Beyond TV & Beyond Media Bundle

Other products by SNAP

Product Features

• Beyond Media plus Beyond TV for the perfect home-theater PC experience
• Skip commercials; schedule recordings from PC, Internet, or WAP-enabled phone
• Record 2+ shows at once; shrink recordings for transfer to portable devices
• Access movies on-demand, weather information, and Caller ID
• Bring photos, music, and videos together into one organized menu

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000ANEQ8Y
• Item model number: BTV-BM-RETAIL
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 3, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,114 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

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  Software > Home & Hobbies > Movies & Television

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Product Description
Overview - Beyond TV + Beyond Media Bundle Get the entire SnapStream Media Center Suite in one bundle. Beyond Media transforms your PC into a media center. Add DVR functionalities with the award-winning Beyond TV and complete the experience with the Firefly PC Remote. This bundle is great for those who want the ultimate media center experience with the option to choose their own TV tuner card. Bundle Contents Beyond TV Get Beyond TV and never miss your favorite TV show! Skip blocks of commercials or part of a show in one click. Schedule recordings online and via web-ready phones. Multi-tuner support gives you the option to record more than one show at a time. Beyond TV’s menus are easy to navigate and control from across-the-room. Named Best DVR Software of 2004 by PC Magazine (Dec 2004) o Record more than one show at the same time or watch one while recording another with multi-tuner support o Quickly watch recorded shows by skipping blocks of commercials, or part of a recorded show, using SmartSkip(TM) o Easily find and select shows to record using the free TV guide or do a search by title or keyword o Deliver the Beyond TV experience to other PCs in the house with Beyond TV Link o Record an entire TV series – Record a single, all or all new episodes of a show with one click o Shrink files with ShowSqueeze™ to save hard drive space o Transfer recorded shows to handheld devices like Microsoft Portable Media Centers for on-the-road viewing o Set up your own personal video library with DVD-ready recordings o Schedule recordings away from home via the Internet or a web-ready phone o Plug your PC into your TV and let the show begin Beyond Media Beyond Media is a media center solution that brings your music, photos, videos and DVDs together into one easy-to-use program. You can create music playlists, share photo slideshows, playback DVDs and much more. Other cool features include instant weather information, Caller ID and music, movies and news on-demand. o Instant access to movies on-demand with SnapStream Spotlight Weather information and Caller ID o Zoom, pan and rotate photos, play slideshow to music o Sort and browse your media by genre, title, artist and keyword o Easily navigate its full-screen interface with a remote control Firefly PC Remote Complete your SnapStream media center experience with the Firefly PC Remote. Firefly PC Remote lets you control your PC-TV, DVDs, music, videos and photos away from your desktop. It is an RF remote that can be used through walls and up to 30 feet away. In addition to Beyond Media and Beyond TV, it also controls 80+ applications, such as Musicmatch®, CinemaNow and Windows® Media Player. o One-click access to your favorite media applications o Control over movies, videos, music and photos stored on your PC o Compatibility with more than 80 third-party applications. Works seamlessly with Beyond TV. o Access to online media services through SnapStream Spotlight. Learn More >> System Requirements o Microsoft Windows XP Home, XP Professional or 2000 o DirectX 9.0 or greater o Processor:

-o- Using a TV tuner card with Hardware encoding (1) : Pentium, Celeron or AMD Athlon at 700 Mhz and above

-o- Using a TV tuner card without Hardware encoding: Pentium 4, Celeron or AMD Athlon at 1.5 Ghz and above o 256 MB RAM o Video Card:

-o- nVidia GeForce 2 and above

-o- ATI Graphics Radeon 7500 and above

-o- Others with 16 MB RAM, 3D Acceleration, DirectX 9.0 compatibility (2) o 15 GB Hard Drive

-o- In systems that use 3 or more tuners, recording capacity is limited by the speed of the hard drive and available bandwidth. In order to utilize additional tuners, the system may need additional hard drives that are faster or configured in raid mode. The more hard drive space, the better the performance will be. o TV Tuner Card (see list below) o Televison Source

