On to the review— with the gyra suite laying in our office, screaming for attention, I decided to take it home for “testing� . Before I go into my using the gyra suite, I’d like to set the scene for you… In my home setup, I have a 50� Sony rear-projection HDTV which is hooked up to my HTPC (equipped with Beyond TV 4, Beyond Media, and Firefly Mini). The TV and HTPC are approximately 10 feet away from a 2-seat couch (directly in front of the TV). The couch is the area that I do most of my TV viewing either sitting directly in front of it, or lying down.

Because I do a lot of viewing late at night while lying down, and because the Firefly Mini PC Remote is IR based, there are often times that I have to awkwardly bend my arm to ensure that the IR receiver receives my button-presses, which as many people can attest to, is a very uncomfortable process. You may be asking yourself, “Why not just use the RF Firefly PC Remote?� I don’t do that because I am simply using the IR receiver portion of the Firefly Mini. I use a generic universal remote (provided by my cable company), which I have trained to blast Firefly Mini commands. With this universal remote I am able to control the PC, Television set, Cable box, and stereo receiver without ever having to switch remote controls.

Back to the testing… after bringing the gyra suite home with me, I got started immediately. The setup process was simple—I plugged the usb receiver into the front of my HTPC, inserted the included CD-ROM, went through the software setup process, and boom— I was using the wireless keyboard and mouse.

My first test was the “laying on the couch to see if the keyboard works� test. It was flawless. Searching for shows in Beyond TV became a much less stressful experience since there was no more arrowing letter-by-letter to perform my searches and because every keystroke I made with the keyboard and mouse was captured. I proceeded to navigate around Beyond TV and Beyond Media using the keyboard/mouse combinatin with great ease. After just 10 minutes, the gyra was beginning to grow on me.

My next test was the “window resizing test” using the wireless mouse. I shrunk the size of the Beyond TV window to fill the right half of my 50â€? screen, and opened 2 Firefox browsers placing them in the top-left and bottom-right quarters of the screen, respectively. Using the gyra keyboard and mouse, I turned on ESPN Sunday Night Football, muted the game sound (Not a big Joe “Theesmanâ€? fan), checked my email on the top browser, and followed the game statistics on the bottom browser.

In order to perform the above task without the gyra suite, it was necessary to physically plug a keyboard and mouse into my HTPC, and do all to opening and resizing of the windows while lying on the floor in front of the TV. This was a pain—and not to mention, was a very inefficient way to manipulate and navigate the windows once they had been opened.

Caption: Beyond TV, and two internet browsers opened at the same time. (Note: This image has been created for the sake of illustration and is not to scale.)

After determining that the gyra suite worked very well with Beyond TV/Beyond Media, and was an ideal way to control the screens on my PC from the couch, I started to look at some of the features that were specific to the gyra Air Mouse. After installing the included gyra software onto my PC, I was able to customize specific buttons on the mouse. I assigned one of the buttons to Beyond TV, and another to Beyond Media. In addition to customizing buttons, you are even able to set up what are called “Swipes�. A swipe is a predetermined physical motioning of the mouse that you are able to associate with an event. For example, I can set a swipe to navigate forwards within an internet browser when I motion the air mouse in the rightward direction.

Overall, the gyra suite performed in a way that I had hoped and beyond. The problems I was experiencing related to not having a wireless keyboard and mouse were solved with this little bundle. Also, by taking advantage of some of the perks, the gyra suite even solved problems that were unbeknownst to me at the time of testing. In terms of weaknesses, the only things I could consider weaknesses were 1) the learning curve of getting used to using a mouse in mid-air (which took all of but an hour to get used to), and 2) if you do not keep the mouse cradled in the supplied charging cradle when not in use, the tendency is for the rechargeable battery to expire (at least in my experience).

If you want a solid, durable, high-quality wireless mouse and keyboard bundle, the Gyration Suite is the one for you.

