Why I buy this one ?
- Beyond Media plus Beyond TV for the perfect home-theater PC experience
- Skip commercials; schedule recordings from PC, Internet, or WAP-enabled phone
- Record 2+ shows at once; shrink recordings for transfer to portable devices
- Access movies on-demand, weather information, and Caller ID
- Bring photos, music, and videos together into one organized menu

What our customer's say!

"BeyondTV Works Dependably for Me!", I'm not sure what got into the last reviewer, but he inspired me to provide my quite contrasting opinion. I'll note up front that I have no interest in any software's 'DivX' capabilities; I just wanted a Tivo-like device for my room. One that didn't charge $12.95 a month for an online TV schedule. My Tivo was and is wonderful, but I figured I could do better without the monthly overhead.

I purchased an older (used) 1.8 Ghz Dell and a Hauppauge PVR-150 card; the PC already had a TV-out on its video card, so I was all set. Ok, I added a 300Gb drive to it.

I spent considerable time trying EVERYTHING I could find, software-wise. And I mean everything (Windows-based). In the end, I had to choose between BeyondTV and SageTV. I found enough quirkinesses in SageTV that I went with BeyondTV and have never really looked back.

Oh, one more note. In between the Tivo and this machine (I call it my PC-VO! :), I also had purchased an HP Media Center machine. This for my personal use AND to watch and record TV while I worked. This featured a 2002 Media Center setup, and it worked pretty well (TV card is currently broken ... working on a replacement). Except that I had to jump through hoops to convert the resulting .ms-dvr files to MPEG so I could edit them and make DVD's out of them. Creating my own DVD recordings was a primary goal for me, and MediaCenter IS NOT the best source for DVD-recordable media. It can be done and was, but everything else records to ready-to-go MPEG files. Even Tivo.

So, I've been using BeyondTV for some time now (currently at v4.5). There are some things I could see being improved, but for me, it's been nothing but a trooper. I have a Wireless USB network connection and can copy MPEG files to my HP for DVD creation. And the 300gig drive is a great holding place for these recordings until I'm ready for them.

I can't claim to have 42 shows scheduled to record, but I have a decent amount of them, and my list has changed over time. I've never seen a problem maintaining or using this list. It finds the shows I ask it to and records them.

In all, I've very happy with BeyondTV and would recommend it to anyone and everyone. For fun, I've just ordered parts for my first "ground up" build of a HTPC machine, and after I fiddle with Linux and MythTV for awhile, I have a feeling I'll be back to Windows and BeyondTV on this machine, too.

Gripes? Well, perhaps one. Maybe 2. I do see some occassional pokiness in the video and/or sound. Occassional is the key, and I blame this partially on my older machine and ancient video card. I could try beefing these up, but it doesn't bother me enough. The BIGGEST gripe I have may also be machine-centric, but BeyondTV also fails to tell me when there is a problem. Every 3-4 weeks it seems I lose my network connection. Well, BeyondTV doesn't see it and cannot connect to refresh the program guide. Now that I know this happens, I simply check once a week and boot about once a month. Perhaps if I was hard-wired this might not happen, I can't say. For me, booting on occassion isn't such a bad thing.

Bottom line? Beyond TV was an excellent choice for me. They still offer a 21 day free trial, so it's easy to try it for yourself. I have no affiliation at all with SnapStream, I just don't like to see the software I use (successfully) given an unjust bad rap. Please try it for yourself!

It's a shame I can't give a 4.5 rating ... I didn't feel right with 5 stars, but a 4.5 would have been more accurate.

Nick

"Beyond TV is garbage", Beyond TV 4 really stinks. I have Media Center 2005, and purchased and installed Beyond TV 4 to replace it. The primary goal was the stated ability to reencode TV programs to DivX, saving a great deal of disk space.

The problem is, the conversion doesn't work. It does one of two things: It either does not convert the files at all (you get 0kb files instead, like it my case) or it convert them to DivX, but they are unplayable in any version of DivX on any system (my friend's case, who also tried BeyondTV4).

The other problem is you cannot have more than 12 scheduled progranms. Below 12, it works fine. Enter more than 12, and it will not record shows (apparently randomly). When I tried to enter the 42 different shows my wife, kids, and I watch, BeyondTV froze. Consistently.

The thing also stutters during playback if you have antivirus active. Finally, for some reason, it gets the time wrong and starts and stops recording at the wrong time. It's not that the computer has the wrong time - it's time is correct. For some reason, Beyond TV gets it wrong.

I tried for two weeks to get hold of someone at SnapStream's tech support, but they would not answer their tech support line, and would not answer my emails. I also got no response to the request for a refund I made.

Search for reviews of this product, and you'll see my experience is FAR from unique. Avoid it at all costs! Go for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. It's stable and works, something Beyond TV 4 can't do.