Snapstream's "Beyond TV" anyone?

K

Ken Moiarty

[First of all my apologies for cross posting this, possibly off topic, query
to so many groups. Wasn't sure which, if any, of these groups it might
elicit an interested response.]



Hello,

I'm planning on buying a Beyond TV bundle {Beyond TV and Dual-Tuner
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Kit, to be specific} to install in my PC.
Before I take the plunge though, I'd like to hear any feedback from others
out here who may have had experience with this PVR product.

My reasons for wanting to try Beyond TV has to do with the fact that where I
live, in Canada, we are pretty much limited in terms of PVRs to what is
offered by our local cable and satellite providers. For example, I just paid
almost $800 (CAD) to Shaw cable to purchase the Motorola DCT6412 PVR unit
that they offer. Hardware-wise it is a good unit, except that its hard drive
can hold only a maximum of 15 hours of recording in HD. (It holds up to 40
hours of standard-broadcast-only recording. But I bought the unit mostly to
compliment and take full advantage of my newly purchased widescreen HDTV. In
rationing my use of this limited hard disk space, I won't be opting to do so
by dropping HD programming choice. The Motorola DCT6412 has myriad digital
ports on both the back and front of the machine. I'd just love to get down
on knees and attach an SATA, Firewire 800, or even a humble USB 2.0 external
hard drive to it in order to try to address the limited storage space issue.
But all the digital ports on the machine are rendered not-enabled by its
software, which is closed to the public, provided and controlled by the
local cable provider (Shaw Cable; whom btw has expressed no credible
intention of ever changing this). Installing a larger drive without some
kind of secret software authorization key or adminstrave inside knowledge to
that effect, I've researched and concluded, is pretty much mined with
software security hurdles only a qaulified ot-entrusted technician could
have any chance of succeeding with. So my only option left in order to
increase storage space for recording is to spend another $800 and add an
entire additional Motorola DCT6412 unit alongside of the existing one. (I
would then manually switch between units as recording needs require. Or I
could spend $200 to $400 for remote control HDMI switch.) Yet this one
additional unit would increase my HD recording capacity to only 30 hours.
Obviously, I've realized, this approach is far too expensive for the
relatively meager returns.

Then I heard about the Beyond TV PVR option, in that, unlike Tivo or
ReplayTV, etc, which cannot access useable EPG for Canadian views, Beyond TV
claim that its EPG works in Canada too. Now, I'm posting my above query here
as I just want to make sure through sodoing so that this product is not
going to turn out to be something unexpectingly less than it is promised to
be, before I buy. Therefore, thanks in advance for any helpful, informative,
or otherwise interesting feedback on Beyond TV and/or any of the tuner/PVR
cards that it claims are compatible with its software and service..

Ken
 
J

jaykchan

My suggestion is to post this to rec.video.desktop newsgroup. They
discuss about this type of topics all the time.

I am under the impression that all those PVR (Windows-MCE or BeyondTV)
can only record over-the-air HDTV, and not record from cable or
satellite. Something to do with the need of CableCard or something to
decode the signal. Honestly, I am not sure about this. You may need
to ask around. If you need to record HDTV from cable or satellite now,
you may do this with a DVR provided from your cable or satellite
service provider. There is an article in BusinessWeek or Fortune about
this a couple weeks ago. It mentioned about a new product that
provides CableCard capacility to decode HDTV; but the article gave me
an impression that this is kind of a bleeding edge technology.

The other thing is that if you use BeyondTV, you will have to run
BeyondTV-Link in another PC if you want to watch the recorded shows in
multiple rooms. If you want to watch the recorded shows in three
rooms, you will have to have 3 computers (one runs BeyondTV, the other
two PCs run BeyondTV-Link). You can get around with this problem by
using a MediaMVP device instead of using a PC with BeyondTV-Link; but
that MediaMVP can only show SDTV, not HDTV, and the video quality is
S-video only (not component video), and MediaMVP has its own problems
(such as forcing me to reboot it from time to time).

You may want to look into the combination of Windows-MCE and
XBox-with-video-viewing-capability (XBox-360?) instead of using the
combination of Beyond-TV and BeyondTV-Link if over-the-air HDTV is good
for you and if you want to play XBox games anyway

Jay Chan


Ken said:
[First of all my apologies for cross posting this, possibly off topic, query
to so many groups. Wasn't sure which, if any, of these groups it might
elicit an interested response.]



