Wednesday, February 15, 2006
SnapStream Media's Beyond TV 4
Posted by Tim Adams in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM
On The Go
Expanding the capabilities of Beyond TV 4 even further, you can even manage recordings remotely from SnapStream's free SnapStream.net service (Figure 31).
Figure 31: Manage your recordings remotely.
Simply log into your account from a web browser, find the show you want to record (Figure 31), and with a couple of clicks, the information is ready for your Beyond TV 4 unit to pick up (Figure 32). Apparently this process happens every fifteen minutes, but you can manually tell BTV to look for updates. Quick, easy and simple. Neither of my DirecTV units have this capability.
Figure 31: Show information is given within the SnapStream.net account in addition to being able to remotely add recordings.
Figure 32: Pending jobs are easy to add and view.
Not at your computer? Log in via your web enabled cell phone (Figure 33)!
Figure 33: You can even manage your recordings from a cell phone.
Conclusions
Unless I could convince my wife to add yet another computer to the household, I may be hard pressed to have Beyond TV 4 take over the DirecTV Tivo spot. Not to say that it doesn't outdo Tivo's offerings in many ways. Compared to the newest DirecTV PVRs, Beyond TV 4 is the easy winner in all respects. A fantastic, easy to use, and not to mention stable, method to get all those tasty broadcasts in your home. Now, if you excuse me, I have some Good Eats to watch.
Tim Adams currently hails from the Pacific Northwest (specifically Oregon), and is the I.S. Director for a group of radiologists. Tim also is an avid musician (samples can be listened/downloaded from ACIDplanet).
