BeyondTV is better than Tivo or any "free" alternative
posted Monday, October 09, 2006 10:00:53 PM by Jeff
Filed under:
Computers, Gadgets
A friend of mine recently asked me to convince him not to buy a new Tivo unit. Despite my own experiences, it seemed like a difficult task at first. Let's face it, the Tivo experience is easy enough... you plug it in and it works. It works really well, in fact.
But this is a guy studying computer science in college, and I know he's fairly savvy, so I figured it was OK to pitch to him the wonders of Snapstream Media's BeyondTV. I've been using it for about two years, and I absolutely love it.
The idea is pretty simple: Create a digital video recorder with a simple interface that can utilize as much hardware as you're willing to throw at it. When I built mine, I spent almost $500 on a computer parts, including a 250 gig hard drive and an Athlon XP 2400+ (overclocked, of course). I also spent about $200 on a nice case that looked like a stereo component, but I wouldn't consider that a legit part of the expense. That $500 included the first analog tuner card, the software and Snapstream's remote control.
Since then, I bought the inexpensive version upgrade, as well as an HD broadcast tuner card bundle. The machine I built has no problem recording 24 off the air in HD while recording something on Discovery Channel from my DirecTV receiver.
The issue here for the geek who can handle all of the computer hardware is really a financial one. Yes, this box cost a little money up front. What I've saved in those two years is over $400 in subscription fees to Tivo. Snapstream handles the program guide for you. You can also login to their site and look at listings, and choose to record something from any Web browser anywhere. Your box will call in to see if you've ordered any remote recordings. Pretty cool. My infinitely flexible machine remains so without having to pay money to Tivo. People always seem to forget about that cost in the long run.
And like Tivo, once you've built your machine, BeyondTV just works. It has never failed to record anything in the two years I've been using it. If I was a serious dork, I could buy more tuners too, and the machine would handle them no problem. Of course, there isn't that much on TV worth watching, so I probably wouldn't do that.
People bring up the free open-source stuff as alternatives frequently enough, but those don't get you commercial-grade support, or steady development, or a wide range of hardware support. And for better or worse, many of them don't run on Windows either, and that's a roadblock for people like me that could care less about ever booting Linux.
If cheap hardware from two years ago can work as an HD DVR, imagine what you could do with today's stuff.
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