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:

After years of yearning to bring the true theater experience home, I have finally succeeded. My home now boasts a theater that will engulf you in the movie experience, tower over you with special not meant for mere television and bring a library of over 175 movies no more than the push of a button away, a jukebox of movies from TV and DVD. This theater was built on a limited budget, but boasts all the features that I’ve been dreaming of since I first heard someone say, “home theater�.

Home theater, we’ve heard the term thrown around for years by every electronics store chain and every television manufacturer in the business, and they’ve applied it to every piece of equipment that could show a picture. But what does it mean? Are we talking about a 13� TV stuck in the corner of a living room, or are we talking about actually bringing the theater experience home? For me, I wanted a full blown theater in my home, and I think I’ve finally succeeded.

Years ago, the only way we could watch our favorite movies was to go buy some over-priced popcorn at our local cinema and pay an arm and a leg for a ticket in. Then came the VCR. This technological marvel opened up possibilities like we had never seen before. We could rent movies from the local Quick Stop for half of a theater ticket, and enjoy the movies in the comfort of our own living room. Sure, we all had to crowd around the TV and watch a cropped version of the original, but it was at home, and that made a difference. Later, DVDs brought us crisper images and the original widescreen format on a medium that we didn’t have to rewind. And surround sound systems brought us one step closer to the theater experience, but was it ever really the same as being in the theater?

Today I can proudly boast that I have found, or rather created, the true home theater. That’s right, a theater at home, not a TV masquerading as the famed silver screen, but an honest to goodness theater. “How?� you ask. Well here is the low-down.

First, let’s talk about the theater itself. I’m making use of a finished basement and the large open areas that you can usually find under the main floors of a house. The room is roughly 24’ X 14’ arranged deep, rather than wide. At the far end of the room, There is a set of shelves that are built into my wall. I have two recliners, and a couch giving me seating for five. The “TV� is where things get different.

My basement

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a High Def plasma TV, I opted to instead install a projection system. A good quality projector like my Optoma EP719 can be had for around $900.00. There are even more affordable options out there, just remember you get what you pay for. This particular projector has a 1024 X 768 resolution and 2000 ANSI lumens. The lumens are the key here, the more you have, the brighter the projector is.

My Optoma projector

My Optoma projector in action

I have also purchased a commercial projector mount for around $100.00. Since my projector is mounted upside down, I had to be careful to find a projector capable of inverting its image. Most projectors will do this, but be careful to check because there are a couple very well priced projectors with all the features you are looking for except they are designed for business presentations done by travelers, and they do not ceiling mount. I also made sure to get a projector with an IR remote, more about that later.

When it’s time to watch our favorite movie (or TV for that matter), we pull down a 96� screen that is mounted above the bookshelves and I end up with a picture that covers the wall from floor to ceiling (as demonstrated below by my daughter). I have opted for a less expensive manual screen, but there are models available that will raise and lower at your command. The viewing experience is controlled by a PC hidden in a side cabinet.

My daughter browses our movie collection using Beyond Media and the DVD Library plug-in

The PC is running Snapstream’s Beyond TV and Beyond Media. Since I am talking about the home theater experience, I will focus on Beyond Media, and in particular, a piece of pure programming genius, and every tech fiend’s best friend, the DVD library plug-in. This plug-in, allows me to store, organize and watch a library of over 175 movies and growing. Many of these are backups of DVDs I have purchased over the years, and a growing library of movies recorded by Beyond TV from various movie channels like HBO and Showtime.

Here is how it all works. First of all, I downloaded kilrsat’s DVD Library plug-in.

The DVD Library plug-in from the main menu of Beyond Media

It is a breeze to install, but there are instructions included in the first post on the page. Once installed, there are a couple of options that add to the theater experience. I like to see a preview or two before a movie starts, you might prefer to go directly to the main event, but I find that there is something exciting about anxiously awaiting the start of the “feature presentation�. The DVD Library comes complete with this option. You can select the number of trailers to watch, and point the plug-in to the file where your trailers are stored.

