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.

Nero and TiVo are launching a new application called LiquidTV. Basically, LiquidTV is TiVo. But instead of running on a set top box, the software runs on a Windows PC.

Users get all the basic features that come with TiVo, including the abililty to watch live and recorded TV, pause live programs, and record programs for viewing later. You can also burn videos to a DVD or compress them to save space using the H.264 codec. There are preconfigured settings for saving videos for an iPod or PSP or you can choose custom compression options.

LiquidTV plays well with other TiVo boxes you may have in your house, as long as they're hooked up to your home network. You can watch programs recorded on your TiVo box on a computer running LiquidTV and vice versa. You can also schedule recordings on the go using a web interface.

There's no Mac or Linux version yet. And while you do get TiVo goodies like WishLists and KidZone, the software doesn't support some of the more advanced TiVo options like TiVoCast or TiVo HME applications.

It's official. There are now almost as many companies making software that turns your PC into a digital video recorder as there are computer users who want their PC to be a digital video recorder.

Last week TiVo announced a partnership with Nero to produce a PC version of the company's popular DVR interface. And today Digeo has announced plans to launch its own PC-based media center software. While Digeo might not be as familiar a name as TiVo, the company produced the Moxi interface used by a handful of cable providers.

Moxi TV for PC will be a full fledged media center application allowing users to schedule and record TV shows up to two weeks in advance. You can also access movies, pictures, music and online media, using a 10-foot interface, meaning the software would run great on a PC in the living room. You'll need a TV tuner for your PC to record and watch live television.

There's no word on the pricing or availability of Moxi TV for PC yet, but Digeo is currently seeking beta testers. You can sign up at their site.

Moxi TV for PC joins a long list of PC-based PVR software ranging from the commercial (Beyond TV, SageTV, ReplayTV PC Edition, CTpvr) to the free (gbpvr, mythtv, media portal).

TiVo, the company that has become pretty much synonymous with the idea of the digital video recorder plans to create a PC version of the software it uses on set top boxes.

The company is partnering with Nero to develop the software. Up until recently, TiVo's Linux-based software was designed to run only on TiVo-branded boxes. But over the past year TiVo has been partnering with cable companies like Cox and Comcast to develop software for those companies' set top boxes. Once the software was portable, perhaps it was only a matter of time before we saw standalone software.

There's no word yet on pricing or availability, so we're not ready to say whether desktop TiVo software will kill competitors like BeyondTV, SageTV, or Windows Media Center. Part of the appeal of these applications has always been that after you initially pay for the software, you get free program guide updates, while TiVo charges you a monthly subscription fee on top of the money you pay for the hardware.

GBPVR is a free PC PVR software package including media-center-like functionality, free for download. Unfortunately, it didn't support the PVR card I have in my PC, so I couldn't tell you how well it works. The interface looks nice, and it seems that the setup isn't too hard, so you'll have to let me know what you think of it if you install it on one of the supported cards listed. The currently supported TV tuner cards (as listed on the GBPVR website) are:

• Hauppauge PVR250, PVR250MCE, PVR350, PVR USB2, PVR150, PVR150MCE and the dual-tuner PVR500MCE
• ATI Theatre 550 Pro
• Emuzed Maui-I, Emuzed Maui-II, Emuzed Maui-III
• DVB-T and DVB-S devices with BDA drivers including:
  • Hauppauge Nova-S
  • Hauppauge Nova-T
  • Hauppauge Nova-T USB2
  • Pinnacle MediaCenter 300i
  • Twinhan DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-C
  • FireDTV DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-C
  • Dvico Fusion DVB-T
  • V-Box DTT-150
  • Blockgold GDI DVB-T
  • Lifeview FlyDVB-T
  • ...and lots of others
• GO7007SB based capture devices, such as Plextor PX-M402U, Plextor PX-TV402U and Lifeview TV Walker
  

The program requires Windows XP or 2000, and the Microsoft .net framework 2.0 installed to run. Windows 2000 requires MDAC 2.6 or higher as well. GBPVR is not open-source, but you can get started writing your own plug-ins in C#, VB.NET or C++ for it by visiting the developer's forum.

