent’s living room is described in detail on his blog. His server has an impressive 6 tuners in it, a combination of internal and external devices as well as both standard definition and high-definition tuners. Brent’s also using the HDHomeRun with Fonceur’s BTV Exterminator Plug-in and with this combo, he’s able to record unencrypted QAM. Read more about Brent’s setup over on his blog.

And then there is Peter’s Beyond TV setup, meticulously documented in text and in pictures. Peter’s quest to find an alternative way of getting high-def TV (because he was “never happy with the level of content control or quality of service” that satellite or digital cable delivered) lead him to Beyond TV. Read more and enjoy some photographs of Peter’s setup below: