SnapStream Blog

Ever been away on business or on vacation and wanted to access your Beyond TV recordings? How about stream your recordings across the Internet? I know there have been times when I am out of town, and have wanted to see what Jack Bauer did on the previous night’s episode of 24. I know I can always wait until I get back home to Houston, but in today’s world of instant gratification, that is a preposterous thought.

Along Comes Orb

To all of you who can relate to my scenario above– I’d like to introduce you to Orb (http://www.orb.com), a free placeshifting application that allows you to make all of your Beyond TV recordings accessible over the Internet. And best of all, Orb will automatically transcode your Beyond TV recordings to a bitrate that is suitable for your Internet connection! For example, I recorded an episode of South Park at 7 Mbps (Beyond TV’s “Best” MPEG-2 quality) on my Beyond TV box at home the other day. When playing the file back through Orb’s web portal, the video was being transcoded at an average of 350 Kbps. The bitrate would dynamically adjust depending on the connection speed I had at a particular moment.

To make Orb work, you first must download Orb’s application (13.9 MB), and install it on a host PC. During the installation process (detailed below) you will create an Orb account, and then do some configuration telling Orb where your media is stored. Finally, to access your media, simply log into Orb’s website with the account information that you created during installation, and let the streaming begin!

I was telling our designer, Joel, about Orb the other day. Joel had a vacation coming up in Cozumel, Mexico, so he decided to get set up with Orb so he could attempt to stream his video internationally. In Joel’s words:

I went to a wedding recently in Cozumel, Mexico. When I arrived, I had some free time at the hotel I was staying at so I logged on the one of the hotel’s Internet stations.

Once on the web I was curious to find out if the Orb software I installed would continue to work even outside of the country. I simply typed in my password and navigated to where my recorded shows were located on my home computer. I chose “Ugly Betty� and it started to play. I only watched a few minutes of the show, but for a split second, it felt like I was home on my couch, enjoying one of my shows.

Want to try setting up Orb for your own scenario? If so, a detailed setup process can be found below.

(more…)

This morning I opened the entertainment section of the paper and read that Jericho had fallen prey to the “curse of the winter break.” Another good show, flushed down the drain due to scheduling stupidity. Even worse, for the folks that invested the time to watch the twenty some-odd episodes, now there is no conclusion to the series. Simply put, that’s super lame.

The article here brings up the concept of the TV viewers bill of rights. His main point is that studios shouldn’t leave viewers hanging.

Expanding on the idea, I have a few more items to add to the list:

• No stupid breaks. If the storyline is ongoing, keep showing new episodes each week. Lost and Heroes suffered huge ratings losses and Jericho died because of this.
• Advance the storyline. Viewers are watching serialized dramas each week to see what’s happening. If you aren’t advancing the storyline consistently, why would people tune in? (Prison break suffered from this.)
• Don’t cancel the show without an ending (aka, have an endgame at all time): Respect the investment that a viewer makes to watch a serialized drama. After a viewer is burnt by this once, they are less likely to invest in more shows.
• Commit to an end time for the first storyline: Here’s a suggestion…. a season is a great timespan in which to answer all the asked questions that were in the pilot.
• Don’t have cliffhangers season to season: Take the hint from 24. If you have a new good storyline at the start of each season, viewers will tune in again. If you make them wait 4 months, they’ll forget what was happening and stop watching in frustration.
• Don’t name the show something that doesn’t continue to make sense: Prison Break. Need I say more?
• Don’t screw with the timeslot: Viewers without dvrs who miss one or two episodes due to a timeslot change are going to be lost. If the plot advanced as it should, by the time they find the show again, they will be a lost as a viewer who never saw the show at all.
• Find a new storyline: The government or giant corporate conspiracy has been done. Seriously.