Hello,

I'm planning on buying a Beyond TV bundle {Beyond TV and Dual-Tuner
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Kit, to be specific} to install in my PC.
Before I take the plunge though, I'd like to hear any feedback from others
out here who may have had experience with this PVR product.

My reasons for wanting to try Beyond TV has to do with the fact that where I
live, in Canada, we are pretty much limited in terms of PVRs to what is
offered by our local cable and satellite providers. For example, I just paid
almost $800 (CAD) to Shaw cable to purchase the Motorola DCT6412 PVR unit
that they offer. Hardware-wise it is a good unit, except that its hard drive
can hold only a maximum of 15 hours of recording in HD. (It holds up to 40
hours of standard-broadcast-only recording. But I bought the unit mostly to
compliment and take full advantage of my newly purchased widescreen HDTV. In
rationing my use of this limited hard disk space, I won't be opting to do so
by dropping HD programming choice. The Motorola DCT6412 has myriad digital
ports on both the back and front of the machine. I'd just love to get down
on knees and attach an SATA, Firewire 800, or even a humble USB 2.0 external
hard drive to it in order to try to address the limited storage space issue.
But all the digital ports on the machine are rendered not-enabled by its
software, which is closed to the public, provided and controlled by the
local cable provider (Shaw Cable; whom btw has expressed no credible
intention of ever changing this). Installing a larger drive without some
kind of secret software authorization key or adminstrave inside knowledge to
that effect, I've researched and concluded, is pretty much mined with
software security hurdles only a qaulified ot-entrusted technician could
have any chance of succeeding with. So my only option left in order to
increase storage space for recording is to spend another $800 and add an
entire additional Motorola DCT6412 unit alongside of the existing one. (I
would then manually switch between units as recording needs require. Or I
could spend $200 to $400 for remote control HDMI switch.) Yet this one
additional unit would increase my HD recording capacity to only 30 hours.
Obviously, I've realized, this approach is far too expensive for the
relatively meager returns.

Then I heard about the Beyond TV PVR option, in that, unlike Tivo or
ReplayTV, etc, which cannot access useable EPG for Canadian views, Beyond TV
claim that its EPG works in Canada too. Now, I'm posting my above query here
as I just want to make sure through sodoing so that this product is not
going to turn out to be something unexpectingly less than it is promised to
be, before I buy. Therefore, thanks in advance for any helpful, informative,
or otherwise interesting feedback on Beyond TV and/or any of the tuner/PVR
cards that it claims are compatible with its software and service..

Ken
 
G

Gary Tait

Then I heard about the Beyond TV PVR option, in that, unlike Tivo or
ReplayTV, etc, which cannot access useable EPG for Canadian views,
Beyond TV claim that its EPG works in Canada too.

TiVo officially works in Canada now (with 7.2 software on Series 2s). There
just isn't a whole lot of hardware here yet, with little to no retail
presence, and TiVo themselves don't ship to Canada, some online retailers
do though.

For a while, you could "roll your own" guide data for TiVo and Replay.
 
B

BD

I'm planning on buying a Beyond TV bundle {Beyond TV and Dual-Tuner
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Kit, to be specific} to install in my PC.
Before I take the plunge though, I'd like to hear any feedback from others
out here who may have had experience with this PVR product.

I've had it for awhile now, and it is pretty darned cool in my opinion.
Very easy to setup recordings.

I have 2 issues, though.

1) The Update process for the scheduling info (ie the online guide) can
be a real pain. You can do it manually, which means you have to
remember to do it. The manual update takes about 3 minutes, once you
kick it off. You can also set it to update automatically - but you
CANNOT tell it _when_ to update the guide info. That schedule is
determined and locked at the time of product install. They say this is
so their servers don't get flooded with update requests at a certain
time of the day, when most people are likely to update.

This would not be a problem if the scheduled update problem did not
take as long as it does, and take so many CPU resources. I have seen
the scheduled update last almost an hour. And for that hour, it takes
up a LOT of CPU. If that happened at 3am, I wouldn't care; but if it's
at 8:30 and I'm in the middle of a game or something, it really sucks.
The process at issue is not run at the highest priority, so it can get
bumed by other processes - but it still bringgs down the system
somewhat.

The fact that the manual update completes in less than a minute is just
weird. I only last week downloaded the latest rev of the software
(4.1). The resourcing issue for the automatic update seems better so
far, and the process seems to finish quicker, but you still can't tell
it when to update.

2) Be careful of advertisements that v4 can encode directly to DivX.
This is true, but your card must be of a certain flavor for that to
work. Mine is not of that flavor, so I am forced to use only MPEG2.

