SnapStream Blog

We want to remind you that on June 12, 2009 all full-power broadcast television stations in the United States will no longer be broadcasting on analog airwaves and will begin broadcasting only in digital. (More info at www.dtv.gov)

With that said, if you are currently using an analog antenna you have a couple of alternatives to keep your Beyond TV working.

1) Continue using your antenna to record, but you will now be recording over-the-air digital TV. You will need a digital converter box and an USB-Uirt IR Blaster in order to use your existing analog tuner. (Here’s a step-by-step article on setting up a digital converter box with Beyond TV.)

2) Switch from using an antenna to something like cable or satellite in Beyond TV. (Additional accessories may be required depending on the service you purchase.)

3) Purchase and install an HD TV tuner card.

If you have any questions please visit the SnapStream forum thread, Beyond TV and the Digital Transition.

Brad over at AOL’s Download Squad blog writes a short piece on why Beyond TV is one of his favorite apps to pay for and in doing so, has a nice overview of Beyond TV. A snippet:

But probably the main reason I prefer BeyondTV to the alternatives is that it has an intuitive feeling user interface but allows you to dig around in advanced menus if you want to tweak things.

Thanks Brad, glad you like it!

Recently, my home PC running Beyond TV got moved from what was essentially an attic to my home office. The attic was far enough away from everything else that the noise level on the PC didn’t matter — and that’s a good thing because as I discovered, the PC I’ve been using for Beyond TV was LOUD.

I gave my HTPC to Zack in the office the other day and asked him if he could make it quieter. It turns out that the graphics card’s fan had gone wonky. Now that it’s been replaced (thanks Ryan!), I’m much better off than I was before and I think the PC is as quiet as it’s going to get without switching out some hardware.

So that’s my next project — switching out the components in my existing HTPC or building a new one so I end up with a quieter PC. I started out doing a bit of research in the SnapStream Forums and came across this recent post on building a small, quiet and cheap Beyond TV Link box. While the article is for link boxes, there are some nuggets in there that might be useful to me.

And then there’s this great article, which I found through a Google search, on “Building a quiet PC” by Jeff Atwood. The good thing about the article is it doesn’t try to recommend a particular set of hardware (any such recommendations can’t be useful for very long because PC hardware changes so quickly). Instead it focuses on the general principles behind quieting a PC.

If I get to mucking with my hardware, which may or may not happen because what I have now is quiet enough, I’ll post the results here. Meanwhile hopefully others will find this research useful.

And if you’ve gone through the process of quieting your HTPC, post a comment below and share how you solved the problem.

(photograph above modified from a photograph by Jef Poskanzer)

For about two weeks, we’ve been publicly beta testing the next release of Beyond TV, version 4.8.2. Some of what’s new:

• Much faster library and scheduler
• Scrollable Couchville-style program guide in the web interface (see screenshot below)
• Lots of web interface improvements
• Update DivX and H.264 encoders
• Automatic HD ShowSqueeze exposed by default

A screenshot of the new Couchville-style program guide in the new Beyond TV beta:

If you’d like to help us test the Beyond TV 4.8.2 beta, just sign-up (access is immediate) and you’ll be able to download it.

P.S. we also have another beta, a private beta, of a version of Beyond TV that supports recording unencrypted QAM (aka clear QAM) on Hauppauge devices such as the HVR-1600, HVR-1800, HVR-950Q, HVR-1250, and HVR-1950. If you’d like to be considered for *this* beta as we open it up, sign-up for the beta program — link above — and then e-mail matt@ with the subject line “I want to test Beyond TV with QAM”.

To expound upon the new Beyond TV 4.8 feature Saved Guide Search, we’ve documented a “real life” use case. Check out the video as we follow a girl’s obsession with David Hasselhoff.

If you’re at the National Association of Broadcaster’s 2008 tradeshow in Las Vegas next week, be sure and come by our booth in the South Upper Hall (Booth #SU6008). And just to make sure you don’t get lost on the way there, we’ve put together some maps and directions.

See you there!

Since there’s been some excitement about the upcoming Hauppauge HD PVR product, I thought I’d share some photographs of Hauppauge’s new product “in the lab” here at SnapStream:

Here’s a photograph of the Hauppauge HD PVR prototype board itself — everyone had to be careful to ground themselves before handling it.

Here’s another pic of the HD PVR all wired up to a digital source via component video cables (those are the blue, green and red cables).

This one shows the HD PVR in action — the red light means Beyond TV is busy making a recording off this thing when the photograph was taken.

The final product — some good ‘ol baseball recorded on the Hauppauge HD PVR in Beyond TV

A close-up of the same frame (I took it without a flash, holding the camera in my hand, so there might be a slight blur)

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!

There’s been a groundswell of interest in the Hauppauge HD PVR device, ever since Hauppauge announced it at CES in early January. I first heard about the device from Hauppauge on a visit to their offices in Hauppauge, NY back in November 2007. Since then, I’ve learned quite a bit more about the device. We’re taking a lot of interest in this new device, but until we actual get a test unit, we can’t say whether or not we’ll support it.

For those of you who haven’t heard about the new device, I’ll briefly recap its capabilities: it’ll take in component video (you know, the red, green, and blue cables on the back of your cable or satellite set-top box — the ones that can carry an HD signal) and encode it to H.264 at up to 25 Mbit/s. And it includes Hauppauge’s standard IR blaster with code library.

Anyways, here is some of what I know about it:

• Hauppauge’s calling it the HD PVR — for now. The name may change before it’s released.
• It can accept component video in (see a picture) up to 1080p
• It can encode that component video to H.264 transport streams (in hardware)
• The hardware itself is basically done — Hauppauge’s just waiting on the final case design (and Chinese New Year has slowed this down)
• It includes the same Hauppauge IR blaster & code library included with other Hauppauge products
• It’s based on a chip from a company called Ambarella (http://www.ambarella.com/)
• It’s an all-in-one chip that has a digitizer and H.264 encoder
• A similar chip from Ambarella happens to be used in popular HD camcorders
• The compression data rates works between 1 Mbit/s and 25 Mbit/s
• The H.264 encoder outputs H.264 transport streams
• The Ambarella chip also has an H.264 decoder and the Hauppauge HD PVR will ship with a video out, but…
• The video out function will more than likely NOT be activated when the HD PVR ships (and possibly never, for reasons relating to the Ambarella driver)
• You’ll need a relatively powerful PC to playback these recordings
• Hauppauge is still making some tweaks to the HD PVR’s drivers as well
• Hauppauge expects for the product to be shipping before the end of this quarter (ie before March 31, 2008)

(Note: the image above is NOT the device — it’s just a set-top box with some component video cables. I’ve requested some photographs and will hopefully have some soon.)

(Note #2: All of the information above was posted *with* permission from Hauppauge — specifically, Ken Plotkin reviewed a draft and gave me the green light to post it.)

Scott, at Techory.com, writes a post on Entertainment PC Software (Feb 2, 2008):

“…BeyondTV is just a cleaner interface, and has a few more bells and whistles built in…”

“…the DVR area is a space where there are a lot of contenders making products, but so far BeyondTV has topped the list of products I’ve tried.”

(A few days ago, Scott also wrote about his experiences Adding HDTV to his HTPC with Beyond TV and the HDHomeRun)

…And on chron.com’s TechBlog, Jim Thompson writes about how technology makes the superbowl more enjoyable and in the comments writes:

“For re-living a game, a PVR is a big plus. I have several of my alma mater’s big games from the past two seasons stored on my homebrew BeyondTV system.”