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WHAT'S HOT

SETUP

    After downloading the 17MB setup program, I began the installation process.

The first series of choices in the setup process.

    Once you've selected your Broadcast source, you will be prompted to set up a free Snapsteam.net account. This is how you will obtain your television show listing as well as enabling you to schedule programs to record when you are away from home.

After you've set up your account, the final stage of the configuration process begins.

Selecting your capture device (TV card).

Scanning and Listing TV channels found.

The next series of screens will walk you through verifying your capture device is working properly.

All done!

At last, you can now start Beyond TV! Startup takes about a minute to load, so you will see a lot of this fella who looks like he's about to say "talk to the hand!"

    BTV gives you several options on how to operate the program. Your front page will present you with the option of "Full Screen," "Windowed," "Web Admin" or "Log."

• Full Screen is the ideal mode when using BTV with as a stand-alone DVR and viewing on a television. Can be used on the PC though.
• Windowed is best for use on the PC, so you are able to use other applications if needed (size is adjustable).
• Web Admin is where the majority of your configuration options are stored. Operates on your local PC (localhost) via Internet Explorer.
• Log is simply a listing of activities the program performs (server activity), which may be handy when using support.

Although you can view live TV in the "Web Admin" mode, it isn't ideal. For viewing and scheduling, "Full Screen" and "Windowed" work best. For the purposes of this review, I selected "Windowed." Now, on to basic configuration.

Tip of the Day screen during Windowed start up.

Beyond TV "Home" page

     At this point, you can enter any of the 5 Menus: Recorded Shows, Live TV, Program Guide, Setup Recordings, or Settings. The last option exits to "Windowed Mode" (more on that later).

    The first order of business is to check to be sure you can see your channels. For this, you enter "Live TV." Once there, you should be able to see live images from your TV card (be it cable TV, antenna or otherwise). Clicking up on the on-screen arrows should change channels. Notice in the image above that it says "No information available." Normally, you would see information on the show (guests, descriptions, synopsis, etc.) but upon your new installation, you won't have any of that yet.

    Clicking on "Guide" will pop-up the message "The Program Guide was unable to load any data. Download Line-up from Snapsream.net and set it as default?" In most cases, you would want to click "Yes" unless you have another source from which you want to obtain television listings.

    Once the data has been loaded, you will be able to see details on each show, as well as a customized TV grid of the program's on your local stations. You are now ready to begin using "Beyond TV."

PRODUCT FEATURES

    First thing you need to do is pick a program or two to record. From the Program Grid, you can click on any show listed to get recording options. You don't have to have to be viewing that program to select it, just click on the title. At that point, you get a pop-up window with several options:

• Watch this episode - Takes you out of the Guide and to the Live TV mode
• View upcoming episodes - Presents you with a list of airdates for that program
• Record this episode - Schedules the program to be recorded, or begins recording if the show is on-air at that moment
• Record all episodes - Schedules the program to always be recorded, regardless of repeats
• Record all new episodes - Ignores repeats, and only records new, first-run episodes
• Cancel - Returns you to the Guide mode

    You can continue to select as many shows as you want to be recorded, you are only limited by hard drive space. Since the default recording format is MPEG-2, you can anticipate that a 30 minute program will consume a little over 1 GB in hard drive storage. These settings, of course, can be changed (as will be discussed later in this review).

    When viewing Live TV, the on-screen display will present you with information on the show, volume settings, channel information, and navigation options.

    You also have the ability to adjust the video signal by clicking "Options." This beings up a new window where you can tweak the video display properties.

    After a minute or so of no activity, the overlay smoothly slides off-screen and your computer monitor (or TV if you are using a TV-out method) displays full-screen video. I am using "Windowed" mode, so in the screen shots you see the active window. In "Full Screen" mode, you never see the window.

   Viewing Live TV through Beyond TV gives you "Time Shifing" ability. "Time Shifting"  gives you the ability to pause Live TV and resume it whenever you wish. When watching Live TV you need only tap your spacebar (or pause on your remote, if you purchased one) to toggle between Pause and Play. You can also fast-forward and rewind by using the "arrow" keys on your keyboard.

By visiting the "Recoded Shows" section you can display and, if you so choose, watch the programs you've already recoded.

