[opendtv] A Journey Beyond TV
- From: Jeroen Stessen <jeroen.stessen@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:10:56 +0200
Hello,
See:
http://www.denguru.com/2006/06/29/snapstream_beyond_tv_4_3/
At a Glance
Product
SnapStream Beyond TV (Version 4.3)
Summary
Digital PVR for WinXP or 2000 with extensive compression features, HD
support
and integrated commercial mark and skip
Pros
? Automatic integrated commercial detection and one touch commercial
skipping
? Automatic integrated compression tools with multiple formats and quality
settings
? Support for a wide variety of hardware
? Online remote management of recordings
? Simple and straightforward installation
? Help box to explain each menu item's function
? Great community support
Cons
? Full "media center" features require separate program (Beyond Media)
? Utilitarian interface could use a more polished look.
? Must use web-browser to access full feature set
(...)
Dvico HDTV Tuner
I used the Dvico FusionHDTV5 Lite (Figure 3) for this project. Dvico
offers a wide
variety of ATSC (High definition) TV Tuners. The FusionHDTV5 Lite is
capable of
capturing over the air high definition television signals by using a
fifth-generation
vestigial sideband tuner that receives the 8VSB modulation signal, which
is used to
broadcast free digital television to your standard over-the-air HD
antenna. (8VSB is
used in the United States and Canada.)
The FusionHDTV5 Lite uses a unique type of software decoding engine.
Unlike some of
the cheaper software-based SD (standard definition) tuner cards that
offload part of
their capture process to the CPU, the FusionHDTV5 Lite instead offloads a
portion of
its processing tasks to the host computer's graphics processor. Since the
graphics
card is mostly idle when you're not using it to play a game, it's a
perfect candidate
to assist the tuner to capture video without needlessly bogging down the
CPU.
(...)
I was definitely surprised to find that Snapstream is willing to risk
offering advanced
advertisement skipping in BTV. Advertisement-detection technology is a
controversial topic.
There is a lot of money to be lost by cable and broadcast companies if
advertisements are
easily skipped. A lawsuit involving another PVR program called Replay TV
got a lot of
attention a few years ago. Then, owners of Replay TV were sued for
offering a 30-second
skip option that was designed to skip whole commercials one at a time.
Although the
30-second skip feature is widely used now, most commercial media PC
software developers
seem unwilling to develop more advanced commercial skipping options such
as SmartSkip.
(...)
Conclusions
Snapstream's BTV is a top-notch product. It was easy to set up, configure
and use.
Since Snapstream chose to develop BTV as a PVR-only application, I can't
make an overall
comparison with other HTPC media programs. But I can compare PVR
functions, which I'll
do with Windows MCE and SageTV. If you want to skip the commentary, just
check out Table 2.
Table 2: PVR Function comparison with MCE and Sage TV
BTV MCE SageTV
Program Guide Ok Ok Uses color
coding
Search Ok Better than BTV
Better than BTV
Output File Format Multi-standard Proprietary Multi-standard
On-screen Help Yes No No
Home Menu Ok More
intuitive than BTV More confusing than BTV
Access to all functions Need Web interface Via main interface Via
main interface
(...)
Clearly the commercial-detection and file-compression tools are the
features that set BTV apart.
SmartSkip functions beautifully. While total removal of commercials would
be ideal, you have to
consider that SnapStream stuck their necks out far considering the legal
implications by adding
SmartSkip as it is. I found that I didn't mind the one-button commercial
block skipping. It's so
easy to use that it's almost as if the commercials are not there anyway.
StreamSnip is an interesting
approach to trimming down HD files without losing any quality. It allows
you to store a lot more
uncompressed HD content on your system, and StreamSnip serves as a nice
tool to get the HD
files ready for third-party editing and compression programs.
Enjoy, greetings,
-- Jeroen
+-------------------------------+------------------------------------------+
| From: Jeroen H. Stessen | E-mail: Jeroen.Stessen@xxxxxxxxxxx |
| Building: SFJ-5.22 Eindhoven | Deptmt.: Philips Applied Technologies |
| Phone: ++31.40.2732739 | Visiting & mail address: Glaslaan 2 |
| Mobile: ++31.6.44680021 | NL 5616 LW Eindhoven, the Netherlands |
| Skype: callto:jeroen.stessen | Website: http://www.apptech.philips.com/
|
+-------------------------------+------------------------------------------+
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