Any comments on new Beyond TV 3.5?

[shhas]

SnapStream now has new version of their software Beyond TV 3.5 out.

Has anyone yet tried this out and any comment on head to head comparison of this new version versus Sage 2.x?

[mlbdude]

I have it and have been beta testing it for awhile. It is probably the best version of BTV yet. Unfortunately it still has some holes in the PVR area. It added a bunch of big items like multi-tuner and network clients but still has work to go on general PVR items.

A couple of examples:

The timeshifting functions are so basic it is almost useless. I find myself having to record everything before I watch it. Even going to the main menu will cause the timeshifting to stop. Also, you can't decide to record or keep a show after it has started.

Recordings are locked into a single channel. So if you want all episodes of Stargate, you need to add a couple of recording requests to get them all.

Price wise I think they are really screwing up. They are charging $40 for the clients. That is $10 more than Sage and it does not even include any of the media center features that Sage has. Also, you have to pay for each tuner after the second. I believe it is $19.99 for each additional tuner but not sure.

Other than those items though it seems to be a pretty solid product. Lots of users are complaining about the prices and as customary with BTV lots of users are having issues with the initial release. I think with the 3.5.1 release though it should be ready to go.

I think between BTV and the new MCE05 Sage finally has some competition going. It still holds the edge, but not by a wide margin any longer. Lets see what they come up with now .

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

I believe it is $19.99 for each additional tuner but not sure.

Holy #$#%, that's like having to buy a copy of SageRecorder for each extra tuner. And if you do the SR thing with Sage, you can have the tuner in another PC.

Just curious, can you use different lineups for each tuner, or is it stupid like MCE?

[mlbdude]

I only have it installed on my bedroom HTPC with one tuner, but from what I have seen/heard it does support multiple lineups.

I have a feeling that they will drop the price on some of these items judging by the negative feedback they have in their forums. Then again, they may not .

[meekell]

I switched to Sage from beyondtv 3.4, so the 3.5 update was free for me. I installed 3.5 and set it up. I can't bother to use it as the interface is awful to look at. Another substantial difference between the two is that beyondtv buffers the video for timeshifting by a static amount of memory. This means that if you don't dedicate enough memory to your buffer, you may not be able to timeshift through the whole show. I like the way sage buffers the whole show you're watching.
________
Prilosec lawsuit settlements

[salsbst]

beyondtv buffers the video for timeshifting by a static amount of memory. This means that if you don't dedicate enough memory to your buffer, you may not be able to timeshift through the whole show.

Trouble in river city!

[Brett]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Price wise I think they are really screwing up.

I'll actually agree with that. I think they are reconsidering it, but who knows.

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Also, you have to pay for each tuner after the second. I believe it is $19.99 for each additional tuner but not sure.

Originally, I was against this as well, but actually its a great marketing technique. New users will be "encouraged" to purchase their additional tuners from the Snapstream store because they include free tuner licensees.

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Lots of users are complaining about the prices and as customary with BTV lots of users are having issues with the initial release.

I don't know if I would agree here. The only issues folks are having with BTV is a small minority complaining about the new webadmin and the price. The webadmin was something that had to be done though. And the price, well they have been providing free upgrades for BTV/PVS for SEVERAL years now. They put a LOT of effort to assure the upgrade would be as hassle-free as possible.

Unfortunately, I can't really talk much about the future and what it holds. Stupid NDAs

I agree its going to be interesting though, with MCE going whitebox OEM. Priced at $125 including operating system its going to make it a tough sale for either company.

-Brett

[kny3twalker]

Originally, I was against this as well, but actually its a great marketing technique. New users will be "encouraged" to purchase their additional tuners from the Snapstream store because they include free tuner licensees.

but Brett
is that not only with the Roslyn which is kind of a flakey card to begin with
would it even work correctly as a third tuner considering all the problems Sage users had with two of them

hopefully they can/will switch this to the pvr 150
then it can be the BTV PVR 150

hehe

[Brett]

No, its a free licensee with any of the tuners, PVR250 Retail & PVRUSB2 included.

Eitherway, they are obviously aware and excited about both the PVR150 and the PVR500 .

-Brett

[kny3twalker]

oh I may have missed it or got to the website before they finished updating last night
but thats nice to know

[Brett]

No biggie. They actually didn't have all of them up until some time this afternoon. Like I said, I don't neccessarily agree with the idea, but its a pretty smart marketing move in my book.

