Downloaded the trial of Beyond TV 3 recently, as they now have TV listings for Canada. Was very impressed, but decided that until my VCRs die, I don’t really need it.
It installed without a hitch, got the listings downloaded no problem. Allows for defining recordings for all episodes, 1 episode or only new episodes of a show. Can also do remote recordings via their website. Didn’t test this out but appears you can tell their servers to record a program, and then can download it later to your machine.
Another nice feature that I didn’t test is setting a recording remotely. Supposedly you can use a web browser and define a recording on your machine. Of course you have to have your firewalls defined to allow the correct port communications through…
The software works very well, and is well defined. The online guide is easy to read on a tv. It allows for recording one show and watching another, or watching a show while it is being recorded (i.e. starting to watch a show that has already been recorded for some length of time, but from the beginning). The Multimedia Centre that comes with ATI cards doesn’t allow multi-tasking.
It remembers if you’ve started watching a show, so when you request to watch it again, it asks if you want to start where you left off or at the beginning.
Builtin commercial advance. After recording a show, it analyzes the material for commercial breaks and inserts indices. Then when you’re watching it you can skip to the next index mark when a commercial starts. Worked very well on the 6 shows I used as a test.
Two weaknesses at the moment. Currently, it only supports one tuner, so you can’t record more than 1 show at a time. Snapstream states this is a planned enhancement.
The other weakness is defining a custom recording period. I couldn’t find a way to do this, and it was very annoying. I like to watch Daily Planet on Discovery, but it’s on 3 times a day. My only options with Snapstream were to record all episodes (I don’t need to record 3 copies/day) or only new episodes. Unfortunately all episodes of Daily Planet are listed as repeats in Snapstreams guide, so none would be recorded.
Overall a very good product.