OCTOBER 2006 MAXIMUMPCBEYOND TV 4.3
Snapstream’s Beyond TV is the closest thing
to a Tivo we’ve tested. Unlike Media Center
2005, it’s designed with one set of goals
in mind—yours. Instead of kowtowing to
the interests of Hollywood content provid-
ers in the hope of forming “partnerships,”
Snapstream has actually built a piece of
software with your best interests in mind. And
unlike MythTV, Beyond TV is easy to install
and confi gure on any Windows machine.
In addition to all the basic PVR function-
ality, Beyond TV adds a ton of power-user
features to your HTPC. You can confi gure
the software to automatically recompress
your recorded TV shows using a more
effi cient codec during downtime, expunge
the commercial breaks from your record-
ings, and log in remotely to change your
recording schedule. It will even place pre-
transcoded videos suitable for playback on
portable devices in the appropriate folders,
so they’ll be copied automatically the next
time you sync the device.
Let’s talk a bit more about the different
codecs supported. By default, everything
gets recorded using MPEG-2. This format
might not be optimal for space or quality
concerns, but MPEG-2 does let you fast-for-
ward, rewind, and pause live TV—you can’t
do that if you use Divx or WMV. Once the
show is on your hard drive, however, you can
confi gure Beyond TV to recompress it using
either Divx or WMV to save disc space—per-
fect for those archival recordings. Best of all,
because Beyond TV uses unencrypted, un-
DRM’d formats, you can archive anything you
record to DVD, whether The Man wants youto or not! Furthermore,
any videos that you
toss into the directo-
ries that Beyond TV
monitors will be view-
able from within the
10-foot interface. We
like that a lot!
Beyond TV sup-
ports over-the-air
standard- and high-
defi nition TV; by using
IR blasters to control
them, you can even
connect a Beyond TV
rig to your cable box or
satellite tuner to record
premium content.
The bad news is that
recording HD content
from cable or satellite
remains impossible
for the time being. The good news is that you
can add as many tuners as you’d like—people
have built systems with as many as 10 tuners.
In addition to the remote-friendly 10-
foot interface, there are several other ways
to access your content. You can simply
browse to the appropriate folder using
Windows Explorer; then view content using
your favorite video player. Or you can
access the Beyond TV web interface from
any computer on your LAN. You can also
view live TV using the web interface. If you
want to get a little fancier, the client-only
version of the Beyond TV package is called
Beyond TV Link. Link gives you access to
the 10-foot interface over the network, evenon machines that don’t include a TV tuner.
Essentially, it lets you turn any PC into a
streaming box.
The fi nal piece of the puzzle is Beyond
TV Media. Media lets you access your music
collection and photo album from within
Beyond TV’s 10-foot interface. Currently,
Media (and Link, for that matter) are stand-
alone products. We like the a la carte
approach that Snapstream has taken with its
product. Instead of paying a ton of money
for functionality you don’t need, you can
simply buy what you do need.
The bottom line is that Beyond TV is,
hands down, the best PVR software we’ve
tested for the PC.TV and video playback look great. The player will even use your
3D accelerator to apply transparent overlays to the video window.The basic Beyond TV interface is similar to other PVR packages,
but there’s a lot more going on under the hood.HOME THEATER PC THEATER PC HOME HOME THEATER PC HOME HOME THEATER PC HOME HOME THEATER PC
Beyond Media lets you browse your music and movie col-
lection from your couch.