[cfaslave]

I totally agree that Beyond Media should be open sourced or shared sourced at least. Unfortunately it's been three-plus years of us asking for that from Snapstream and it appears they don't want to spend any money or resources towards doing that (legal costs, etc).

I used BM for a long time and it worked for my purposes, but really the only truly functional piece of it (without lots of third-party programs behind the scenes) was DVD Library. Once I figured out how to get that same functionality from alternatives I really haven't missed Beyond Media a bit.

I recommend XBMC or Meedio as good front-end alternatives to Beyond Media. Both have usable ways to work with BeyondTV. If you want a workable, integrated front-end with PVR, DVD-Library, Music, Photos etc then I recommend SageTV (with SageMC add-on) or GB-PVR. You've already mentioned your issues with the alternatives so I understand you've already decided to deal with the dead BM for now, but I thought I'd put in my 1 1/2 cents of opinion on the subject. I gave up on hoping for anything Beyond Media-related a LONG time ago and unfortunately gave up any hope on an integrated HTPC front-end from Snapstream over a year ago as well - anyone still hanging on a thread thinking Media-related functionality is coming from Snapstream any time soon hasn't been listening to Snapstream.

BeyondTV is a great product so if you're wanting to stick with it, I really encourage you to give XBMC and/or Meedio a second look. Both are great front-ends both with ways to "connect" to BTV. I recommend XBMC and SageTV as highest on the list because they have the most active users, the most user-development and the most frequent updates to their software - all of these are integral to the success of an HTPC software imo.