Configuring the DVD Library plug-in

But what trailers to watch? Surely you don’t want to see the same trailer for Snakes on a Plane over and over again. Neither do I. I want to see trailers for movies that are in the theaters or soon to arrive on DVD and join my collection.

This is easy to do if you have a constant internet connection. All you need to do is to complement this great plug-in with another of Kilrsat’s creations, the Showtimes plug-in.

The Showtimes plug-in was meant to allow you to browse for movies that are currently playing, lets all say it now, “in a theater near youâ€?. I rarely get the chance to go out to the movies, and don’t feel the need with my home theater being what it is, but there is one great thing about the Showtimes plug-in — it downloads trailers. So, I install the showtimes plug-in and direct it to automatically download trailers, and then point the DVD Library to the trailers folder of the showtimes plug-in.

Configuring DVD library to pick-up movie trailers

This folder can be found by default in:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Snapstream\Beyond Media\plugins\movieshowtimes\trailers

As a father I am also very concerned about controlling what my two girls watch. I have several movies in my collection that I don’t feel are appropriate for my children. I use Brett’s PIN module to ensure that my girls can watch TV and movies unsupervised and not click on a movie that is out of their age range. If they do attempt to open a movie beyond the selectable rating limit of PG, they get a message saying that it exceeds the rating restriction that I have chosen.

Brett’s PIN module in action, blocking a rated R movie

When my wife and I decide to watch the same movie, we simply unlock the movie in the options box. This requires me to enter my PIN that I have pre-selected, and all movies become viewable. Once I play a movie, the DVD Library resets to lock all PG13 and above movies.

My movies are a collection of DVD backups and movies recorded by Beyond TV, but it does require a little bit of interaction. For my DVDs, I use a combination of DVD Shrink and IMToo DVD Ripper. DVD Shrink allows me to both back up my DVDs and gives me the option to reduce their file size to fit on a single DVD-R (4.7 GB). It also allows me to backup only the main feature and skip all of the menus and trailers. IMToo will transcode DVDs to DivX or a variety of other codecs that allow you to save hard drive space while still maintaining quality. These two programs helped me import my library to my PC, but the expansion of my library comes from Beyond TV.

I make a habit of recording as many movies as I can from HBO, Showtime, and Starz. I will very often record from the HD channel just for the wide screen format.

Recording movies with Beyond TV to supplement by DVD collection

These movies will not be recorded in HD since I am recording from cable, but I prefer the 16:9 format that is broadcast on these channels. Once recorded, I clip the extra couple minutes from before and after the movie using VideoReDo and then use Beyond TV’s showsqueeze feature to convert the files to DivX. The DVD Library has the option of importing right from Beyond TV, but I prefer not to clutter up Beyond TV with a hundred movies when all of my movie watching is done from Beyond Media. So I simply move the files to the folder I have set up for the DVD Library and search for new movies.

Finally, I control the whole system with one remote. I use a Harmony 659 programmed to turn on my projector and my stereo system with the push of one button. I have also programmed the remote with all of the codes from my Firefly Mini, and I use the Firefly’s receiver to receive the IR commands from the Harmony and control Beyond Media and Beyond TV.

My Harmony 659 remote control

I still sit back from time to time and dream of ways to improve my theater. Perhaps one day my screen will lower automatically. Perhaps a plug-in can be created to dim my X10 lights automatically at the start of the movie. Perhaps I can convince my kids to cook me popcorn every Friday night. And maybe, just maybe, I can replace my recliner with one with a massaging feature. Until that day comes, I’ll continue to enjoy the many wonderful benefits of the theater in my home.

About Me
I am a technical advisor and factory rep for a large truck and engine manufacturer. I currently live in southern New Jersey, and work from my home. My only programming background comes from writing ladder logic for custom electrical applications on my company’s medium duty and severe service truck lines. I am married with 2 daughters ages nine and six, and both are now proficient with using Snapstream products.

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.

