SnapStream adds placeshifting to BeyondTV PVR software

Filed under: Video, Windows, Commercial, Beta

SnapStream adds placeshifting to BeyondTV PVR software

by Brad Linder Sep 9th 2008

SnapStream Media's BeyondTV application for Windows is one of a handful of applications that should make anyone think twice about purchasing a TiVo or cable company DVR. Like Windows Media Center, SageTV, and MythTV for Linux, BeyondTV lets users record and pause live TV on a PC and do a whole bunch of other things like shrink videos using DiVX or Windows media compression. But one thing that BeyondTV hasn't done a great job of up until recently is allowing users to placeshift or watch video recorded on one PC on another machine.

But the latest beta version of BeyondTV adds a nifty placeshifting feature utilizing Microsoft's Silverlight technology. Users can login to the web administration interface for their accounts to see a list of recorded programs. In the options menu is a button that says placeshift. Click it and BeyondTV will analyze the recorded show and your internet connection and transcode the video in real-time for streaming over the internet.

In other words, if BeyondTV is a TiVo killer (for ubergeeks who would rather build their own, anyway), BeyondTV 4.9 beta is a Slingbox killer (again, for the ubergeek set).

BeyondTV is available for $70 or you can download a free trial version.

Tags: beyondtv, beyondtv-4.9-beta, beyondtv-placeshifting, placeshifting, slingbox, snapstream, snapstream-media, tivo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Schwinn said 8:37AM on 9-10-2008

Technically, MythTV supports place-shifting already... because the files are not a closed/DRMed format.

Still, if you're after streaming, I know that Myth can do this, though I'm not so sure it can do it through a web-browser (never bothered to do it this way.) It can do it through a free, downloadable program, I know.

A hacked Tivo can do this too (again, maybe not through a browser, but still...)

James said 10:39AM on 9-10-2008

@Schwinn: the MythTV web interface does have clickable links in the Recorded Programs page, but you need to register a handler for the "mythtv://" protocol (?) and I'm not 100% sure what the best way to do that is. Also, I guess you'd have to expose your Myth server through your NAT somehow.

The other option is that Myth runs a UPnP AV server out of the box -- if you forward/tunnel your traffic outside your home network, that could be an option too.

jason said 1:21PM on 9-10-2008

All the software based PVRs are useless as none of them support closed captions in recordings. It is perfectly possible to do - they just don't care, including Snapstream and Myth.

Schwinn said 5:18PM on 9-10-2008

@James: That's why I said you can play it from a suitable external viewer (I think I had used VLC at one point, and the Myth pages seem to suggest MythTV Player ( http://www.sudu.dk/mythtvplayer/ )

@jason: I never thought of that... rather, I never tested it. I'll take a peek tonight and see if my mythbox does CC. Actually, now that I look here http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Closed_captioning it says it IS supported, as long as you setup the proper VBI type. Of course, other links tell me that this may be tuner-card dependent, and/or transcoding may kill the CC stream. Still, it seems the software does support it...

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