Hauppauge sent us an evaluation unit of the Wireless MediaMVP (referred to as WMVP henceforth) the other day, so I decided to take advantage of this freebie, and test the unit in my house by connecting my Beyond TV server to the WMVP (see figure 1 below).

Attention to the weak-stomached– my living quarters are very small, so setting up a real-world test scenario realistically came down to two options.

1) Place the WMVP unit right next to my family room TV (which already has a Beyond TV server hooked up to it), or

2) Set up a 13� television in my bathroom (approximately 25 feet from my Beyond TV server) and connect the WMVP to the small screen TV.

I opted for option 2—for the sake of being different AND to determine if I would actually realize value by using the device in this environment. After making my decision, it was time to go through the process of setting up the WMVP and configuring it to work with my Beyond TV server and home wireless LAN.

Figure 1. Network layout of my Beyond TV server, wireless router, and WMVP

Caption. The WMVP connects wirelessly (or via physical Ethernet) to my wireless router, which grabs the media stream originating from my Beyond TV PC.

Setup of the WMVP was very straightforward. I simply installed the included Hauppauge software on my Beyond TV server, told the software which folders on my PC to serve up (see figure 2), and plugged the WMVP into my 13� TV. After configuring the WMVP to communicate with my wireless network (see figure 3), I was ready to rock-and-roll.

Figure 2: Hauppauge software included on CD-ROM

Figure 3: LAN configuration screen

After setup of the WMVP on my LAN, I was able to stream previously recorded content captured with Beyond TV 4.4 (see figure 4) (MPEG-2 Good quality) over the network to my bathroom as well as MP3s (see figure 5), photos, and home videos.

Figure 4. Play back previously recorded videos

Figure 5. Play back MP3s

The biggest question I had before setting the device up was whether or not video playback could be done wirelessly in a quality acceptable to me. Note, in order to be acceptable to me, video must not be choppy, audio and video must be in sync, and the video quality must be pleasant to the eye at full screen. To my surprise, the quality did pass my standards– video playback was good (no choppiness), there was no video or audio interruption and the full-screen videos looked relatively clear and non-pixilated.

After the WMVP passed the “Video Playback Test�, it was obvious to me that it would have no trouble playing MP3s, and displaying photos. As expected, when the MP3 and Photos tests (playing back MP3s and flipping through a slide show respectively) were applied, I had no issues with the WMVP.

Now that the testing had concluded, the million dollar question was—would I actually use the WMVP in the bathroom? The answer to that question was yes and no.

Yes, I did use the WMVP quite frequently for streaming MP3s through the TV. It turned out to be especially handy when getting ready in the mornings, when longer periods of time were spent preparing for work. Listening to music while brushing my teeth and flossing set my day off on the right foot. As for photos, videos, and TV shows, I did not spend much time taking advantage of those capabilities.

I could see where this would be a very handy little product if I had another room to stream to—in an area where photos, video, and TV streaming made more sense, like a bedroom. Even so, the ability to sing along to music in the shower, and the side-benefit of being a great conversation piece makes the WMVP “Bathroom Edition� an essential piece of Water Closet hardware.

The Training Process
The training process on the Sony Remote (and most others) is very straightforward. First, set the two remotes with their IR eyes facing each other about 1�-2� apart. By holding the “Set� button on the Sony to enter programming and then the component button (I chose CBL/SAT) it was ready to train. Making a quick mental game plan of how you want to match the buttons up and what order you will do them in as to not forget one. Then, start by pressing the button on the Learning Remote that you want to train first. When it flashes to indicate it’s ready, hold down the corresponding button on the Firefly Mini until the training light goes off. It’s key to train the full cycle, not just press and release the button quickly on the Mini. Rinse and repeat for all of the buttons on the learning remote and then finish the process by ending the training, in this case, pressing the “Set� button once more.

Problems and Pitfalls
In the process of doing this, I ran into a few pitfalls you will want to avoid.

- The Buttons on the new remote didn’t exactly match up with the buttons on the Mini. Other than having to give up FF and RR so I could have Skip Forward and Skip Back, all I had to do was be a little creative in naming.