[Via PVRWire]

SnapStream Media releases version 4.5 of its personal video recorder, BeyondTV today. 4.5 is a dot release, and doesn't feature any spectacular changes. Version 4.0 for example, added support for HDTV and DivX. But there is one major new feature. For $30, SnapStream is selling a DVD burning plugin that integrates directly into the BeyondTV interface. Now, when you record a show, you can choose to play, delete, save, or burn to DVD.

Since BeyondTV records in MPEG-2, DivX, and WMV formats, you could always have burned your own video-DVDs. But the ability to do it with your remote control from 10 feet away is new. If you've recorded programs in DivX or WMV, BeyondTV will automatically convert them into DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files. Or if you've recorded a high definition program using an over-the-air ATSC TV capture card, BeyondTV will convert the file into a high quality DVD. There's no support for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD burning yet, but Snapstream CEO Rakesh Agrawal says those features are planned for future releases.

I interviewed Agrawal for this week's PVR Wire Podcast. You can hear him describe some of the other features in BeyondTV 4.5, as well as the impact he thinks Windows Vista will have on 3rd party personal video recorder programs like BeyondTV and SageTV. Several of the retail versions of Vista will ship with Media Center functionality.

The commercial software PVR landscape has been dominated by SnapStream and SageTV. Both products install on Windows, and both have loyal followings. Recently SageTV made an interesting move; they've released a version of SageTV for Linux, which includes either the software to install on your existing Linux system, or a complete Linux distribution as part of the setup kit.

The idea here is that you can basically create your own dedicated PVR, much like a Tivo or PVR you might get from your local cable provider. As a SnapStream user for years, I always sort of thought that having my PVR running on Windows was an advantage, since I know Windows and was able to hack it to my heart's content. But having recently upgraded my cable subscription, I've opted to get the HD PVR that my cable provider offers, and retired my SnapStream box. I'd be lying if I said that system reliability didn't have at least something to do with prompting me to go with a different solution.

So I can see why you might be tempted to go to a closed-box solution, taking your flaky Windows PC based PVR and installing linux and SageTV on it. At least you then still have access to the system to make modifications if you desire. In any event, it's certainly an interesting offering in the commercial software PVR arena.

PRV Wire's Chris Tew has written an interesting editorial in which he argues that "There is one company that Google, Microsoft or Yahoo could acquire to ensure they will be well placed on the living room TV, and that company is TiVo." Chris rules out Microsoft because they've already got their foot in your living room with Windows Media Center and because TiVo runs on Linux. Yahoo! and TiVo already have a partnership and YHOO has a history of big acquisitions. "Securing its services on TiVo," says Chris, "could give Yahoo an advantage it desperately needs" over Google. Google, of course, is also a big spender, and would love to get its ads into the living room.

In the end, Chris puts his money on Yahoo!, but I wouldn't rule out Microsoft so quickly. Microsoft already has a hardware arm and could easily merge the Media Center and TiVo product lines with a branded TiVo version of Windows MCE, and many of the TiVo faithful wouldn't bat an eyelash. In the end, I think it would be ideological, rather than technical, differences that would hamstring a MSFT-TiVo buy-out. But I guess I'll side with Chris on this one--of those three companies, Yahoo! seems like the best candidate, and may be foaming at the mouth for a new avenue of expansion to pursue.

What do you do when you're out of town and realize you forgot to set your PVR to record, say, Celebrity Duets? Nothing! You're out of luck! No duets for you! That is, unless you have a Windows Media Center PVR, and the foresight to have installed /mobileRecord by Casey Chestnut. /mobileRecord is an IM bot that talks to your WMCE scheduling software and lets you schedule recordings via MSN/Windows Live Messenger. This is particularly handy if you have an IM-capable smart phone, but even if you're just IMing from the office it could be seriously handy. /mobileRecord also supports voice recognition if you have Microsoft's Speech Server 2007 beta installed, which will allow you to command your PVR from any phone. /mobileRecord is delightfully free.

