Beyond TV 4.0
I’ve been a SnapStream customer since before their product was called Beyond TV, and rarely have I gone
through an upgrade to such a complicated and historically finicky piece of software that was as painless as the upgrade to version 4.0 was this time around. It made me not
mind that I had to pay for the upgrade. Beyond TV is a Windows-based PVR (Personal Video Recorder) software package
that allows you to turn a PC into a souped up Tivo. If you have the inclination to take a relatively modest PC - mine
runs on a 4 year old AMD Duron 700 machine running at 900 MHz with 512 MB of RAM - and swap out a few parts, you can
have yourself a PVR that gives you complete control of your shows.
Among Beyond TV’s best features include the fact that it records all video in the relatively ubiquitous MPEG 2 format, with no encryption or other impediments to moving it around. It can also transcode video to smaller formats like Microsoft’s Windows Media or now DivX, which makes the video that much more portable. You can get video off of your Tivo, but I guarantee it isn’t nearly as easy.
While there are still odd hiccups in Beyond TV 4.0, it’s a must-upgrade for any current Beyond TV users, and well worth downloading the trial version for anyone considering making their own PVR.
