SnapStream Blog

Beyond TV Link running on a Mac Book Pro with Parallels, check out this video:

(for the uninitiated, Beyond TV Link is the network client to our Beyond TV PVR software — I use it at home, for example, to watch TV, live or recorded, while sitting in bed on my wireless laptop.)

(…and a thank-you to Erik Pettersen of BYOPVR for passing this along!)

I’m a part-time Macintosh user. It’s a long story, but my wife and I actually got one of the original iMacs as a wedding gift. Yeah, I know, really nice wedding gift (shout out to John!). The best part is that we use it and love it… but I digress. Being involved full-time (and then some) in the “media center” software space and being an occasional Macintosh user, I was intrigued when Apple launched Front Row, a full-screen interface to photos, music, DVDs and videos on the Mac. But I haven’t seen Apple market this very much — no TV ads with mentions of Front Row, not a lot of play in Jobs’ keynotes, etc. I suspect it was the equivalent of someone’s 20% time at Apple and got the greenlight because people at Apple were intrigued by it, but who knows, maybe it was a requirementthat came from the top down.

Anyways, Apples seems to finally be giving Front Row some airtime in their marketing, as evidenced by this e-mail that I received last night:

Downloadable TV shows have been a hot ticket since iTunes got things started in October of last year and since then, it seems a week doesn’t go by without an announcement of new TV shows available on the net. TechCrunch writes about most of the options for TV show downloads. Joining a TV show mid-season (for example, I just started watching Lost a couple of weeks ago)? You can get caught-up on missed episodes by downloading them over the net. Downloaded (or streamed) TV shows can be a great way to supplement the high-quality recordings made with PVRs, like our Beyond TV.

This article appeared in USA Today last week about how TV show blogs are becoming a popular way to attract fans and promote TV shows. I think this is pretty cool (”wow, content creators talking directly with their viewers!”) so I added a little blogroll with links to blogs for popular TV shows (see the right-hand side of the blog). Is there a popular TV show that has a blog that you like? Post it in the comments and I’ll add it to the blogroll. (My favorite? Definitely Dwight’s blog.)

nVidia launched their DualTV MCE card this week. We haven’t seen new tuner products from nVidia in while, so it’s great to see them back in the game.

SnapStream worked closely with nVidia during their development, so Beyond TV 4.2 already has support built right in! Thanks to nVidia, Beyond TV users now have one more choice when choosing dual tuner cards. Go ahead and give it a try and tell us what you think!

Here is the nVidia product page, and Chris Lanier seems to have posted the nVidia press release.

Next to Christmas, I have to say that the Fall TV season is one of my favorite times. It’s like the networks are sending me new packages to open every night for an entire month. Of course some of them turn out to be the “puke green sweater from Aunt Mildred,” but it’s still fun to watch.

Fox has lobbed the first volley in the primetime war with “Prison Break” (now a record all for me), followed soon by “The O.C.” (yeah, I admit to watching it) and “Reunion” (which might just be good). I’m also looking forward to “My Name is Earl” and “E-Ring” on NBC.

Don’t forget to ShowSqueeze and keep anything you find interesting until you’re sure it’s going to stay on the air. Both “Commited” and “Skin” got the ax, so I keep my DVD copies of both closely guarded.

To check what’s on when, take a look at the TV Guide listing of all the new premieres.

I’ll admit it, I’m jealous of Canadians. Great healthcare, quality education, low crime rates, beautiful cities. In 2002, Vancouver tied with Melbourne as the top city in the world in which to live, according to The Economist. And living in Vancouver just got better.

As Kevin Tofel over at HD Beat pointed out, Vancouver now has its very first over-the-air high-def signal. CTV recently started broadcasting a high-def signal out of Vancouver and Toronto. Toronto already had two high-def signals, but for Vancouver this is a first. This means that our Canadian friends can soon take advantage of Beyond TV 4.0, which will have support for OTA HDTV recording! The takeaway? For Canadians, it’s been a bad year for hockey, and a good one for HDTV.

NOTE: Just to clear up any confusion, it’s important to mention that we don’t have arrangements to get Canadian guide data right now. Because there won’t be a Canadian EPG, Canadians will have to use manual recordings or XML TV to schedule high-def recordings.

Chrissy Davis
Public Relations Coordinator

Al Gore’s new cable TV channel, Current TV, launched yesterday. Aimed at 18 to 34 year olds, Current TV takes interactive TV to a new level. It’s not so much just texting or logging on to vote for your favorite idol, but they actually seek and will pay for video content from everyday people like you and me.

According to the Google Blog, there is a segment called Google Current, which uses Google Zeigeist data, data that highlights trends based on popular searches.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired of the MTV-esque shows aimed at people in the same age bracket. It seems that Current TV is trying to change that pace a bit with intelligent content relating to current affairs. If you want to know more about what they aired yesterday, The Washington Post has a piece on Current TV’s first day and its broadcasts.

Erik Pettersen of Build Your Own PVR recently tested out the Diamond XtremeTV PVR 550 Power Pack. XtremeTV PVR 550 is a great kit for anyone who is looking for an all-in-one media center solution. It includes a hardware MPEG encoding TV tuner card, Beyond TV Subscriber Edition, Beyond Media and Firefly PC Remote.

“The inclusion of SnapStream PVR / HTPC software is an important one, as I have long lamented the woeful VB6 looking quasi-PVR applications that come bundled with most other TV tuner cards, �? said Erik.

Beyond TV Subscriber Edition, which is available with select Diamond Multimedia, ADS Technologies and VisionTek TV tuner cards, operates on a pay-as-you-go subscription model similar to that of TiVo’s, but at a much lower cost. SnapStream offers three different subscription options: monthly, yearly or lifetime.

In a move that is sure to please many PVR users, NBC recently announced plans to stop scheduling programming off the hour in an effort to increase viewership in the upcoming fall season. For the last couple of seasons, NBC has used strange scheduling (such as programs starting or ending at 9:02) in an effort to lock viewers into its prime time lineup. Unfortunately for PVR users, this scheduling caused conflicts when trying to record back to back shows on different channels. Many users reported coming home to find that a 32 minute long “Joey” (or other NBC program) had caused shows on other stations to not record due to conflicts on the tuner.

While the decision to stop this practice is only a small piece of NBC’s overall programming strategy, it has a large and positive impact on the PVR community. It will be interesting to see if other broadcasters learn from this and decide to keep there programming at regular intervals, especially as PVRs become more common in the average household. In the mean time, we can keep our fingers crossed.