SnapStream Blog

Hauppauge HD-PVR shipping delayed to mid-May – 04/30/08
The Hauppauge website it still tells us that the HD-PVR will begin shipping on May 1st, 2008, but there is new information that says that isn’t the case. Instead, the earliest, expected shipment dates are mid-May 2008. via BrentEvans Blog

Sezmi looks to provide alternative for cable/satellite – 05/01/08
The box will fetch content from a number of places: the built-in OTA receiver will grab locals, and it will use the owner’s broadband internet connection to snag IPTV material and web-based content (YouTube, Hulu, etc.). via Zats Not Funny

ZeeVee’s Box brings the PC to TV – 05/01/08
ZeeVee has an interesting solution that uses the existing cable wiring in your home to display what’s on your PC on an empty channel on your TV dial. Instead of requiring an additional receiver, it uses the HD tuner in your TV. No new-fangled wireless HD or old-fangled screen-scraping required. via NewTeeVee

DViCO FusionHDTV7 Dual Expres – 05/02/08
The FusionHDTV7 Dual Express, which is the world first dual HD (Digital or QAM) reception PCI express card, has been released. via ehomeupgrade

The latest version of Beyond TV added a feature that some people have asked me questions about. The release notes listed this line item:

- DirecTV Pay Per View Guide Data

With Beyond TV 4.8.1, we’ve added enhanced program guide data for DirecTV users. Before we added this feature, those of you using Beyond TV to record from DirecTV may have noticed that large portions of DirecTV’s pay-per-view channels would show up as just a continuous stream of “Pay-Per-View” entries. For example, this is what a portion of your DirecTV program guide might have looked like before:

Now, with our new DirecTV data feed, you’ll get actual program information with more accurate start and stop times. For example, NBA League Pass subscribers will get information about which teams are playing. Same thing for most other sports packages on DirecTV. And pay-per-view movies now show up correctly in the program guide. Here’s the same chunk of the program guide after we deployed the enhanced DirecTV data:

It’s nine days and counting until the 2008 NAB Show and we’ve all been feeling the stress of getting everything in order before we head out to Las Vegas. To let off some steam, I came up with an idea to re-energize the troops. By incorporating the competitive spirit of SnapStream with baked goods, the 2008 Oven Mitt Extreme Throw Down Challenge was created. The task was simple, bring your best baked good along with your A-game on Friday, then we would do a tasting and judge each one. There would be three smaller awards (Most Original, Best Tasting, and Best Presentation) and one big award (Best in Show). The idea was received with enthusiasm and we had seven participants:

Zack - homemade pecan pie, homemade whip cream, and homemade sugar doodads

Melissa - homemade million dollar cake

Michael - some random pastry filled with pork (it was actually pretty good)

Mark - Chocolate Velvet Volcano Cake

Joel - Sweat Breads (Filipino pastry called Ensaymada)

Rob - Apple Cake

Rakesh - 7 layer dream bar (basically tons of sugar and butter)

Tom - Kroger store bought Coffee Cake with Pecans (cost $5.99 tax-free)

Joel cuts his dessert

Zack is putting together his pie presentation.

After we tasted all the baked goods. We cast our votes.

And the winners were:

Best in Show - Mark
Best Tasting - Rakesh (Once again sugar prevails.)
Most Original - Michael (Pork. Who’d of thought?)
Best Presentation - Zack (He spent way too much time… )

All in all I would have to say that the 2008 Oven Mitt Extreme Throw Down Challenge was a success!

In the latest Beyond TV 4.8 release users will enjoy new features such as saved guide searches, frame-by-frame playback, access control, and warning e-mail notifications.

Saved Guide Searches: Love Will Ferrell movies? Want to make sure you catch them on TV? Now you can input keywords of your favorite actors, sports team, or TV show genre and have Beyond TV e-mail you the next time they appear on TV, or simply have it auto record. (In case you’re wondering how conflicts are handled, auto-recordings from saved guide searches are added at the lowest priority to your recording schedule.)

Saved Guide Search results e-mail (this one is on Will Ferrell)

Saved Guide Search results automatically added to Upcoming Recordings.

Warning Notifications via E-mail: Configure your Beyond TV to notify you via e-mail whenever an error has occurred to your machine. Avoid missed recordings, by instantaneously solving computer hiccups as they occur.


Warning Notifications E-mail

Frame-By-Frame Playback: Paused recordings can be advanced by single frame with the arrow keys for a more detailed review. Now you can watch in amazement as the Mythbuster’s gang explode their contraptions frame-by-frame.

