Beyond TV 3.5 - Adding Multi-Tuner Support, a Quick Beta Look

Final Words

Things are going as planned according to SnapStream, with the upcoming Beyond Media and Beyond TV 3.5 product launches. Assuming all goes well, the HTPC community should be able to expect a second substitute for MCE: PVR and multimedia functions, at least before the end of September.

Beyond TV 3.5 adds more than just multi-tuner support of course, and we will touch more on that when the product hits the market. Our first glimpse of Beyond TV 3.5 is very encouraging, but we would like to see a few additional options, particularly relating to multi-tuner systems. Ideally, you should be able to set which channels you want to tie together. A simple screen like this would do the trick:

Click to enlarge.

SnapStream's logic so far has been that you would likely want to record on cable, rather than antenna, if you were to force tie channels that don't share channel number and may or may not share station name together, and that is why they keep them separate. But, SnapStream has already implemented automatic priority management for channels that do share the same number and station name (cable sources go first, then antenna if nothing else is available).

Based on our latest discussions with SnapStream, their main issue with tying channels together was that the user may tie incorrect channels together, thus opening a whole new can of worms for tech support. Plus, one of SnapStream's biggest selling points has been that BTV is easy to use, which isn't to say that they are sacrificing the enthusiast crowd. A possible compromise to our recommendation is to tie together channels based on their call signs (aka station name, different from channel name), so that the user has nothing to worry about.

List of channel names with their call signs in Beyond TV 3.5 beta's web admin
Click to enlarge.

We see manual tying channels together as a benefit, since it gives users further control if desired. If you don't want to tie channels together, then you don't have to. In our case, we could tie channel 3 on cable with channel 32 on antenna - both are Fox. The only difference would probably be commercials and maybe "breaking news". While there could be conflicting EPG data, it likely wouldn't be unless you tied together two channel numbers that aren't really the same; even so, the cable EPG data should take precedence.

For those who haven't bought either Beyond TV or SageTV and are on a HTPC budget, we would have to say: hold off making that decision till Beyond TV 3.5 comes out. The way the two companies have tiered their pricing system will likely appeal to certain people, at least from the way we understand it. SnapStream, for example, will have a general price tag (it will stay at $69.99 for CD-ROM but the download price will be changed to match the shipped CD-ROM) for Beyond TV 3.5, which will come with the ability to have a two-tuner configuration. Each additional tuner will require an additional "tuner" license key, which is an entirely different key from the key for the software itself. By contrast, SageTV 2.0's higher base price doesn't set a limit on the number of configurable TV tuners. However, just like SageTV, you have to pay for each client that you plan on running Beyond TV Link - Update: $29.99 (No additional cost IE streaming live tv is not available if you have any hardware encoding TV cards in the system; it is all or nothing.)

As it stands, Beyond TV 3.5 looks to be a bit more than what a typical upgrade might entail, and should make things interesting when it actually hits the market.

For your information, we will have another look at Beyond TV 3.5 once it goes gold, to look at some of the finer details of the software. This will include a look into 802.11b and 802.11g based BTV HTPC network. However, we can already say that high quality settings work better with 802.11g.