Aside from those niggles, I like it.

BD.
 
B

BRH

Ken said:
[First of all my apologies for cross posting this, possibly off topic, query
to so many groups. Wasn't sure which, if any, of these groups it might
elicit an interested response.]



Hello,

I'm planning on buying a Beyond TV bundle {Beyond TV and Dual-Tuner
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Kit, to be specific} to install in my PC.
Before I take the plunge though, I'd like to hear any feedback from others
out here who may have had experience with this PVR product.

My reasons for wanting to try Beyond TV has to do with the fact that where I
live, in Canada, we are pretty much limited in terms of PVRs to what is
offered by our local cable and satellite providers. For example, I just paid
almost $800 (CAD) to Shaw cable to purchase the Motorola DCT6412 PVR unit
that they offer. Hardware-wise it is a good unit, except that its hard drive
can hold only a maximum of 15 hours of recording in HD. (It holds up to 40
hours of standard-broadcast-only recording. But I bought the unit mostly to
compliment and take full advantage of my newly purchased widescreen HDTV. In
rationing my use of this limited hard disk space, I won't be opting to do so
by dropping HD programming choice. The Motorola DCT6412 has myriad digital
ports on both the back and front of the machine. I'd just love to get down
on knees and attach an SATA, Firewire 800, or even a humble USB 2.0 external
hard drive to it in order to try to address the limited storage space issue.
But all the digital ports on the machine are rendered not-enabled by its
software, which is closed to the public, provided and controlled by the
local cable provider (Shaw Cable; whom btw has expressed no credible
intention of ever changing this). Installing a larger drive without some
kind of secret software authorization key or adminstrave inside knowledge to
that effect, I've researched and concluded, is pretty much mined with
software security hurdles only a qaulified ot-entrusted technician could
have any chance of succeeding with. So my only option left in order to
increase storage space for recording is to spend another $800 and add an
entire additional Motorola DCT6412 unit alongside of the existing one. (I
would then manually switch between units as recording needs require. Or I
could spend $200 to $400 for remote control HDMI switch.) Yet this one
additional unit would increase my HD recording capacity to only 30 hours.
Obviously, I've realized, this approach is far too expensive for the
relatively meager returns.

Then I heard about the Beyond TV PVR option, in that, unlike Tivo or
ReplayTV, etc, which cannot access useable EPG for Canadian views, Beyond TV
claim that its EPG works in Canada too. Now, I'm posting my above query here
as I just want to make sure through sodoing so that this product is not
going to turn out to be something unexpectingly less than it is promised to
be, before I buy. Therefore, thanks in advance for any helpful, informative,
or otherwise interesting feedback on Beyond TV and/or any of the tuner/PVR
cards that it claims are compatible with its software and service..

Ken

If you already have a TV Tuner card in your PC (or can borrow one from
someone), why not try the BeyondTV demo?

I tried it awhile back and seriously considered purchasing the software.
I have an ATI All-in-Wonder 850XT and an ATI TV Wonder VE in my PC,
and the software worked as advertised. Note that I did not try
recording anything in HD (and I'm not sure if BeyondTV has that capability).

Since I already have two RePlayTV units with enough capacity to suit my
needs, and my PC storage capacity would have to be increased to make
this worthwhile, I decided not to get BeyondTV.
 
C

C. Sowash

If you already have a TV Tuner card in your PC (or can borrow one from
someone), why not try the BeyondTV demo?

Most TV tuner cards like ATI All In Wonder lack hardware MPEG compression, so
there is a great deal of CPU processing required to compress a real-time video
stream coming in. Hauppauge does hardware MPEG compression in their high end
units like the USB2 one. However, even with the USB2 unit connected to a fast
computer, I found that there were occasional losses during recording. This was
probably due to disk conflicts. It definitely does not work as well as a
ReplayTV.
 
K

Ken Moiarty

[...]
If you already have a TV Tuner card in your PC (or can borrow one from
someone), why not try the BeyondTV demo?

Actually I do have a TV tuner/PVR card in my PC. It's by Creative and it's
called Videoblaster Digital VCR. I did download the BeyondTV demo with the
intention of trying it with my Videoblaster card. But BeyondTV wouldn't
recognize it.