Firefly Mini Button = Sony Button
Last = Recall
Firefly Button = TV/Video
Option = Display
Close = Sleep
Exit = Menu

- As mentioned above the Learning Remote must learn the full code from the Mini, not just a burst. This means you must hold the button on the Mini until the Learning Remote indicates it learned the code (5-10 seconds in some cases).
- Your mileage may very, but the distance between the remotes that worked for me was about 2�. You may need to experiment with the distance to get proper learning.
- On the Sony Remote I chose, once a button was learned, it couldn’t be retrained without first clearing it out. This process took me a minute to figure out. I wish I had avoided all of that nonsense by training right in the first place.
- When training, since the remote are facing each other, the left and right are reversed. Make sure to not train the right button to go left or vice versa.

Other Options
The Sony remote used in this article (picked up a few months ago at Fry’s) is only one of many options. Just looking quickly on the web I saw the Phillips PM625S for $20 and the Zenith ZN5DSS for $23. While I haven’t used them myself, they both advertise the “learning� capacity needed to be trained by a Firefly Mini.

Conclusion
Integrating the Firefly Mini into your “all in one� remote really helps clean up the clutter and make it easier to use all of your devices. The particular remote I chose actually had a slightly better range than the (already good distance) Firefly Mini and really makes my HTPC setup work well.

The King of all Monster PVRs
Powered by SnapStream Beyond TV 4

Introduction:

With the third installment of our Monster PVR series, we here at SnapStream asked ourselves, “How can we beat the Medusa PVR, our 6 tuner beast, and our Hydra PVR, our 10 tuner monster?”

Why, by making an 11 tuner system with HDTV support, of course! This is when the Godzilla PVR system, king of all monsters was born. How do we top the Hydra PVR? This system is an ultra high end HTPC showcasing Beyond TV 4 and capable of recording 11 shows, 4 high definition and 7 standard definition, at once. With Beyond TV 4’s HDTV support and with its unlimited tuners, you can create your own monster system.

(Interested in using SnapStream at your company or organization? Learn more about SnapStream’s turnkey enterprise TV solutions. http://www.snapstream.com/enterprise)

The Guts of Godzilla:

All in all, it takes a lot of hardware to build a Godzilla PVR. Here’s everything that went into our machine:

Case

Godzilla’s Silvertone LC16M Case

The first step in building a new HTPC is figuring out what it is going to look like. I wanted Godzilla to feel at home among it’s home theater brethren. I choose the Silverstone LC16M. This case supports a fullsized ATX motherboad and had room for 6 internal 3.5″ drives and one DVD±R/RW drive. I knew I wanted to install at least a terrabyte of space in this case so that was a major selling point. Other advantages of this case are it’s LCD screen and front mounted multimedia keys. There’s even a knob that makes it look more like a home theater component.

The Silverstone LC16M’s LCD isn’t actually a Liquid Crystal Display, it’s a 2 line x 16 character Vacuum Fluorescent Display (VFD). These VFDs are usually used in home theater components because it lacks the need for a backlight like the ones required by LCDs. It’s connected via an internal USB header via an adapter that ships with the case. If you don’t have an internal USB header available you can connect it to a spare USB port on the back of your PC. Beyond TV 4 doesn’t support LCD displays natively but there is 3rd party support available thanks to the Beyond TV’s Developer SDK and some devoted Beyond TV users.

All that is needed to get this display to work is LCDSmartie, the iMon LCDSmartie Plugin, and the LCDSmartie Plugin for BTV.

Hard Drives

Six Seagate Barracuda Hard Drives went into Godzilla

With HDTV support in Beyond TV 4 we wanted to record as much HD content as we could. Since the price of 250 GB hard drives have dropped recently we choose to install four Seagate 250GB SATA drives for storing our BTV recordings and two Seagate 160GB SATA drives for the OS and other applications. We configured the four 250GB drives as RAID 0 (striping) and formatted them with NTFS and 64k blocks to increase the disk size and performance. With one terrabyte of space allocated as our recording drive we are able to record 112 hours of HD material or 424 hours of standard definition material at Better quality. If we ever started to run low we could always ShowSqueeze to Windows Media or the DivX format.