-Brett

[Watter]

Here's an opinion from someone who's been a long time SageTV user but never tried (for more than a few minutes) BeyondTV. I've been more than a little frustrated with SageTV lately so I decided to give this BeyondTV 3.5 release a serious shot.

I'm comparing the 3.5 release against SageTV with MLBDude 2 skin.

Here are some points:

• Web Admin - I like the Web Adminstration interface. You can do just about everything witht he system via your browser. This is awesome.
• Settings - The settings are much more organized, comprehensive, usable than Sage's.
• Customization - Even without Studio, SageTV appears to be more customizable. Of course, this just may be my inexperience with BTV.
• Recordings Menus - I am definitely NOT a fan of SageTV's recordings lists. SagetTV has the right idea, but the implementation is buggy as heck. BTV's are pretty bug free, but they're also not great. Moving back and forth up and down the hierarchy involves selecting from menus and <left> and <right> commands don't so anything.
• FF, RW - BTV is closer to Tivo (what I consider to be the epitome of FF/RW behavior) but it's still not perfect. I realize it's always just personal preference, but I've never been a fan of SageTV's behavior int his area
• Stability - SageTV occassionaly crashes on me when I'm performaing a FF or RW. BTV has crashed on me several times when starting up playback of a video. Sheesh...
• Recording Quality - SageTV allows you to create custom recording qualities by editing the sage.proerties file. Of course the format for these settings is some ancient arcane druid language so it's not something a normal user can do. BTV allows you to modify the atrributes of it's built in qualities. There are quite a few settings you can change (including Variable Bit Rate). I'm not sure how the two really compare.
• Response times - Navigating BTV's UI is snappy and works, for the most part, pretty well. The only issue is the pause whenever it's starting video playback. It's not terrible, but still a little annoying.
• Commercial Skip - It's nice that this is integrated into the whole. It seems to work "ok", but not great.

Overall, I don't think it's too bad at all. Things seem a bit more professional than SageTV, but Sage seems a little more advanced; that doesn't seem like the right word, but Sage is a little more something, anyway. I'll tell you this though, I haven't tried the MeadMVP integration yet, but if that works well, then it may be one of the deciding factors.

I'm going to give it a week or two. Honestly, I'm waiting for Meedio to release its TV component before making my final decision on whether or not to stay with Sage.

-Watter

[mlbdude]

Recordings Menus - I am definitely NOT a fan of SageTV's recordings lists. SagetTV has the right idea, but the implementation is buggy as heck. BTV's are pretty bug free, but they're also not great.

Can you expand on that? That is one area where I think Sage is way ahead. Better and more grouping/sorting options. But I have never seen any bugs that I am aware of. Can you mention what you are experiencing?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Watter

Settings - The settings are much more organized, comprehensive, usable than Sage's.

Could you explain this too? I've always liked Sage's organization.

Oh and is the web admin an option yet or is it still the only way to stuff?

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Could you explain this too? I've always liked Sage's organization.

Oh and is the web admin an option yet or is it still the only way to stuff?

Not everything is in the FSUI yet so you still have to go to the webadmin to manage some items. Webadmin is nice, but it should be a completely optional thing.

I actually can't stand going to a web page to configure my PVR, but some users that don't use the system as a Tivo like system love it.

[stanger89]

My sentiments exactly, I always hated having to open a web page to change settings.

[GaryK]

I used to use Beyond 3.4, uninstalled it for SageTV. Tried BeyondTV 3.5, and after spending about 3 hours trying to get this Still beta product to work, I removed it and went back to SageTV.

Beyond 3.5 is the biggest piece of cr*p I have seen! Hell at lease with Microsoft you know your screwed till Service Pack 2 is released. According to the message forum at Snap, there spending more time covering up problems then fixxing them. Going from Beyond 3.4 to 3.5 (A minor revision) you think they would fix the bugs they already have and maybe introduce one or two new things, instead the screwed EVERYTHING up by packing a ton of features, and not even bother fixing the bugs the Beta testers logged.

Screw SnapStream, SageTV is still the best product out there, I have tried them all! Of corse, releasing Studio would be A really nice bonus for us loyal users!

Just my 2 cents....

[Watter]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Not everything is in the FSUI yet so you still have to go to the webadmin to manage some items. Webadmin is nice, but it should be a completely optional thing.

I actually can't stand going to a web page to configure my PVR, but some users that don't use the system as a Tivo like system love it.