[Via Engadget]

Good day Linux fans! As of yesterday, the new version (0.20) of MythTV is ready for your downloading and PVR pleasure. This release is new, (obviously) and features some new stuff: better DVD playback, DVB radio channel support, mouse support, and MythArchive (a new plug-in), which allows your recordings to be burned to DVD. For a while now MythTV has been a great and cheap way to get yourself a nice and moderately full-featured PVR. If you don't want to pay tons of money to get a manufactured PVR, MythTV (for Linux) makes a nice PVR box. I still haven't set up a PVR using MythTV, but I keep meaning to. I have a PC I have my eye on for this purpose, an older one, so maybe I will get with it and install MythTV someday soon. Any suggestions as to what Linux distro is best for MythTV? How about for general desktop consumption? Any that you recommend?

[Via Slashdot]

Sandisk launched a TV recording device called the V-Mate. This new tool enables users to download and record up to three hours of video on SD, MicroSDHC, MiniSDHC, MMC, and Memory Stick Duo and Memory Stick Pro Duo flash cards. The device measures 5.1x2.6x0.8 inches, and changes up the analog to digital by compressing video with MPEG 4, simply by connecting to the audio/video input on a TV. This is certainly the easiest way to trap TV signals, and transfer to computers for storage, editing, or playback.

This is certainly the easiest way to trap TV signals, digitize home videos, and transfer to computers for storage, editing, or playback. Recording for the V-Mate can be done through Cable, Satellite, DVD, VCR, PVR, and Camcorders. The V-Mate also has the functionality to let you schedule recordings based on channels, dates, and stop and start times. Play back on the V-Mate is the best. Since its on a flash cards, users have the ability to check out the shows on mobile phones, handheld devices, PDA's, PC's and of course through the V-Mate connected to any TV.

Product Description

SnapStream's Beyond TV product is a Windows-based Personal Video Recorder (PVR) similar to TiVo or Microsoft's Media Center PC television functionality. It allows you to take any Windows PC (that meets the hardware requirements) and use it to pause and rewind live television, as well as schedule shows to be recorded based on a number of different schedules.

The Beyond TV moniker was applied to SnapStream's offering back when they transitioned from version 2 to version 3 of what was then simply known as SnapStream Personal Video Recorder. The Beyond TV branding allowed SnapStream to branch out into other areas, such as Beyond Media (photos, music and home video management), Beyond TV Link (watching shows from remote computers), and even into hardware with their Firefly brand of remote controls. For the purposes of this review, we'll be sticking to Beyond TV 4.0, which was released late in 2005.

In what has to be one of the fastest app re-brandings in history, Yahoo!, which acquired media center software maker Meedio last week, has released Yahoo! Go TV, a free re-branded version of Meedio for Windows. Yahoo! Go has all of the features you'd expect to see in a media center, including music, videos, photos, and full-fledged DVR functionality, plus the ability to search Yahoo! videos and, of course, view photos on Flickr.

[Thanks, Ken!]

The other day we covered the Windows release of Participatory Culture's Democracy Player (formerly DTV), a media player that lets you "watch internet videos like you watch TV." Today Lifehacker points us to a great tutorial for using Democracy to automatically download your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent. Of course, there are many other ways to approach the "poor man's TiVo" problem, and this one takes a bit more fiddling than most, but if you prefer to have your downloaded shows available right away in Democracy, this is the method for you.

CyberLink has announced PowerCinema Linux, media software that "transforms a Linux PC into an entertainment center featuring analog and digital TV, radio, Teletext and electronic program guide browsing." It looks like it's aimed primarily at PC and set-top box manufacturers and provides most of your standard media center features including music, movies, and photo slideshows.

[Via Engadget]