How to watch TV on your iPhone/iPod
February 7th, 2008 at 11:56 pm by matt
A few months ago, we added a new plug-in into Beyond TV that allows you to pretty easily move anything playing on television onto any video-capable Apple device (i.e. an iPhone, iPod, or an Apple TV).
Once you go through the initial setup, Beyond TV’s H.264 integration should make it simple and automatic to get your favorite TV shows onto your Apple device.
I created this video to show you how it all works, all the way from getting the right hardware for Beyond TV and setting up your PC through plugging your iPhone or iPod into your PC and having iTunes magically copy all of your latest TV shows onto it. Hope you enjoy the video and find it useful!
Tags: apple, AppleTV, cell phone, h264, i phone, i tunes, iPhone, iPod, iTunes, iTunes Integration, Mobile
February 8th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I would very much like to see this for the Zune. Let me know if you need beta testers! (BTV 4.7.1 with 2 tuners – avermedia 350 and WinTV-HVR1600 – using BTV-Exterminator to record QAM channels)
I have a Zune 30Gb – so not too interested in H.264 but would like to use ShowSqueezed WMV files to put onto my Zune without the need for additional conversion.
February 9th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Can this be done with a WM5 PPC?
Dean
BTV 4.7.1, BM, 3 tuners
February 9th, 2008 at 6:39 am
Added:
My PPC is a ipaq 4705 w/ 128MB RAM & 4GB SD.
February 9th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Got it working fine…
February 11th, 2008 at 7:42 am
I agree with Sharon about the Zune. There’s alot of negativity around the Zune in the Snapstream forums. I picked up a refurb’d Zune last year because it was cheap. And (surprising to me) I really love it.
I manually showsqueeze to WMV and watch TV on my lunch break. I fiddled with the RSS feature on the iPOD integration in the WebAdmin, but couldn’t get it working. If Snapstream would allow me the same integration with the Zune that the iPod has, I’d be very pleased. Plus (side note), I’d love to see RSS feeds for news and weather in BeyondTV. BeyondTV is kinda the central media point in the house…getting updated news and weather and storm radar on the TV would be great and probably pretty easy.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
I know there appear to be lots of iPhone fans but you really shouldn’t neglect the N95 crowd. And we can use the H.264 podcasting function as well… See the post here: http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=42813 . I’ve since added an 8GB microSD card and it works very well…. I can sync shows OTA, reagardless of where I am (well, except in the subway).
Caveat: for some reason, the H264 recordings are tagged in a way that makes it appear they will not work on the phone (a warning shows up before downloading). They work fine, though. :shrug:
February 17th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
I have iTunes on my work laptop, but the company firewall (built in and passworded on the laptop’s hard drive) won’t let me connect to the EPG, so I installed BeyondTV on my home PC, which doesn’t have iTunes.
If I want to transfer recordings to my laptop, is it as easy as automatically converting the recordings, looking for the file’s title in the BeyondTV video folder, and then use a USB drive to deposit it and transfer it into iTunes? Is there something else I need to do? Thx.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
To the Zune Users -
Right now, we do not have the Zune software and our software integrated to the level that it is a hands free process. (RSS feeds) What does work very well however, is adding BeyondTV’s video folder (or a seperate one that you set up) as a watched folder in the Zune software. You can set your shows to automatically ShowSqueeze in .wmv at 320×240. Your transcoded recordings will be listed as videos that you can then move onto your Zune. The same goes for many mobile devices – the thing that makes iTunes special is the seamless RSS feed integration that does all of the updating new episodes and auto-syncing for you.
Rob -
Yes, what you suggest will work fine. As mentioned above there are 2 main steps to iTunes integration. First, BeyondTV converts shows that you have recorded to the right size and quality for an apple device. Second, it generates an RSS feed that takes care of it’s importation into iTunes and it’s update settings. Your situation makes it difficult for you to do this without installing iTunes on your home PC. You could set up a shared network drive from your home PC to your laptop and have iTunes pull the shows over your network at home, or you could use removable media like you suggested. All in all, it comes down to whether or not you can set up a situation which will allow the podcast to import correctly, or if you are just manually moving the video files into iTunes using one of many options.
- Matt
March 11th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I would like the ability to select per show which iPod format to convert the file to. There are three of us with iPods, 1 Touch and 2 Nanos, we all record different shows and each would like to be able to use the podcast feature and have the show formatted for our particular iPod.
Take this as a Feature Request, have the iPod device as a definable option per show, not a global setting.
/duane
March 15th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Since there is already a RSS feed of the H.264 files created, why can’t the software be updated so that all the filenames end with “.wmv”. Since BTV already converts the files to the WMV format and the podcast script is already written it should be an easy combination of things to do — a little copy/paste and find/replace. Then all of us with Zune’s would be immensily happier.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
We have all of the Zune stuff fixed in the 4.8.1 release of our software. Enjoy
March 28th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Great work on the video Matt. LOL at safety first helmet….
March 29th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I guess I’ll have to add a “me too” here.
A generic export function would be great for those of us that are “iDevice challenged”.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:21 am
i have a device (SLINGBOX AV) where i can view shows on my computer and it also steams it over the internet so i can view show over the net. Can i use beyond tv4 with this?