The Game Library Plug-in for Beyond Media

The key component of the Game Library is the simplified setup. Installation is a simple download, and setting up the library is as easy as drag and drop. The games are automatically imported. The cover art is automatically downloaded. The searchable data fields (from genre to year released) are automatically populated. Actually, the ability to search for games is the true time saver. You can filter titles, first by system, and later by genres, years released, publishers, or even keyword descriptions. Want to find all PC Games installed on your system that were released by Activision? It is easy with the filters.

Details for Half-Life in the Game Library plug-in

While it is true that the Game Library comes preconfigured for a dozen or so emulator systems, my favorite hidden gem is the ability to organize PC games. To do this is easy. First, enable the “PC Games� system and drop a short-cut link with the name of the game (ie: Half-Life 2.lnk) in the selected “PC Games� folder. Let the system import and download the data, and your good to go!

I’ll close this never-ending blog entry with a brief bio about myself for the new folks. I first heard of SnapStream several years ago when it was a lonely web interface; with the release of PVS v3.0 (Beyond TV) I finally ditched my TiVO and fully adopted their software. I have held official roles as technical support, forum moderator, beta tester, product advisor, and SSDN Administrator. Currently, I have limited time to actively participate in forums (or even watch TV), but occasionally I check-in to see how my favorite company is doing. And yes, I do plan to continue to developing this and other plug-ins, just not today.

Now for the obligatory legal terms: Remember play safe, and responsible. Requesting or linking to ROMs is strictly prohibited, and frowned upon, on the SnapStream Forums.

– Brett Flury, Guest Blogger and SnapStream Enthusiast Extraordinaire (Brett on the forums)

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Learn More
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Other Beyond Media downloads that we’ve highlighted:

• Netflix on your TV
• NHL scores your TV

Sports are a big thing here at SnapStream. It doesn’t really matter what sport it is, we’ll find a way to talk about it, argue about it, make predictions, and determine who knows more. From cricket to curling to football to our personal sports concoction, “Beyond Wiffle”, that we play everyday in the park across the street, we take our sports seriously.

That’s why when I saw “NHL Scores” it really hit home. It is perfect for the times when you just have to know the score, right now. If I’m on the couch here’s my situation: it takes too long to bring up scores on my phone, SportsCenter won’t cycle around to the game I’m interested in for another 30 minutes, and I really need to know who won last night in the playoffs. Now I have another option, and with a few clicks of my remote I have my answer.

Daily scores

Summary by team

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• Netflix on your TV

The first Beyond Media plugin I’d like to highlight is the Netflix plugin created by Craid Baldwin. I’m not currently a Netflix subscriber, but everyone I’ve spoken with has raved about how much easier this plugin makes their life. It gives you access to your Netflix queue right on your TV. As soon as you finish watching your latest batch of DVDs you can take your remote and start searching for what you would like Netflix to send you next. Everything from just seeing what’s in your Netflix queue to getting recommendations and making changes to what Netflix is going to send you can now be accessed via remote control.

The Netflix plugin start screen

The Netflix plugin queue screen

The user benefits aside, the Netflix plugin is special for another pair of reasons. It features a well organized 10 foot friendly interfance, and it is a solid example of a plugin that exposes features which other plugins can use. The “Send to Netflix� option in the “Movie Showtimes� plugin (link) is provided by the Netflix plugin. This is a nice example of even user created addons keeping with the Beyond Media extensibility spirit.

Learn More about the Netflix Plugin by cncb

Download the Netflix Plugin by cncb (requires Beyond Media)

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(if you are interested in creating Beyond Media plugins, check out http://code.snapstream.com for tutorials and other development information. When you’re finished, submit your plugin to http://www.snapstream.com/ssdn/submit.aspx and it will get published for the community to see and download.

Will SnapStream be integrating Beyond TV and Beyond Media?

The answer to this question is a definite yes!

Here’s how the timeline looks today. Beyond TV 4 is the next product release from SnapStream. It’s a direct upgrade to previous versions of Beyond TV that adds support for high definition recording and playback, as well as FM Radio, DivX support, and a whole lot of spit and polish.

