ShowAnalyzer change in pricing model and new version

[DaveW42]

It looks like ShowAnalyzer has released a new version and is also changing its pricing model. You can currently get it for $19.98 with lifetime upgrades. Soon it will cost $29.98 (free upgrades for the first year, $14.98 for upgrades each subsequent year).

Click here for more info. The author posted on 10/17 and said the old pricing is good for 5 days. However, he posted at 1:00am. SO ... to be safe I would suggest making any purchases by 10/21.

Credit goes to missingremote.com (I saw the article posted there).

I currently use ComSkip and have been pretty happy with it. However, I figured I would give ShowAnalyzer a shot and see how it compares (I have never used it before). Note that in a review earlier this year, Geektonic appeared to like ComSkip slightly better. Click here for that review.

Dave

[wrems]

I purchased SA a long time ago and have the key for my current version 0.9.7.290. Does this mean that I have lifetime upgrades of version 1.0 and beyond or do I have to hurry up and buy the latest and greatest in order to have lifetime upgrades????

[Ryokurin]

The way the site is reading is that as long as you purchase before 1.0 is released (which he's saying will be in 5 days) then you will be grandfathered. I too gave him a donation something like two or three years ago and I believe my key is unlimited. I have to go home to check to verify. Hope it truly is faster too.

[sleonard]

I am running the latest version and there was a significant speed increase. The last 5 one hour h.264 HD-PVR recordings took between 9 and 12 minutes to analyze. Most of my "South Park" episodes took between 2 and 7 minutes. Accuracy has been pretty good so far on the shows I've watched but not perfect.

A few of my recordings did give it a lot of trouble. "The Dark Knight" took 4 1/2 hours while "The Assasination of Jesse James" only took 20 minutes and both are 2 hours 45 minutes long. 2 episodes of South Park took more than an hour. I'm guessing there is something wrong in these recordings though. I'll find out when I watch them.

S

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by sleonard

I am running the latest version and there was a significant speed increase. The last 5 one hour h.264 HD-PVR recordings took between 9 and 12 minutes to analyze. Most of my "South Park" episodes took between 2 and 7 minutes. Accuracy has been pretty good so far on the shows I've watched but not perfect.

A few of my recordings did give it a lot of trouble. "The Dark Knight" took 4 1/2 hours while "The Assasination of Jesse James" only took 20 minutes and both are 2 hours 45 minutes long. 2 episodes of South Park took more than an hour. I'm guessing there is something wrong in these recordings though. I'll find out when I watch them.

S

Any improvement on "live" analyzing HD-PVR files? The version I'm using, 1.032.718 (or something like that) gags on just about every HD-PVR file when trying to analyze as the file is recording. So much so that the built in process kill for stalled processes doesn't kick in and I'd have to kill them via task manager.
However if I wait to analyze the files until they are done then stalls are MUCH less frequent, and I have to manually kill processes only on rare occasions.
Just curious if that had been addressed in the latest version?

[sleonard]

I had a ton of unanalyzed recordings when I installed it. It finished with those late last night after all my scheduled recordings were over. Tonight when I get home I'll be able to test live scanning.

S

[Ryokurin]

Yes it is a lot faster! It may be due to some of the files being partially done due to the last version hanging overnight but it finished one hour long show in 15 minutes, and another in just under 5! Before it would take 90 minutes to do a hour show. The only thing that was relatively quick were 30 minute shows.

And yes, your key should tell you when or if it expires. I purchased it in 06 and I'm still covered.

[toricred]

Several people have been getting it to work live. I did for a while and then something happened and it would no longer work live. I'm troubleshooting now, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with some of the settings I changed trying to optimize the built-in Directory Watcher.

[DaveW42]

If it can analyze shows substantially faster, then it should help lower the power bill (at least a little bit). I can't wait for the day when this type of program works so well that you can use it in conjunction with another program (e.g., VideoRedo) to delete the commercials, freeing up hard drive space. I will be installing my copy of SA in a few days (I am waiting to do a clean install of Windows 7, once it ships).

[toricred]

I fixed my problem and it was a configuration change I'd made. It is now working fine on live recordings.

[Humanzee]

For those of you who bought a previous version, you can retrieve your 1.0 + version key from http://www.dragonglobal.biz/retrieve_key.html

[Taddeusz]

My problem with the new ShowAnalyzer is that it is nowhere near accurate enough for me. I have 0.9.7 highly tweaked. The only way I was able to do that is through School House. 1.0 doesn't yet have School House or any other kind of analogue. I've been told that some kind of School House is going to eventually appear in 1.0

I don't like playing the guessing game when tuning. Takes too much time to test each setting and process over and over again till I get it right. School House is nice in that it shows real-time results of the changes that settings make.

Don't get me wrong, I like the speed of the new ShowAnalyzer. I just don't like how it's being released final as an incomplete product compared to the previous version.

[sleonard]

I've had a chance to test it on live recordings and the results are mixed. It did successfully process several live recordings but it also got stuck on a few as well. When it would get stuck it required me to kill the process in task manager. I just had to kill one from a show that started recording last night.

The pause and kill functions inside Showanalyzer do not seem to function at all. Task Manager is the only choice.

Also, I can't find any setting that would prevent SA from processing a show until it has finished recording. As soon as a show starts recording it is added to the queue.

S

p.s. it does still need some accuracy tuning but it's still beta code and overall a whole lot better than this time a year ago.

[Bikeman]

While speed is always good, I'm still having major issues with endless processing of files.

Just killed a task running for 11:12 and have 2 others that don't look good, one @ 2:47, for an hour show and 1:41 for a half-hour show. After killing the first task, a half hour show just processed in ~9 minutes

Delay is set to 60.

Running .733 on .ts files only, 097 for .mpg files on Vista 32 bit, Quad core with 3 gig RAM