With six hard drives in this case we ran into an issue: heat! Heat is the biggest enemy when building a quiet HTPC system. You have to sometimes sacrifice a quiet HTPC so the machine can cool itself efficiently. One of the best design elements of this case is the ability to add 92mm fans to the each of it’s two hard drive cages. This allows the system to suck air in from vents under the case and blow it over the hard drives. This is then exhausted through the power supply on one side and the dual 80mm fans on the other.

The fan used to dissipate heat from the hard drive.

CPU

When choosing the processor to go in Godzilla we thought to ourselves, “What CPU should we choose to power the ‘King of all Monster PVRs’?” We choose the Intel Pentium D 840 “Extreme Edition” Processor! What could be beating in the belly of a beast like Godzilla but the best processor Intel makes? Intel introduced the Pentium D line of processors in the Spring of 2005 which consists of two Pentium 4 Prescott dies in a single package which creates a dual core processor. This allows one processor to behave as two processors physically in one package. This obviously has an advantage as opposed to a single core design.

What makes the “Extreme Edition” processor different from a regular Pentium D processor? A regular Pentium D processor has two cores which Windows XP sees as two physical processors. The Extreme Edition processors adds hyper-threading to each core! This allow Windows XP to run 4 simultaneous threads at once! It’s the equivalent of having two hyper-threaded processors in one computer. Beyond TV 4 is on the cutting edge by adding Core Detection.

If Beyond TV 4 detects additional cores, it allows for running simultaneous ShowSqueeze and SmartChapter jobs. You are allowed to run an additional job for each additional core detected. Beyond TV 4 also benefits from dual core processors because of Beyond TV heavily multi-threaded architecture.

CPU-Z on Godzilla’s Intel Extreme Edition Processor

CPU Cooler

While trying to push the Godzilla PVR to its limit we experienced an overheating and fan noise issue. The stock Intel cooler is designed to spin up when the processors temperature rises. The temperature while doing a few simultaneous DivX transcodes rose to a sizzling 77° C and spining the fan to 5000 RPMs causing Godzilla to roar (watch this video to hear the roar) and making its presence known! We wanted Godzilla to be, ummm, a little quieter while watching our HD shows so we had to put a muzzle on him. We replaced the stock fan/heatsink with a “monster” cooler befitting Godzilla. We chose the Coolermaster Hyper 48 for it’s pure copper design and heat pipes. Replacing the heatsink and fan reduced the temperature to 70° C at full load. Even at full load the computer is a lot quieter than the stock fan running at normal speed.

A Coolmaster Hyper 48 was used to cool the Intel CPU

This screenshot shows the CPU temperature before installing the Coolermaster Hyper 48

Godzilla PVR all Together

One crowded case

With all of its components installed, the Godzilla PVR had little room to breath. Using the Intel D955XBK motherboard we could fit two PCIe x16 cards, three PCI cards, and one PCIe x1 card. We installed three Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500s and one PowerColor PCIe x1 Theater 550 Pro based on the ATI Theater 550 chipset. The Theater 550 Pro card from PowerColor is one of the few PCIe TV tuner cards on the market. Since all of our available PCI and PCIe x1 slots were taken up we had to USB HD tuners. We installed four DVico Fusion HDTV5 USB Gold tuner cards. We wanted to install an ATI X850 video card, nVidia GeForce 7800 or even a pair of PCIe cards in SLI mode, but the Godzilla PVR would not allow it. Most of these high end cards are longer and required power adapters to power the card not allowing them to fit inside of Godzilla. We resorted to installing a passively cooled NVIDIA GeForce 6600. This barely fit in the case, with only millimeters to spare.