-o- Analog Cable

-o- Digital Cable (4)

-o- Satellite (4)

-o- Antenna o Internet Access o Optional Hardware

-o- PC IR Blaster (4) (see list below)

-o- Serial Port Tuning Cable (4) (see list below) o Open USB Port Supported Hardware TV Tuner Cards With Hardware Encoding*: (1) o Adaptec VideOh! Media Center (USB 2.0) ** o Adaptec VideOh! Media Center (PCI) ** o ADSTech InstantTV Deluxe (USB 2.0) o ADSTech InstantTV Deluxe (PCI) o ATI eHome Wonder ** o AverMedia m150*** o Avermedia m175 (Download Drivers) o Diamond XtremeTV PVR550 (PCI) o Diamond XtremeTV PVR600 (USB) o Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 o Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150MCE o Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250*** o Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250BTV*** o Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-350***, **** o Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500MCE*** o Hauppauge WinTV-PVR USB2*** o Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe (USB 2.0) (NTSC version) o PixelView PlayTV P7000 o Yuan MPG-600 o Yuan MPG-843 o Yuan PG-600 * Other cards based on the "Conexant Blackbird", "Conexant Falcon II", "Conexant Butterfly", or "Windows Media Center" designs may work. Only devices listed above are officially supported. ** These devices work with the drivers provided on the CD provided with the tuner device. *** These cards have been tested in multi-tuner configurations. **** This device's TV-OUT is not used by Beyond TV. For more information, please see this knowledge base article. Without Hardware Encoding: o ASUS TV880 o ATI TV Wonder (PCI / USB) o ATI TV Wonder Pro (PCI) o ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon family o AVerMedia AverTV Stereo (PCI) o AVerMedia AverTV Studio family o Hauppauge Win-TV Go PCI ** o Hauppauge Win-TV Go FM ** o Hauppauge Win-TV Go Stereo PCI ** o Hauppauge Win-TV Radio ** o Hauppauge Win-TV USB ** o Hauppauge Win-TV USB Pro *, ** o I/O Magic PC PVR o LifeView FlyVideo 98 (PCI) o nVidia Personal Cinema FX o nVidia Personal Cinema GeForce4 o nVidia Personal Cinema GeForce4 MX o Osprey 100 (PCI) o Pinnacle PCTV (PCI) o Pinnacle PCTV Deluxe o Pinnacle PCTV Pro PCI o Pinnacle PCTV Rave PCI o Pinnacle PCTV (USB) o PixelView XCapture PCI (Conexant 2338x chipset) o STB Systems (PCI) o TerraTec Cinergy 400 TV *This device is only supported in MPEG-2 mode. ** Be sure to run HCWCLEAR and reboot before installing Hauppauge drivers to assure complete removal of other drivers that may interfere with a proper install. Run this only once before installing the drivers for any Hauppauge device(s) in the system PC IR Blasters: o USB-UIRT o MyBlaster o Actisys IR-200L o Other PC IR Blasters that are compatible with Girder Serial Port Tuning Cables: o Sony-DirecTV serial port tuning o RCA-DirecTV serial port tuning

Product Description
Beyond Media Platinum gives you total control over all your digital media. It's a DVD player, a music player and a photo browser, all in one. This revolutionary all-in-one media player will turn your ordinary PC into a 21st century home entertainment system! Navigate its full-screen interface with Firefly PC Remote

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars BeyondTV Works Dependably for Me!, February 17, 2007

By	N. Knight (Parma, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm not sure what got into the last reviewer, but he inspired me to provide my quite contrasting opinion. I'll note up front that I have no interest in any software's 'DivX' capabilities; I just wanted a Tivo-like device for my room. One that didn't charge $12.95 a month for an online TV schedule. My Tivo was and is wonderful, but I figured I could do better without the monthly overhead.

I purchased an older (used) 1.8 Ghz Dell and a Hauppauge PVR-150 card; the PC already had a TV-out on its video card, so I was all set. Ok, I added a 300Gb drive to it.