Access Control: Beyond TV now supports the creation of user accounts with restricted privileges. Activities like watching recordings, watching live TV, scheduling recordings, and changing settings can be access-controlled on a user-by-user basis. Using access controls, you can monitor what and how much TV your kids watch, by restricting Live TV and allowing them only to watch recorded shows recorded by you.


Beyond TV’s new access control makes it so you can give different users, different levels of permissions.


Here’s what the web admin looks like to a user who only has permission to watch recordings.

Recording Stats: Better manage your storage capacity with at-a-glance recording stats, including average hours per day of recordings, based on your recording schedule.


Recording Stats in Beyond TV

In addition to the new features, we’ve made the following improvements to make recording and watching television more manageable.

Sort Recorded Library: Simply hit the O button on your keyboard while viewing Recorded Shows in Viewscape and sort all recorded shows by name, original air date, or date recorded in ascending or descending order. This improved feature is useful when trying to watch past seasons in release order.


Sort Recorded Library

Way Faster Scheduler: The recording scheduler is now 10 to 20 times faster than before. Any use of the program guide such as scrolling, deleting/adding new jobs, forcing/blocking recordings, and changing job priorities will result in a smoother and quicker output.

For a complete list of new features, bug fixes, and improvements check out the release notes.

Speculation on Hauppauge’s upcoming “HD PVR” product and general discussion of capturing HD on a PC (58 posts)

The Writer’s Strike (146 posts)

Discussion about why we’re shutting down Couchville.com (81 posts)

Two interesting threads going on in the SnapStream forums… The first one is about the 2009 transition to digital — since it this FCC-mandated transition only officially applies to antenna transmissions, does it mean anything for regular analog cable?

http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=43454

Another one that I just started: Have you ever watched a popular TV show streamed over the web on your laptop? How do you think this popular new way of delivering television shows will change traditional cable/satellite/antenna television?

http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=43671

SnapStream would like to thank all of the Beyond TV Users that participated in our Beyond TV 4.7 survey and congratulate Tom Gabriele. Tom was randomly selected as the lucky winner of an iPod Nano for completing our survey.

What started as a budding relationship, ended with an ugly break-up. According to techcrunch, NBC has packed its bags and has officially broken ties with iTunes. It may seem as though accessing your favorite NBC shows through iTunes is on an indefinite hiatus, but with Beyond TV’s iTunes integration feature there is no need to worry.

The iTunes integration, an add-on feature in 4.7, allows Beyond TV users to automatically sync their recorded shows, including NBC favorites Heroes, The Office, and Chuck, to their iPods and iPhones without a snag.

So, with NBC gone and iPods/iPhones craving video content, Beyond TV users are good to go with the Automatic Sync/H.264 iTunes integration feature.

Learn how to sync Beyond TV recorded shows to your iPod/iPhone

Last week the guys over at Missing Remote wrote an in-depth and comprehensive review on the latest features of Beyond TV 4.7. Here are some of the highlights:

iTunes Integration:
This feature allows users to automatically sync their recorded shows from BTV to their iphone or ipod.

“Snapstream has done a great job with their initial offering of iTunes Auto-Syncing. Things are straight forward and easy to configure. Once you have configured everything and added the RSS feeds to your podcasts in iTunes, things will pretty much take care of themselves.�?

Firefly Mobile:
This new application allows you to turn your iphone, smartphone, or PDA into a remote for your BTV.

“This can be a very handy way to get remote control access to a pc without having to buy an IR receiver and a remote. This could also be useful for those that have a touchscreen setup and want to use the second display/touchscreen to act as a remote control.�?

Community Recordings:
Enabling community recordings allows for your BTV to automatically schedule and record the most popular shows as per the Beyond TV user community.

“I think the opportunity for this add-on to shine will be during the off season when I never know what’s decent on tv.�?

Conclusion:
“With all this new capability, BeyondTV continues to be a strong contender in the Home Theater PC PVR market. If you’re about to build your own HTPC, or you’ve been thinking about trying something different you should definitely give BeyondTV 4.7 a try.�?

Checkout Missing Remote for the complete review.

Note: Zack’s opinions don’t necessarily match those of SnapStream.
Before I worked for SnapStream, I read computer and car magazines as the gospel. If it was in print, I simply believed it. When a reviewer told me what the best card/software/car was, I had total faith that I had been told the whole story.

But what I didn’t know is that there is a secret, sometimes seedy, underworld to reviews.
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