BEYOND TV - EASY-TO-USE PVR SOFTWARE
FOR MANY INEXPENSIVE TV TUNER CARDS

Updates to this page, including Ruel's report on Snapstream Beyond TV, are forthcoming. So visit here again soon. If you are looking at the other PVR-related pages here at Ruel.Net, then you might be asking yourself: Which software does Ruel like the best? Well, stay tuned and visit this page again as Ruel updates this page. Also visit this page again for Ruel's report about how he has been using and customizing Snapstream for watching television including how Ruel is using this software to easily record using the Windows Media Video (WMV) format. (Beyond TV can also record in the MPEG2 format.) You can click here if you want to get the latest version 3.5 of Snapstream Beyond TV. (Or if you want the previous version 3.4, then click here.)

This is currently a page of mostly screenshots of Snapstream Beyond TV as taken by Ruel who has been watching a lot of TV. FYI, Ruel is currently using Beyond TV with an ATI TV Wonder PCI card. You can use Beyond TV with almost any WDM-compliant TV Tuner card and the TV Tuner card does NOT need to have a built-in hardware encoder although that would be helpful for MPEG2 recordings. FYI, Snapstream Beyond TV with the new version 3.5 does now support TV Tuner cards with the built-in hardware encoders if you want to spend some extra bucks for the higher quality hardware encoder cards.

Version 3.5 of Snapstream Beyond TV is now out as of October 8, 2005. You can click here if you want official information about getting Snapstream Beyond TV. New features for version 3.5 include: (a) support for multiple hardware encoder TV Tuner cards so that you can watch one show on one channel while recording another show on a different channel at the same time; (b) increased support for both hardware and software encoders; (c) support for multiple lineups; (d) integrating satellite or cable lineup with your local antenna lineup seamlessly; (e) support for Snapstream's upcoming Beyond TV Link client product which is suppose to enable users to attach to a single Beyond TV 3.5 server to any locally networked computer; (f) pre-configured recording and ShowSqueeze settings specifically for Microsoft Portable Media Center; (g) new software encoder that is SVCD/DVD compliant; (h) new bundled MPEG-2 decoder that supports DX-VA and is twice as efficient as the previous decoder; (i) TVTV web-based European electronic program guide support; (j) option to SmartSkip only certain recordings; (k) improved ViewScape user interface including search guide listings by keyword, schedule manual recordings, sort recordings by series and folder, new conflict resolution screen, support for over scanning so the user interface will fit on your TV set's screen, and free hard drive space indicator; (l) smarter Scheduler that has the option to have Beyond TV automatically find and record a movie when it does not conflict with other recordings, that will automatically reschedule "Record Always" shows to minimize conflicts, and that properly handles multipart shows such as miniseries shows; (m) optional automatic intelligent quality selection for ShowSqueeze; (n) ability to set the priority of a remote recording; (o) new serial tuner plug-in support for Motorola DTC2000; (p) Service Manager monitors the health of Beyond TV services and restarts services if needed; (q) Beyond TV no longer depends on MDAC; (r) enhancements for Community Developers including WebService API for writing applications to enhance Beyond TV experience and WebAdmin rewritten in ASP.Net enabling developers to modify or create Web pages. Again, you can click here if you want official information about getting Snapstream Beyond TV.

FYI, if you are upgrading from Snapstream Beyond TV 3.4.4 to Snapstream Beyond TV 3.5, then I would suggest that you do a clean install where you first completely uninstall version 3.4.4 and do a completely new installation of version 3.5. I was unlucky in doing an upgrade install of version 3.5 on top of version 3.4.4 and had to completely uninstall the software and do a new clean install of Snapstream Beyond TV 3.5 to get it to work properly. Also, if you are going to use version 3.5, then I would also suggest that you not use any other other TV PVR software such as SageTV on the same PC system. Snapstream Beyond TV 3.4.4 can safely co-exist with SageTV on the same PC, but version 3.5 will interfere with watching TV or watching recordings in SageTV. (If you want to go back to the previous version 3.4, then click here.) Anyways, if you only want to pick one or the other software and if you pick Snapstream Beyond TV to use as your TV PVR software on your system, then you don't have to worry about any other TV software.