Godzilla PVR Picture Gallery

Beyond TV 4’s Web UI with all the TV tuners configured — to recap, we installed three Hauppauge PVR-500MCE (each has dual analog tuners), one PCIe ATI Theater 550 Pro analog tuner and four DVICO Fusion HDTV5 USB Gold USB 2.0 HDTV tuners.

The library screen showing more than ten tuners recording at once (some analog, some digital)

Show information for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, one of the more than ten shows we recorded simultaneously. The movie took a mere 32GB on Godzilla’s RAID array.

Thanks to our eleven tuner system, we can kick back and enjoy The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

This top view of the Godzilla PVR shows how tight a fit it is when you have this much hardware crammed in one monster system.

And Godzilla from the back.

Keeping Godzilla cool was no easy task, either. Here, our heat sink tries to lower the temperature of the beast.

Inside Godzilla before the wire cleanup

Overhead view of Godzilla

Conclusion
As you can see, we built one heck of a machine.

Useful Links

• Beyond TV 4 Product Page
• Multi-tuner Support Page
• Beyond TV Link Product Page
• SnapStream Forums
  (ask questions, discuss ideas or just listen in!)
• SnapStream Store
  (buy Beyond TV, Beyond TV Link, and more)

About the author: Percy Bell, Test Engineer extraordinaire for SnapStream Media, has been a pioneering early adopter for years. In the three years he’s worked at SnapStream, Percy has earned a reputation as a connoisseur of new and emerging technologies. In short, he’s the first to own everything you see reviewed on CNET. Percy has rigged up an extensive multimedia setup at home with all the latest in PC entertainment equipment. Bringing his expertise of PVR’s, and his passion for the most advanced technology, Percy created Godzilla PVR, the most intimidating PVR we’ve made yet.

With Beyond TV 4, iTunes and Videora iPod Converter, it’s easy and won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

First, you must set Beyond TV to MPEG-2 recording mode – the default if you haven’t changed it – and you’ll need to load Videora iPod Converter and iTunes onto your PC. Both programs are small and easy to install.

Videora iPod Converter is located at http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/iPod/
iTunes is located at http://www.apple.com/itunes/

Record Your Shows

Start by using Beyond TV to record the shows you’d like to convert. Take some time getting the right shows recorded – your effort will be appreciated. If you are having trouble thinking of some shows your giftee might like, try using the Browse By Category option to find movies or shows in a particular genre that he might find interesting. Or use the Search by Keyword feature to find a favorite actor.

Convert The Video

Now, relax, and brew a pot of coffee or settle in for a good nap. Depending on your computer speed, this part of the process can take a while. If you are loading a lot of videos onto your iPod, plan on letting Videora run overnight.

At this point, you may want to clean up the file names a little before sending to your iPod. Go to C:\Program Files\VideoraiPodConverter\Videos and take the date stamps out of the file names. This way they will look better on the iPod display.

Import to iTunes

Once it has imported the files, you can click on the “Videos” link in the left sidebar of iTunes to see your shows.

Sync To iPod

From here, you can either manually or automatically send the Videos to the iPod.

At this point, you should be able to view your shows on iPod from the “Videos”–>”Movies” option.

In this how-to article, I’m going to walk you through the steps to get TV shows recorded with Beyond TV onto your PlayStation Portable.

First, in case you need convincing that you can watch television on a PlayStation Portable, here’s are its specs:

• High quality 4.3 inch, 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD
• Resolution – 480×272 pixels
• Displays full color (16.77 million colors)
• Plays 3D games, similar to the PlayStation® 2 console but formatted on a UMD™ (Universal Media Disc).
• Photo, music, and video playback.
• 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless LAN access
• USB 2.0 connector
• Supports the Memory Stick™ PRO Duo for storage of software and data.

Copying TV shows recorded with Beyond TV is really a simple three-step process:

Step 1: Record your TV content with Beyond TV 3
Step 2: Convert your recorded TV shows to MPEG-4
Step 3: Copy your shows to your PSP

Here are the details on each step:

Step 1: Record your TV content with Beyond TV 3

More on this on the Beyond TV webpage.

