I don't watch a lot of TV. I just don't have time. So when I do watch TV I want to watch the things I want to watch and not just whatever is on. For that reason, I've been an advocate of PVRs (Personal Video Recorders).  2 years ago, I bought a software PVR called Snapstream. It was a good start but fairly primitive at the time. So I went and got a Tivo and have been quite happy with it since then.

But Snapstream has made steady progress on their PVR and rebranded it "Beyond TV". Version 3.4 is out and it works pretty well (though some people, including myself, have run into stuttering problems on playback). The new version takes aim at Tivo and other PVRs and has a ton of features that make it pretty compelling. Here are some screenshots of its interface. Remember, this is a program you just install to your Windows PC and it can run as a full screen application (or windowed if you prefer).

Their main interface.

When you buy the program, you get a .NET account with their web service which provides FREE listings from the net. It works quite well, better than Tivo in this area.

Finding a program is a matter of typing in the name. This is one area that is not as nice as Tivo's. This is the only way to find a program. I can't, for instance, simply look for "History" and have shows dealing with that subject matter show up. One feature that wouldn't be hard for them to do that neither have would be to have a channel spotlight. Each channel realistically only has so many shows coming on in a given week.  I would love to be able to click "Discovery Channel" and it would list what shows are coming on that week and then get season passes to them (both Tivo and Beyond TV support season passes -- get all the episodes as they come on).

This interface shows up when you first go to a channel but smoothly slides away as you watch the show. Very slick.

See the yellow areas? Beyond TV can detect whether something is a commercial and will highlight it allowing you to quickly skip over those areas if you choose.

One complaint by PC users has been that sure, you can do this on your PC but who wants to watch TV on their computer? But that's the thing that's cool about Beyond TV, you can get a remote control and control it like you would a TV. Its new full screen interface works fine on most standard TVs. Just make sure your video card has TV out on it (most good new ones do) and you're all set to have your PC control a regular television.

The million dollar question is, how does it compare to at Tivo. The answer isn't straight forward because it has a few features missing such as the aforementioned program finding features. The other issue is that because they only provide the software, the hardware side can be problematic. Why, for instance, does 3.4 have jerky video on my brand new 3 Ghz Dell machine with a ATI 9800 Pro card in it? Some people have the problem others don't (btw, by the time you read this they'll probably have this fixed, they're aware of it and working on a fix). 

On the other hand, there are some killer features in Beyond TV that make it quite compelling to nerdlings such as me. I can, for instance, watch my recorded shows from remote. I.e. if I'm working late and it's recorded say The Simpsons, I can watch it from work as it streams the video to me from my home machine. Very slick.  I can also export my saved shows to a PocketPC to watch. Seriously, you can watch shows pretty decently on a PocketPC. So for those of you who travel quite a bit, this can be pretty handy. Store up a half dozen shows and watch them on the plane on your PocketPC or Laptop (since it saves the files as standard Windows files including .WMV files).

Beyond TV is $70 normally. The only hardware you need is something that will take video signal (like WinTV or something) and convert it to be on your PC.  I personally have a WinTV USB card. Pretty ghetto fabulous in setup, I just plug the cable into one end and the USB cable to the PC and off I go. Very easy to set up.

As a software developer, I have to really hand it to the Snapstream folks, they have an immense amount of polish. Their installer is possibly the best software installer I've ever encountered when it comes to trying to make things painless for the user. You can try out Beyond TV at Snapstream's site to see for yourself how you like it.

Right now I'd give it 3.5 stars out of 5. When the video playback issue is addressed it'll go up to 4 stars. I definitely recommend giving it a shot. I have it set up in our basement on a PC that's in front of our various exercise equipment. Nothing too fancy but makes the treadmill more bearable...