Selecting a show from the list provides you with program information.

Upcoming Recordings are also listed.

    Since storage space is an issue, Beyond TV offers several options. Shows can be set to expire, and be deleted from the hard drive, after a user-specified amount of time. If "ShowSqueeze" is enabled, BTV can automatically re-encode a program to a different media format and delete the original (more on "ShowSqueeze" later).

    Another "plus" that Beyond TV provides is through the "SmartSkip" technology. When enabled, "SmartSkip" will detect and index scene changes after you've recoded a TV show and save them in an XML file tied to the program. This allows you to see an on-screen representation of the chapters within the show (but only when viewed within Beyond TV), and effectively skip past those you don't want to see, namely the commercials. On the downside, Beyond TV can not (or will not) use the "SmartSkip" chapter XML file to cut out the commercials. It would be a great convenience if after a show has been recorded, you could set it to be re-encoded using the "SmartSkip" information to cut out the commercials. But by reading the BTV Forums, I see that some people are working on a way to do this themselves. For the most part, "SmartSkip" does a pretty good job, but wasn't always accurate. However, with improvement, it could be a very valuable too.

Recording Away from Home

   Beyond TV gives you the ability to schedule recordings when you are not able to get to your local computer. You can do this via: web browser, Pocket Internet Explorer (if you have a connection) or WAP/Cellphone browser (if provided by your carrier).

SnapStream.net web-based Program Guide

    As mentioned before, all program data is pulled down from SnapStream.net, the free online television schedule service provided with your Beyond TV purchase. Since it is a web-based service, you can log-in to SnapStream.net from anywhere and schedule shows you want to record. If you have an "always-on" internet connection, Beyond TV will query SnapStream.net every 5 minutes and pick up those changes. So, if you are traveling, and forgot to record "The Simpsons" you just visit SnapStream.net and add it. When you get home, the show will be waiting for you.

SnapStream.net Program Detail

    The web-interface is very easy to navigate. Hovering your mouse over a program give you a brief description, and clicking on it will give you a pop-up window with more detail and recording options. In the window will also be three red "record" buttons which give you the option to Record This Episode, Record All Episodes or Record All New Episodes. Your choices will be saved and sent to your local computer the next time BTV performs a schedule update.

  The same is true for web browsing on the Pocket PC. While it offers a much more scaled-down interface, the functionality is basically the same. Beyond TV's mobile device scheduling is a feature that is neither well documented nor promoted. Yet, it does exist if you know where to look. Simply open Pocket IE (or your Pocket PC web browser of choice) and navigate to "mobile.snapstream.net" (without the quotes). The "mobile" part is important, otherwise you will find yourself on the main SnapStream.net web page, which is not optimized for mobile devices.

    Once you log-in, you will be presented with several menu choices:

• At A Glance
• Search
• Remote Recording
• Logout

    "At a Glance" will present you will all of the shows for today that fall in these categories: Movies, News Programming and Sports. I found it to be a very limited amount of categories compared to the non-mobile "At a Glance," which offers Science-Fiction, Animated, Game Shows, Soap Operas and more. Why these couldn't be on the mobile page? Regardless, if you don't see a show you want to record, then use the "Search" option.

Mobile.SnapStream.net Search Function

  Once your results are displayed and you select a show, you can make a selection from the standard scheduled recording options. This same mobile interface is available to anyone who's cellular telephone offers WAP browsing. All of the options available in the Pocket IE interface are offered in the WAP browser. In fact, it is exactly the same (even the same URL), however the presentation of the site depends on the capabilities of your cell phone. My provider, T-Moble offers free T-Zones (or WAP browsing) so I was able to test this function as well.

As you can see, my Nokia 5035 is able to present the web site, however in a very limited manner.

Ugly it may be, I was still able to search for a program ("The Practice") at Mobile.SnapStream.net on my cell phone.

 Once found, I could view the program's details, and add it to be recorded by Beyond TV.

   Scheduling via a mobile device is quite a valuable tool for me. I can't tell you how many times I've been out and wished I could get back home just to set the VCR to record a program I'd forgotten about. Still, I'd like to see a few more program categories from which to select, and a program grid. The mobile site gets the job done, but just barely.

