I love Snapstream BeyondTV

I was wandering the software aisle of Best Buy just before my trip to Vail, Colorado. I came across a piece of software called BeyondTV by a company called Snapstream. I had years before purchased a Hauppauge tv tuner card, then later a Hauppauge tv tuner with FM radio, and then later an MSI TV @nywhere. I thought the whole concept of recording tv was a cool idea.

Nothing ever really became of those hardware purchases. The software for the Hauppauge cards were unexciting and just plain "blah". The MSI card was a bit better as it came with some scheduling software but somehow never got used much (besides the fact that the box advertised MPEG4 encoding but it never did...). It too turned out to be a dud because of the bundled software. And because I was never a Linux nut I never tried any of the UNIX tv pacakges available.


So anyways, I installed the Snapstream software and to my amazement this was one piece of slick software! The software was truly marvelous. The user-interface was easy and simple to work with. I started out with a 40gb hard drive. Then it moved to an 80gb. Now I've got a 250gb hard drive in the machine, and am thinking of putting in another 250gb because I only have 10hrs of space left.

Let me first explain. Beyond TV is a software package than when coupled with a compatible tv tuner card on your PC will allow you to record tv programs from your tv cable without any intervention. Do you want to catch every episdoe of Lost, House or Reba without having to stay at home? This can do it. Set it up to record a single episode or every single episode that airs from today forward? This can do it.

This essentially bundles the features of a TIVO (which isn't available in Canada) and a Rogers PVR (the local cable company offering) but without the rental fee. Sure it might be overkill, but I've got extra PCs lying around with all these tv tuner cards. Great!

Now, all I need to do is find time to watch all these recorded shows.