Who has done it right:

• 24 (Uses packaged “day” seasons that people can digest. Airs without breaks once the season starts.)
• Most soap operas (No ridiculous cliffhangers that last for months. Advances the storyline quickly.)
• Wrestling (From 10 years ago) (Basically the same as soap operas, but for dudes)

Who hasn’t done it right:

• Jericho (Took a huge winter break and lost viewers)
• Lost (Took a huge winter break and lost viewers. Plot line doesn’t advance quickly enough.)
• Heroes (Took a huge winter break and lost viewers)
• Desperate housewives (Did a good job for one season and didn’t properly start a new serial for the second season and beyond)
• Prison Break (Named the show something stupid and had to put the people back in jail)
• Vanished (didn’t advance the storyline)
• Drive (Gave up too quickly. Maybe the July 4th airings will rectify this?)
• Invasion (Left the series at a huge cliffhanger)

(Digg this story)

Brent Evans covers the top 5 reasons to use a home theater PC (HTPC) instead of a cable DVR:

1. You control your content
2. Skipping commercials is easier
3. HTPC’s can expand with your needs
4. Your Content Follows You
5. HTPC’s go beyond TV viewing

Read the full article over at Brent’s blog.

INTRODUCTION

Last month, we quietly released a version of Beyond TV (4.6.1) that supports Silicon Dust’s HDHomerun Digital QAM dual tuning device. What does this mean to you?? If you are up to a little setup, it means you no longer have to rely on an over-the-air ATSC signal—instead, you are able to directly tune non-encrypted (Clear) QAM channels from over your coax cable. No more unpredictable thunderstorms interfering with your recording of LOST or Heroes!

Shortly after we released version 4.6.1, I became intrigued with the idea of setting up the HDHomerun with my Beyond TV box at home. My motivation stemmed mostly from times when I came home to find that my HD recordings would cut off halfway through a show or were garbled at points during playback. As many existing over-the-air users may be able to attest to, dropping and unreliability of over-the-air signals can be a bit annoying. My other contributing motivation was to see if I could set it up myself—a non-technical person who works in sales/marketing for SnapStream.

Note: Over-the-air HD or Clear QAM tuning devices can be added on to Beyond TV at any time. Because of the complexity of setting up Clear QAM, I would recommend to users that you start out by setting up Beyond TV with analog or digital cable before trying to set it up with Clear QAM.

So I was ready to get rolling on the setup of the HDHomerun! My enthusiasm could hardly be contained—then I looked at a tutorial on how to set the HDHomerun up with Beyond TV. I was deflated at the thought of going through the several pages of required setup—could it really be this complicated to set up? I was determined to get an answer to my question, so I proceeded.

WHAT IS CLEAR QAM?

Before we get started– a little information on what QAM actually is. In layman’s terms, QAM is digital cable without a set-top-box. More specifically, Clear QAM is unencrypted digital cable without a set-top-box.

In more technical terms, Clear QAM can be described as an unencrypted video signal that is sent through standard coax cable from cable providers in a digital format. Most cable providers today will at least push a standard and hi-def version of the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) through their coax lines to customers. I say at least because oftentimes, additional Clear QAM channels are made available by the cable companies. Though Clear QAM is not quite cable card support, it is a step in the right direction.

(more…)

This review is the fifth in a series of product reviews written by the SnapStream community members. This review is of the Crossbar Media MediaCaster written by Dave, aurigus0 in the forums.

Here is the problem: you have a DVR/HTPC hooked up to your TV downstairs, but you have other televisions in your house you wish to use to access the HTPC. How do you distribute the Audio/Video signal to these other television sets?

One solution to this problem is using the Crossbar MediaCaster, which was kindly provided to me for review by SnapStream Media.

The basic idea of this hardware is that you are creating a “private access channel” AKA Avcast® entertainment network, which is provided content from any device that outputs an RCA signal.

(more…)

This review is the fourth in a series of product reviews written by the SnapStream community members. This review is of the BTC 9019 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse written by Dave, aurigus0 in the forums.

If you have an HTPC which uses software such as BeyondTV you can use a remote a majority of the time, but there are times where you will want a good old-fashioned keyboard for surfing the web or for other PC tasks. Sure you could use a wired keyboard or mouse, but who really wants to be tied to the Television, which may be across the room. Typical wireless keyboards may only work several feet away from your PC, however the 9019URF works at least 3.5 meters (10.5 feet) away from your PC. In my experience it worked in another room on a different floor, through the walls. It uses Radio Frequencies (RF) which can go through walls and does not require line of sight.

(more…)