Web Admin Mode

    Once you have scheduled a few programs, you'll want to investigate your recording options. While you can do some of this in the Windowed/Full Screen mode, the real power is tucked away in the "Web Admin Mode." It should be noted that Beyond TV can act as a "server" if you have an "always on" internet connection. With the proper configuration, you will be able to visit this page and perform all the functions detailed below from a remote computer.

Web Admin Mode Home Page

    Web Admin presents you with 4 navigation choices up front:

• Watch - Watch any of your recorded programs
• Record - Manage your upcoming recordings
• Program Guide - Search and Select programs to record, and view the program menu for your channels
• ShowSqueeze - Convert recorded shows to other video formats or for viewing on different devices

    A Fifth option, "Configure" is tucked away on the right-hand sidebar. Due to the myriad of options therein, it is probably not listed on the main screen to avoid confusing the novice user. Let's explore each of these sections!

Watch

    The "Watch" section will present you with a list of all the recorded programs on your computer. By clicking on the arrow button, you can play the video either in your browser or in Windows Media Player.

    Clicking on just the show's title will present you with several options:

• Play - Does what it says
• ShowSqueeze - Takes you to a page where you can optimize the recoded show for viewing on mobile devices
• SmartChapters - Used by SmartSkip to determine chapters to skip, use this to generate on a per-program basis if not enabled for all
• Move - Moves the recoded show from one file folder to another
• Edit - Change the program information for a given show
• Delete Highlighted Show

Record

    This area, as in the "Windowed" mode, lists the shows you have scheduled to be recorded. You can make changes as to how Beyond TV handles the shows here.

Program Guide

   Unlike "Windowed" mode, this option is not available if you are not connected to the internet because it is a framed connection to the SnapStream.net website. Otherwise, it operates just like the Windowed mode. It too is limited to two weeks of listings. I realize that due to constantly changing network schedules it isn't wise and/or possible to provide much more, but it would be nice to see four weeks.

ShowSqueeze

Of the four home page options in the "Web Admin" mode, "ShowSqueeze" is of particular interest for Pocket PC users. ShowSqueeze is the tool that re-encodes your giant MPEG-2 file into a more manageable size for your Pocket PC.

    Beyond TV ships with several default encoding configurations for the Pocket PC. In this section, you can select the Target Format (MPEG-2, WMV, or Divx) and the Target Quality based on the format. To avoid this manual process, you can set BTV to automatically perform a ShowSqueeze after every show has been recorded. That way, all you have to do is copy the show to your storage card and you're ready to go!

However, none of the Pocket PC profiles seemed to be useful in their original form. I spent several days trying to find just the right encoding combination for making a program viewable on my Dell Axim X5 in Windows Media format. As you can see from the screen shot above, I found that the "Jordana" profile was the most compatible with my device. I had hoped to see more sharing of encoding profiles in the SnapStream Forums, but that was not to be. It took a lot of trial and error before I found something that worked. Certainly, Divx is an encoding option as well, but I found the file size of the final product to be too big for my liking. I much prefer the relatively small file size that Windows Media produces (1.5 GB Simpsons episode converted to a 30 MB file). Of course, a storage card is essential for viewing your shows on the Pocket PC. I wish there were more options for Pocket PC encoding, but at least you have the option of making as many profiles as you wish to keep testing until you get the one you like.

To edit a Profile, you need to enter "Recording Preferences" in the "Configure" section.

The Recording Preferences Screen is where you can set your recording source, file format, default quality, padding (add minutes to the start/end time) and turn on/off SmartSkip.

    For direct recording, your choices are Windows Media and MPEG-2. Divx is not an option here, but you can use ShowSqueeze to re-encode your show to Divx later. Also, as in ShowSqueeze you can select the default quality. For example, you can skip recording to MPEG-2 and record directly to Windows Media in a Pocket PC format. Keep in mind though, if you choose Windows Media as your default format, you won't be able to use Time Shifting (pause Live TV).

Selecting "List All Qualities" will bring you to a screen listing all of the recording profiles. Many of these are my own experiments (all the "Jordana")

Selecting "Edit" on a listed profile brings up this screen.

    Once you've navigated to the "Editing a Quality" you can make changes to it, and either save your changes to the profile or save as it as a new one. I did a lot of experimenting in this section. I'd save a profile, go back to "Watch" have it do a ShowSqueeze then test it out on my Pocket PC. Then I'd try another one, adjusting the frame-rates or the screen dimensions.