I spent considerable time trying EVERYTHING I could find, software-wise. And I mean everything (Windows-based). In the end, I had to choose between BeyondTV and SageTV. I found enough quirkinesses in SageTV that I went with BeyondTV and have never really looked back.

Oh, one more note. In between the Tivo and this machine (I call it my PC-VO! :), I also had purchased an HP Media Center machine. This for my personal use AND to watch and record TV while I worked. This featured a 2002 Media Center setup, and it worked pretty well (TV card is currently broken ... working on a replacement). Except that I had to jump through hoops to convert the resulting .ms-dvr files to MPEG so I could edit them and make DVD's out of them. Creating my own DVD recordings was a primary goal for me, and MediaCenter IS NOT the best source for DVD-recordable media. It can be done and was, but everything else records to ready-to-go MPEG files. Even Tivo.

So, I've been using BeyondTV for some time now (currently at v4.5). There are some things I could see being improved, but for me, it's been nothing but a trooper. I have a Wireless USB network connection and can copy MPEG files to my HP for DVD creation. And the 300gig drive is a great holding place for these recordings until I'm ready for them.

I can't claim to have 42 shows scheduled to record, but I have a decent amount of them, and my list has changed over time. I've never seen a problem maintaining or using this list. It finds the shows I ask it to and records them.

In all, I've very happy with BeyondTV and would recommend it to anyone and everyone. For fun, I've just ordered parts for my first "ground up" build of a HTPC machine, and after I fiddle with Linux and MythTV for awhile, I have a feeling I'll be back to Windows and BeyondTV on this machine, too.

Gripes? Well, perhaps one. Maybe 2. I do see some occassional pokiness in the video and/or sound. Occassional is the key, and I blame this partially on my older machine and ancient video card. I could try beefing these up, but it doesn't bother me enough. The BIGGEST gripe I have may also be machine-centric, but BeyondTV also fails to tell me when there is a problem. Every 3-4 weeks it seems I lose my network connection. Well, BeyondTV doesn't see it and cannot connect to refresh the program guide. Now that I know this happens, I simply check once a week and boot about once a month. Perhaps if I was hard-wired this might not happen, I can't say. For me, booting on occassion isn't such a bad thing.

Bottom line? Beyond TV was an excellent choice for me. They still offer a 21 day free trial, so it's easy to try it for yourself. I have no affiliation at all with SnapStream, I just don't like to see the software I use (successfully) given an unjust bad rap. Please try it for yourself!

It's a shame I can't give a 4.5 rating ... I didn't feel right with 5 stars, but a 4.5 would have been more accurate.

Nick

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beyond TV is garbage, April 12, 2006

By	William Farrell "Nowandever29" (MI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Beyond TV 4 really stinks. I have Media Center 2005, and purchased and installed Beyond TV 4 to replace it. The primary goal was the stated ability to reencode TV programs to DivX, saving a great deal of disk space.

The problem is, the conversion doesn't work. It does one of two things: It either does not convert the files at all (you get 0kb files instead, like it my case) or it convert them to DivX, but they are unplayable in any version of DivX on any system (my friend's case, who also tried BeyondTV4).

The other problem is you cannot have more than 12 scheduled progranms. Below 12, it works fine. Enter more than 12, and it will not record shows (apparently randomly). When I tried to enter the 42 different shows my wife, kids, and I watch, BeyondTV froze. Consistently.

The thing also stutters during playback if you have antivirus active. Finally, for some reason, it gets the time wrong and starts and stops recording at the wrong time. It's not that the computer has the wrong time - it's time is correct. For some reason, Beyond TV gets it wrong.

I tried for two weeks to get hold of someone at SnapStream's tech support, but they would not answer their tech support line, and would not answer my emails. I also got no response to the request for a refund I made.

Search for reviews of this product, and you'll see my experience is FAR from unique. Avoid it at all costs! Go for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. It's stable and works, something Beyond TV 4 can't do.