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SnapStream Beyond TV 3.5 Review
Page: 2/4
(2095 total words in this text)
(39333 Reads) 
General Usage:
I had no issues bopping around the well laid out and pretty blue interface using the remote control. “Click Click” LiveTV. Channel guide, pause, “instant replay”, and Fast Forward were all a remote control button press away and intuitive to navigate. The PVR operations function and work just as you’d expect. Scheduling future shows or recording the current show you are watching was very straightforward. I added the equivalent of a “season pass” choosing only first run and Beyond TV blissfully recorded all the new episodes of “Drawn Together” and “MTV’s Ultimate Mashups” for me.
 
I did tweak the playback settings a little bit for optimal playback. I utilized the InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder and the overlay rendering setting. Picture Quality was good, even using the somewhat marginal s-video output from the VIA EPIA M10k. It was roughly comparable to my TiVo’s PQ on a similar recording quality setting.
In general, I did not have any complaints about the interface and navigation. Sometimes, as a TiVo user, there’s a little bit of a UI hangover when using a PC PVR solution due to the subtle differences in navigation (you get used to hitting Peanut the “tivo guy” button). I only experienced this occasionally, and I am sure the functionality or remote control commands are configurable to make it conform to my idiosyncrasies.
 
Some Minor Gripes:
The advanced configuration options are not available from within the main Beyond TV interface. To access the advanced options (which included video file locations) you have to log into the Beyond TV web admin interface. Don’t get me wrong, I *like* the web admin interface. You can schedule/configure beyond TV via web browser, and I *like* having access to lots of minutia should I desire to tweak under the hood. With that said, I’d really really like to be able to access some of the configuration options, especially video folder locations, via the main interface via remote control. I store/record my video on a different partition than my OS install, and it didn’t take long for the default video directory to get filled up on me and although it’s documented in several places, it took me a while to realize that this was configurable via the Beyond TV admin web interface.
It’s difficult to weigh menu simplicity design and ease of use with making available advanced features for advanced users, but I think there should be a submenu where users can drop off the configuration deep end from their couch =)
I would have liked to see more/better HTPC-esque functionality/framework for managing my existing media like videos, DVDs, mp3s, photos, etc… Apparently I’m not alone, and SnapStream is looking to fill this feature request with the upcoming release of Beyond Media.
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