I use my HTPC purely as a set top box and not a PC and I still love this option. A PC based PVR is a sophisticated system. There are many things invoved in managing it that are so much easier to do with a mouse and keyboard as opposed to a remote. As long as the on-screen UI lets you do allof the major things, and I think BTV does, then allowing for more sophisticated management via a HTTP interface is fine by me.

A good example: Every time I reinstall SageTV (which has happened all too oftent his past few months as I switch out hardware tryign to get the system stable) I have to go through the process of specifying which channels in my Sat TV lineup I actuallh have subscribed to or care to have in my EPG. Doing this through BTV's web interface was much easier than on screen witha remote.

-Watter

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by Watter

I use my HTPC purely as a set top box and not a PC and I still love this option.

If it were an option I'd agree with you, but to require the user to use the web interface, I hate. That was probably my favorite upgrade from Sage 1.4 to 2.0, you no longer had to drop out of the UI to change things.

A good example: Every time I reinstall SageTV...I have to go through the process of specifying which channels in my Sat TV lineup I actuallh have subscribed to or care to have in my EPG.

If you save your sage.properties file, all you have to do is install Sage, throw the properties file in the SageTV dir and go, all your settings are restored/remembered

[Watter]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Can you expand on that? That is one area where I think Sage is way ahead. Better and more grouping/sorting options. But I have never seen any bugs that I am aware of. Can you mention what you are experiencing?

There are quite a few little things that drive me nuts in this area, but I'll just mentioned a few. It should be noted that I use the two pane view:

1. Returning to the Menu - I'm constantly on the verge of pulling my hair out when I perform an action with a recording and then return to the list only to find myself in a completely different part of the list. Of course, as I'm typing this I'm trying to recreate the behavior in order to provide a more specific example, and I'm unable to do so. Heh.
2. Sorting - This ties in to one my biggest complaints with SageTV (I'll explain below), but the only sorting option which gets "watched" shows out of my way is "Intelligent" but as far as I can tell. there's absolutely nothing intelligent about it. I have no idea what criteria it's using to sort the shows in this mode, but it's never in the order that I would actually want to watch them.
3. Page Up/Down - This is well know bug. You can't page up/down in the list of recordings (at least the two-pane list) without screwing everything up.

I mentioned by “biggest complaint” above, and that complaint is with “watched” items. I waste way, WAYYYY too much time either manually deleting watched items or attempting to dig past them to get to items I actually want to see. I honestly do not understand why there can’t be a simple setting which has a yes/no property. If set to yes, then when you leave a recording and return to the ui and you have watched 90% or more of it, SageTV asks you if you want to delete it (I know I’ve used Tivo as an example before, but here it is again) the way the Tivo does.

This has nothing to do with disk space. I let SageTV manage that and it does a great job. This is purely an issue of having to wade through hundreds of gigabytes of “watched” shows that have no business still cluttering up my lists.

Could you explain this too? I've always liked Sage's organization.

Oh and is the web admin an option yet or is it still the only way to stuff?

I have always considered SageTV’s settings to need a little work. A couple of examples:

• Organization – I know you guys who change these settings all the time or who have written STVs know the configuration menus by heart, but for me, whenever I need to change something, I still have to hunt around to find it. Is it in the “Multimedia” section or the “Video” section, or wait… maybe “Advanced”?
• Advanced Options – many of the advanced settings are in the .properties files. For instance, the recording quality settings that mentioned in a previous post. To modify these in SageTV, you have to 1) do it in a properties file, and 2) know what the heck the entries in the property file are supposed to mean.
• There are a number of menu items that don't make any sense like "DXVA MPEG Mode". After personally asking and seeing others ask I've never once seen an answer as to what this setting does. Ther are others which do have a meaning but not one that is immediately clear or one that someone can lookup in a help file to figure out like "Overlay Color Keying" or "Video Orbiting Duration". BTV has little blurbs of text appear at the bottom of the screen which display a description of whatever option you currently have selected. It goes back to the "professional appearance" thing.

Almost all of my concerns with SageTV (aside from stability) boil down to “User Interaction”. I know it may not be financially possible, but Frey could do far worse than to contract with a group which has expertise in UI design.

Finally, it should be noted that you guys asked me what I didn’t like so this post came off as hugely negative. I really do like SageTV. If not for the instability problem I’ve had over the last few months, I wouldn’t have even have bothered trying out BTV. I’ve criticized SageTV a lot over the years, but the fact is I still use it and I still try to persuade my friends and acquaintances to do so as well.

-Watter