6. Up And Running

I was finally able to explore the Capture Wizard a bit, and found it easy to use. I could use it to watch live TV in a window and record video to my hard drive. As a test, I recorded an entire movie, encoded in MPEG2 format, to one of my Network Attached Storage devices. Then I was able to play it back from a Buffalo LinkTheater that I have on my network.

This was all fine, but it didn't match what I was really looking for. My original goal was to duplicate the functionality of a PVR, and for this, I'd need an application that played back in full-screen mode, had the ability pause live TV, had recording capabilities, and featured an on-screen program guide. In my case, this is where I'd use Beyond TV.

Setting up the Beyond TV application was fairly straightforward. The only kink in the process was when I had to select my satellite box from a list to get it to use the IR commands for my satellite system. My box was not one of the options, but a "learn" feature let me train the device to handle commands for my satellite receiver.

I noticed there wasn't a way to teach it the on/off button; it only learned the digits and the enter button, which told me that it wouldn't be able to control the power on my satellite receiver. This was proven later when I scheduled a program to record. I ended up with a blank recording because I had left my satellite receiver off, and Beyond TV had no way to turn it on.

Figure 8 shows the main Beyond TV menu. Note the message on the bottom; it indicates that the ability to view program guide data will expire unless the "SE" edition is upgraded. There are two upgrade options, a $30 "lifetime" subscription to program listings, or a $50 upgrade to SnapStream's primary product, BeyondTV 4.

Figure 8: Beyond TV Main Menu

Figure 9 shows some of the recording settings that can be changed. In the SE version, only MPEG2 is supported, but premium editions support DivX and other formats that may require compression on the computer CPU instead of in a capture device. The padding field adds extra time to the start and end of recordings to compensate for programs that may not start or stop on time.

Figure 9: Record Options