Following the release of Beyond TV 4, we will be porting the ViewScape interface of Beyond TV to the Beyond Media architecture. Beyond Media is built on our next generation and highly extensible media shell foundation, most of which we make available today to developers in the Beyond Media SDK. Porting Beyond TV’s user interface under that architecture will provide a great unified experience for our users.

Only the user interface of Beyond TV needs to be ported to Beyond Media. The server components of Beyond TV will remain the same and will not need to be ported to unify the two applications. In layman’s terms, the guts of Beyond TV that do all of the recording and post processing won’t be changing at all, just the look and the integration. Again, much of this is due to the architecture and excellent server and client side separation in Beyond TV, which developers can access using the Beyond TV SDK…a powerful development platform for customizing and controlling our PVR technology.

What does unifying the two products get you? In addition to a more elegant and seamless experience, you’ll get the ability to plug in new skins and cool additional features (like the DVD Library and Movie Showtimes browser) that have been created by dedicated community members to further enhance your media center experience. Because Beyond Media is based on an Avalon/XAML like model (the presentation technology that Windows Vista is building towards), developers can create all kinds of cool and uniquely home theater like effects in their HTPC applications.

Finally, as we’ve mentioned in our original announcement, if you own Beyond TV 4 and Beyond Media, getting the fully integrated product will be a free upgrade for you when integration is complete. It’s our way of saying thanks to our customers!

What are your plans for high definition support?

We have been testing high definition support for a few months now, and I feel confident in saying we will have excellent support for high definition cards in Beyond TV 4. I won’t mince words…setting up your home entertainment rig for high definition capture can be a small project. But with SIX times the resolution and pure digital clarity, we know many of you are waiting with bated breath for the chance to dive in and explore a whole new world of digital entertainment.

At the beginning of the year I played with many different solutions (probably better classified as hacks) for playing back high definition streams in preparation for bringing this feature to market. The main thing that struck me was how hard and difficult it was to do something simple like capture and play back high definition content. I literally dug through hundreds of posts with many different and lengthy guides that would hack together components and different applications just to accomplish some of what, in my mind, should have been very simple things.

I’m very glad to say that we’ve got the necessary expertise here at SnapStream to do this type of thing RIGHT. We’ve spent thousands of man-hours writing new components from the ground up to handle all of the special requirements for HD support. We’ve also been in the testing process with a group of very dedicated folks who are beating up the product in their own living rooms today and giving us their valuable feedback. That’s why we believe that you will find a much simpler and more elegant approach to high definition support in Beyond TV than you’ve been used to seeing.

One specific question that comes up often is our support for different types of HD. Over the air broadcast cards (antenna) and QAM capture cards (basically, cable HD) are the two types of HD support most people are interested in. Satellite HD is a closed system and one that currently cannot be supported without additional work in the ecosystem.

Our initial release of Beyond TV 4 will support over the air (OTA) capture cards. QAM support is something that we are watching closely and will implement as soon as is feasible.

QAM capture is in a state of flux right now when it comes to the marketplace. As some of our users already have pointed out, it’s an area when some standardization needs to be built into the OS before general support can be introduced. In general, we watch for some standardization because this market is moving very quickly and our efforts are best spent working on lasting solutions for our customers.

However, there is a balance between how easy the support is to implement and how proprietary it is. Our plan right now is to deliver solid OTA high definition first. Here’s why.

• 1. Having solid over-the-air high definition support is required before we can extend support to QAM. The software infrastructure required is similar, so refining over-the-air support in the product drives both features forward.
• 2. It would be silly for us to hold back over-the-air support from those customers that can use it today.

Once Beyond TV 4 is released, we’ll be taking a good hard look at QAM to see if we can create a solution that makes sense for our customers. Please continue to give us constructive feedback on this issue!

I’d like to thank all of our customers again for giving us the opportunity to answer some of the questions that have been on your minds. We got far more questions than we could actually answer in this first installment… but we will continue to do this Q&A on a regular basis and get to more questions! You can ask us new questions by posting to our new Q&A forum.

Richard Kuo
Chief Technology Officer