Step 2: Convert your recorded TV shows to MPEG-4

The PSP supports video playback in the standard H.264 MPEG-4 format. MPEG-4 is designed to deliver DVD quality video at lower data rates. This means that you don’t have to sacrifice; you can get the same quality video in a smaller size file. You may have heard of several variants of MPEG-4 like DivX® and XviD. These formats are not compatible with the PSP. Beyond TV supports the MPEG-2 video format so some transcoding is required before Beyond TV recorded shows can be played on a PSP.

Conversion Software

• PSP Video 9 – FREE!
• Sony Image Converter 2 – $19.99
• iPSP – $19.99
• Kinoma Producer 3 – $29.99

There are several applications on the Internet that convert content to MPEG-4 and copies them to your PSP. I recommend PSP Video 9 for its ease of use and price point; it’s free!

How to convert your Beyond TV 3 shows with PSP Video 9

Download:

• PSP Video 9 – This is required to convert and copy content to your PSP.
• Apple’s Quicktime (optional) – Quicktime isn’t a requirement to convert video with PSP Video 9 but it is required if you want to playback your converted content on your PC.

Now you can follow the getting started instructions for PSP Video 9 from their website and see the screenshots below for an example of recording we converted using PSP Video 9:

PSP Video 9 first screen after installation, which asks the user to connect his PSP.

The PSP Video 9 About Box.

The PSP Video 9 Setup Page.

The PSP Video 9 Convert Page

Step 3: Copy your shows to your PSP

You can copy shows to your PSP via USB 2.0 or manually with a Memory Stick reader/writer.

But first, a quick aside on Memory Stick Duo’s that are used by the PSP. You might ask yourself, “How do I store my Beyond TV recorded shows on my PSP?” The simple answer is on a Memory Stick Duo.

These”Duo” cards differ from the standard Memory Stick cards in their form factor. The Memory Stick Duo cards are 1/3 smaller than the original Memory Stick.

The PRO version of these cards are the same as the non-PRO cards, except their capacities are 256 MB or larger.

Relative Size of the Memory Stick Duo compared to other media formats.

When copying via USB, PSP Video 9 makes this process easy. Simply choose the "Copy Video to PSP" option:

The PSP Video 9 Copy Page.

When copying manually you must follow some guidelines.

• PSP Videos must follow the naming scheme of “M4Vxxxxx.MP4”
• PSP Video Thumnails (THM files) must be JPEGs of size 160×120 named "MV4xxxxx.THM" with the filename being the same as the video filename except for extension.
• PSP Videos must be located in the \MP_ROOT\100MNV01 directory
  on the PSP.

That’s it! You are ready to watch recorded TV on your PlayStation Portable (PSP).

PSP Playback Support

During playback you are given several ways to control your video playback experience.

• Back to Beginning
• Fast Reverse (3 speeds)
• Fast Forward (3 speeds)
• Slow Motion
• Frame Advance (1 frame step)
• Play
• Pause
• Stop
• Goto specific time
• Repeat video

You can also change the screen mode (Original, Normal, Zoom, Fullscreen) and turn on the Info Display.

Video Main Menu.

Video Selection Screen showing Thumbnails.

Video Playback with a 320×240 recording.

(Original video had 16:9 content recorded in a 4:3 aspect resulting in a letterboxed recording.)

Using Zoom Screen Mode to compensate for Letterboxed Recording.

(Original video had 16:9 content recorded in a 4:3 aspect resulting in a letterboxed recording.)

Turning on the Display shows info HUD.

Video Help Screen shows button assignments.

What size files should I expect?

I took a 1 hour long TV show recording with Beyond TV 3 and converted it to MPEG-4 using various PSP Video 9 default quality profiles. The resulting file sizes are listed below. Experiment yourself to get the best quality vs. size for your PSP content.

Conclusion

The PSP is the perfect companion to Beyond TV 3 for watching your content on the go. With the PSP you can have access to your photos, music, and video and still play all the new cutting edge video games in a very nice package.