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Originally Posted by Javiermi
I've seen some ot the specs for Beyond TV LInk, and to be honest I don't see any advantage!
Ok, you have the sleek BTV Gui, but as far as I can see ( I maybe dumb) you can do exactly the same through your web browser.
Why would somebody spend $40 just to see a nicer interface?, besides you will need to install the software on EVERY single PC you need to access the BTV Server.
Is there anything I'm missing?
Javier
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Javiermi,
There is one important point that I forgot to address. BTV 3.5 allows for the use/administration of multiple tuner cards. However, according to the documentation, all the cards used in a multiple tuner configuration must be hardware encoder tuner cards.
To use the streaming Live TV aspect of the Web Interface, you need a software encoder tuner card (thus only a single card can be used). Hardware encoder tuner cards encode in mpeg, so if you wish to stream live tv, BTV Link is the only option available.
Using multiple tuner cards was something that many of us really wanted, and I'm glad we finally have that option. I think that may be the biggest factor, for many, in getting BTV Link, as well as finally giving people with hardware encoder cards the option for streaming (BTV 3.4 and previous only streamed Live TV through the Web Admin, and was unavailable to them until BTV 3.5 and BTV Link. It just depends on how you've configured your system, and how you use it.
*Again (see below),
Software encoder cards (1 only) - streaming: Web Interface Live TV (WMV) or BTV Link (mpeg)
Hardware encoder cards (multiple) - streaming: BTV Link (mpeg) only
Mixing hardware and software encoder cards - not allowed (to my understanding)
*This apparently is tech support's official stance as of Ver 3.5.3; 4/15/2005. However, another user has reported to me that he/she has mixed, 1 software + 1 hardware successfully. I can only speculate on multiple software tuners and multiple hardware tuners in various combinations.