As a matter of fact, though, I have actually changed my mind about buying
the BeyondTV bundle: Tomorrow I'm going to drive into downtown Vancouver to
pick up the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Dual-Tuner which a vendor there has
in stock. (I've realized that any savings by obtaining this card in the
BeyondTV bundle will be more than offset by shipping costs, considering
border customs *broker fees* are disproportionately high for small purchase
items such as this.) After installing it inside my system, I'll fire up the
BeyondTV demo. (Still, success of my investment in the Hauppauge card is
kind of dependent on BeyondTV since BeyondTV is the only game in Canada that
I know of as far as providing an integrated EPG for a PC PVR setup. Without
this, I'll then merely gain another great PVR card which I can still only
use as a digital VCR. But this way, if it turns out not to be satisfactory,
I can decide not to part with the cost for the BeyondTV software: still not
ahead, but at least not quite as much of a loss.)

I tried it awhile back and seriously considered purchasing the software. I
have an ATI All-in-Wonder 850XT and an ATI TV Wonder VE in my PC, and the
software worked as advertised. Note that I did not try recording anything
in HD (and I'm not sure if BeyondTV has that capability).

No, I'm going to use my PC for recording standard definition. That way I
can reserve the limited hard drive space on my Motorola DCT6412 unit just
for recording HD programs.

Since I already have two RePlayTV units with enough capacity to suit my
needs, and my PC storage capacity would have to be increased to make this
worthwhile, I decided not to get BeyondTV.

Well it seems to me that increasing one's PC storage space is such a
temptingly easy and relatively inexpensive option these days. If you know
where to buy, that is, several-hundred-GB hard drives are tantalizingly
cheap now a days. For example, at the store I'm going to tomorrow
(www.atic.ca), I want to also pick up a 300 GB hard drive (Maxtor ATA133,
7200 RPM, 16GB cache) which is marked at a mere $130 CAD. Now that's video
storage space!

Ken
 
K

Ken Moiarty

BD said:
I've had it for awhile now, and it is pretty darned cool in my opinion.
Very easy to setup recordings.

I have 2 issues, though.

1) The Update process for the scheduling info (ie the online guide) can
be a real pain. You can do it manually, which means you have to
remember to do it. The manual update takes about 3 minutes, once you
kick it off. You can also set it to update automatically - but you
CANNOT tell it _when_ to update the guide info. That schedule is
determined and locked at the time of product install. They say this is
so their servers don't get flooded with update requests at a certain
time of the day, when most people are likely to update.

This would not be a problem if the scheduled update problem did not
take as long as it does, and take so many CPU resources. I have seen
the scheduled update last almost an hour. And for that hour, it takes
up a LOT of CPU. If that happened at 3am, I wouldn't care; but if it's
at 8:30 and I'm in the middle of a game or something, it really sucks.
The process at issue is not run at the highest priority, so it can get
bumed by other processes - but it still bringgs down the system
somewhat.

The fact that the manual update completes in less than a minute is just
weird. I only last week downloaded the latest rev of the software
(4.1). The resourcing issue for the automatic update seems better so
far, and the process seems to finish quicker, but you still can't tell
it when to update.

2) Be careful of advertisements that v4 can encode directly to DivX.
This is true, but your card must be of a certain flavor for that to
work. Mine is not of that flavor, so I am forced to use only MPEG2.

Aside from those niggles, I like it.

BD.

Thanks for the reply. Where you say that the automatic schedule update
download time is "determined and locked at the time of product install", do
you mean that the time of install has something to do with it? Or merely
that there is no user control over this whatsoever?

Ken
 
D

David Chien

For mpeg-2 recording, just about any 2Ghz+ PC nowadays can do this just
fine, like I've done with my 8500DV and 9600 AIW units. Nothing special
about it at all, and modern CPUs easily handle the processing. You've
got lots of software encoders that'll do this, including Intervideo
WinDVD Recorder version.

Divx/MPEG-4/MPEG-4 AVC however (in order of increasing complexity) do
take up far more CPU power, with MPEG-4 AVC generally requiring hardware
assist (eg. ATI video card GPU encoder assist) to do real-time, 640x480
30fps recordings. Divx should be okay on most 3Ghz+ systems (see
divx.com -> forums).
 
R

Roger Wilkerson

David, I'm using BeyondTV 4 to schedule and record on one 500mce and
one 150mce. I'm in the US and have comcast which I've split of to my pc
running winxp pro. Works great. Really like the scheduling capability
that comes with the tv grid for beyond tv. Can tell it to record only
new shows of a series or all shows, etc.

Beyond works great with the hauppauge tv cards. there is also a very
good beyondtv support forum as well.
 

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