   This only scratches the surface of the options available within the "Web Admin" mode of Beyond TV. Once you enter the "Configure" section, the program's power really opens up.

    You can set up your PC for streaming your recorded shows across the internet, to other computers in your house or to a Wireless-enabled Pocket PC. Since I do not have a wireless network or an always-on internet connection, I was unable to test the streaming playback aspect of Beyond TV. Settings for this are found in the "Configure" area as are the options for Beyond TV's media player. This allows you to set the MPEG-2 decoder, skip-forward length, de-interlace mode and much more. There is just an amazing amount of user control available in Beyond TV, more than I ever expected.

Pocket PC Playback

    Once you've finally found a format that works (Windows Media, in my case), and you've had Beyond TV encode the program for your Pocket PC, you need to find a way to get it on your device. I strongly suggest a removable storage card, the bigger the better. I used an SD card for my device, and used Windows Explorer to drag-and-drop the file to a card-reader. There are programs that will watch a folder on your hard drive, and move them via ActiveSync to a folder on your Pocket PC. However, that is a slow process and I've found manually moving it to be the most expedient process.

    Your options are many as to how you can view the shows recorded by Beyond TV. Since the MPEG-2 file resides on your PC, you are able to re-encode how ever you want. There is no requirement that you use ShowSqueeze to do the work for you. I found it to be very convenient and much easier to have BTV record the show, re-encode it overnight, and copy it over to my SD card the next morning.

    The resulting video is dependant on several factors, including the quality of your TV reception, the quality of your TV card, and your encoding settings. As I mentioned, I found it very frustrating to have to tinker with the encoding settings. To me, that is not fun. I don't enjoy testing over and over, tweaking an encoding profile by a few frames-per-second to see if a video plays better. I wish that Beyond TV just shipped with several easy-to-comprehend encoding profiles, that looked good on most Pocket PCs. Even after two weeks of testing, I still have not found a satisfactory encoding setting for Pocket PC playback. I don't think a user should have to scour Google and read the SnapStream Forums just to try to figure out how to get a show to playback smoothly on the Pocket PC.

    The reason you have to fiddle with it so much is that one encoding profile might look great, but has a screen size of 250x180 which is nowhere near fullscreen. Or the size would be right, but the video would look like a slideshow rather than an episode of The Simpsons. Sometimes the video will look good, but the file size is too large. Everything is a trade-off when it comes to video on the Pocket PC. You accept choppy video for a smaller file, or give up a few more megs on your storage card to have full-screen playback. I am convinced that there has to be a happy medium somewhere. There has to be a setting that has acceptable video playback with a reasonable file size, but finding it through trial-and-error is a total wear out.

    That rant aside, I really do love having the ability to take a few of my favorite shows with me to work for viewing on my lunch hour. I can imagine that if I were to use public transportation that it would be a blast to watch Conan O'Brien or Dave Letterman on the way into town. The fact that Beyond TV can record your favorite shows, then re-encode them for Pocket PC viewing without me lifting a finger is just about geek nirvana.  Check out the below video clips to guage the quality that you can expect on your Pocket PC. (Right click, save target as)

The Simpsons - 1.50MB

NYPD Blue - 1.24MB

   All in all, I was very pleased with the ability to watch my favorite shows when I wanted where I wanted. I just wish that finding the right settings for Pocket PC playback was easier.   

HELP SUPPORT

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

BUGS AND WISHES

PURCHASING

PROS

• ShowSqueeze re-encodes your recordings for Pocket PC viewing
• Unlike TiVo, you can archive your recorded shows to DVD or CD-ROM
• Free Program Guide
• You only pay for the software, no subscription fees
• Remote scheduling
• SmartSkip allows skipping chapters (a.k.a. commercials) when viewing a show

CONS

• Encoding settings not optimized for Windows Media 2003
• Confusing options in encoding settings, little to help to novice user
• No documentation on Divx
• Only retrieves TV listings for 2 weeks ahead
• Mobile scheduling website too sparse, needs more options
• SmartSkip occasionally marks wrong areas as chapters

OVERALL IMPRESSION