Brad's favorite apps worth paying for: BeyondTV

by Brad Linder Oct 13th 2008

Over the past week we've been bringing you some of our favorite applications of all time. And most of them have been free. I love freeware and open source software. In fact, almost every application I run on my Windows, Windows Mobile, and Linux devices didn't cost me a penny. But I decided to do something a bit different for my favorite apps posts. I want to highlight some of the applications that are so good or so useful that I decided to pull out my wallet and pay for them. Some of these apps I can't imagine living without, while others are just extraordinarily useful.

First up: BeyondTV, from Snapstream Media. You can think of BeyondTV as TiVo for your PC. But it's a lot more. It's a personal video recorder that's extraordinarily easy to use, but also quite powerful. It offers a ton of features you won't find in the Windows Media Center software that comes with Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Here's how it works. You throw a TV tuner in your computer and install BeyondTV. You can then search for programs by title, keyword, or category or browse a program guide. You can schedule one time recordings, or record every episode or every new episode of a show. BeyondTV will do the rest, including sorting your shows by series.

There are a few things that set BeyondTV apart from similar PC-based PVR software like SageTV and MythTV. For example it has a built-in "showsqueeze" feature that lets you automatically re-encode recordings using DiVX or Windows Media video codecs. You can certainly do this with other applications, but it typically requires a plugin. But probably the main reason I prefer BeyondTV to the alternatives is that it has an intuitive feeling user interface but allows you to dig around in advanced menus if you want to tweak things.

BeyondTV runs on Windows XP and Vista and costs $70 to download or $80 if you want it shipped to your door in a box. You can also order the software bundled with a TV tuner card for an additional fee.

If you're looking for Linux alternatives you might want to check out MythTV or SageTV, both of which run on Linux. MythTV also happens to be free and open source. If you're a Mac user, you should check out EyeTV. And if you're a Windows user but don't want to pay for a PVR application you can check out Media Portal or GB-PVR, both of which are free. Or you can download the free trial version of BeyondTV and test it out for a few weeks before you have to pay.

Tags: beyondtv, dvr, eyetv, favorite-apps, gb-pvr, mythtv, pvr, sagetv

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

andyg8180 said 12:26PM on 10-13-2008

SEVENTY DOLLARS??!? i must disagree with you there... $70 for just the ability to encode your tv shows to divx is not money well spent... XBMC or MythTV FTW...

Odds are, most people arn't using their media centers while encoding considering encoding rapes your processor... So running a freeware standalone product will work just fine... for free :-)

Brent said 12:26PM on 10-13-2008

I totally agree with Brad on this one.

andyg8180,
You really took that out of context. While XBMC and MythTV are fine for some, neither are as stable and easy to setup as BeyondTV or SageTV. Both require you to spend a lot of time tinkering and tweaking your setup to get your media center to work and both require you to pay a monthly fee for your TV Guide.

I've used XBMC, Meedio, MediaPortal, BeyondTV MCE, VMC and SageTV. Out of those, SageTV and BeyondTV are the best and well worth the money.

jsaint said 12:27PM on 10-13-2008

Yup, just like Brent I too have spent plenty of time as a system builder with all the major Windows based DVR software packages and feel in my self proclaimed vast experience Beyond TV is really good and worth the money. You should also visit their vibrant forums but be aware that many folks are still upset the "Beyond Media" optional package is still not integrated and although Snapstream has one of the best DVR's it still has a weakness in your other media for now. I use Vista media center and Beyond TV daily and still can't give one up over the other. I love my XMBC and have yet to use SAGETV over ver 5 but still think its also worth the money. So get those free demo's and expand your TV horizons NEVER settle for the Dish or Cable Co. DVR options you can do better. One last note, Linux is not my strong suit but I have great interest in trying linuxmce.com over Myth distro's would love to see a new article on that one.

Brad Linder said 12:29PM on 10-13-2008

Like they said. Another thing to keep in mind is that you never have to pay for program guide updates with BeyondTV. You do with MythTV and most other free media center applications.

Aaron said 4:40PM on 10-13-2008

I purchased a TV tuner and it cam with a stripped down version of BeyondTV (3 day PG, manual recording only). It costs about $30 to upgrade to the full version. A lot of the TV tuners you find out there will be bundled with this stripped BeyondTV and a remote for usually under $100. Add the $30 for the upgrade to the full version, you get a good deal.

Schwinn said 8:59AM on 10-14-2008

MythTV is ridiculously easy to setup with many of the purpose-built distros (like MythBuntu and MythDora). If you can install Windows, you can install MythTV.

What's more, the article above is incorrect in stating that transcoding requires a plugin. At least with these distros, the transcoder is built in, and can be set to auto-run after a recording.

I tried using Beyond and other windows-based PVR software before, but the sad fact is, with Windows patches and instability, and resource requirements, you end up having a big system that just barely keeps up with PVR duties. Granted, I was dealing with an old platform (Athlon XP1800+, 384MB RAM) but even Win2k and ANY PVR-software just choked on that config, even without a tuner-card installed... Mythbuntu runs wonderfully, and even with adding a tuner-card, it continues to run flawlessly. Can't say that about ANY windows OS on this little hardware.

Lastly, I LOVE the auto-skip commercials feature. It's not perfect, but it's wonderful that I often don't have to do a thing, and it will simply skip ALL the commercials on its own. I don't believe BeyondTV can do that...

Honestly, give a Myth-distro a try... you'll be rather surprised. Sure it costs $20/year for listings... but that's 4 years worth of listings for 1 BeyondTV application. And it's on a STABLE OS.

KevinofDundas said 12:31PM on 10-14-2008

Question for you: Does the XP:MCE remote and/or keyboard work with BeyondTV?

Does it work well?

cliff said 3:27PM on 11-22-2008

The MCE remotes work great on BTV

Brad Linder said 12:33PM on 10-14-2008

It should work. I can't say how well, because I went the other route. I bought BeyondTV before purchasing my first PC with Windows XP or Vista MCE. So I have a Snapstream Firefly remote control that works quite well with BeyondTV and reasonably well with MCE.

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