Beyond Media FAQ (pre-release) [Archive]

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rakeshagrawal

01-29-2004, 10:32 PM

DVD player:

Does it come with a codec that can play DVDs?

It's most likely that Beyond Media will require a pre-existing DVD decoder on your system. The reasoning behind this is that most every system that comes with a DVD drive also comes with a software DVD player (ie a Cyberlink, Intervideo, Sonic, etc). Accordingly, in most cases, we think people already have a DVD decoder. For people that don't have a DVD decoder, we will probably point them somewhere where they can buy one (for example, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/windowsxp/buypacks.aspx). There is also an outside chance that we will bundle a DVD decoder with Beyond Media, but we're leaning against it.

Music player

What media types does it support?

Beyond Media should handle a pretty wide range of music formats. The product isn't far enough along to say exactly what it will and will not support. If you have requests for us to support a specific format, let us know.

Album art?

Yes, we intend to support a number of models for album art -- including the "folder.jpg" model (which is used by Windows Media Player) as well as album art embedded in ID3 tags (which I believe is used by software like MusicMatch).

Ripping?

We are investigating this feature -- the first release of Beyond Media may support CD ripping from its full-screen interface.

Video player:

What will it be like?

The video player will feature a file browser similar to the one you see in the screenshots for the photos module. The actual player will be similar in its look and feel to the Beyond TV video player. It will handle playback of all the formats that Beyond TV supports right now (which is pretty much anything that Windows Player supports for playback on your particular box).

Integration with Beyond TV

Will Beyond Media integrate really well with Beyond TV? (fast loading, etc.)

YES. Part of the Beyond Media setup wizard will give you the option of automatically adding Beyond TV (if you have it installed) to the Beyond Media main menu. We are working on addressing the load time of Beyond TV so that jumping from one to the other is faster / easier.

General

Does Beyond Media allow the user to add or remove menu items?

Absolutely. There will be a very rich and simple system for building menus, views on the local file system (ie file browser with certain filters applied -- ie only view files with certain extensions, or certain type, etc.) and other things that will make Beyond Media everything you'll ever need in a 10-ft shell.

Will there be/is there a plug-in architecture to allow users to create modules that can be added?

Yes, as rkuo mentioned in a previous post: Beyond Media will feature a fully extensible framework. New screens and menu options can be added and Beyond Media can load custom modules/screens on startup or even dynamically compile new modules on startup. Modules are scripted/compiled using C# + .NET framework along with some classes provided by SnapStream.

Pricing?

We haven't finalized the pricing for Beyond Media.

Will there be a trial version?

Yes, there will be a trial version.

rakeshagrawal

01-29-2004, 10:33 PM

I broke this pre-release FAQ out of the other Beyond Media thread (here: http://209.151.81.67/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11908) to make it easier to find.

If you have any other questions, just post them here!

wetdagger

01-29-2004, 10:40 PM

How about a ETA of the new products.

Thanks,
wd

rakeshagrawal

01-29-2004, 10:43 PM

:) ETA is one that we're going to avoid answering until we're really close to release.

SHS

01-30-2004, 08:56 AM

rakeshagrawalherea better option to album art embedded in ID3 tags Mp3 Tag Tools (http://massid3lib.sourceforge.net/).

kamiller42

02-03-2004, 11:48 AM

Originally posted by rakeshagrawal
DVD player:

It's most likely that Beyond Media will require a pre-existing DVD decoder on your system.
Thank you, because I like my PowerDVD decoder w/ DD and DTS support. A lot of decoders don't even offer DTS. :-(

Music player

What media types does it support?

Beyond Media should handle a pretty wide range of music formats. ... If you have requests for us to support a specific format, let us know.
RealAudio and RealVideo version 10.

gimdo

02-06-2004, 04:37 PM

Will you be able to browse through all of the folders on your computer if you want and when you click on something it will open up the right program to play it or start the app you just selected?
EX: I browse through my D: drive to the folder Games and select the game I want to play and the game will start up and I'll be all happy playing and when I'm done playing I exit the game and go back to browsing my computer with Beyond Media and play some QuickTime Movie trailers.
If it's going to work something like that I'm sold.
Also will there be any web surfing capabilities that would also be great.

gblinckmann

02-07-2004, 11:47 AM

How about the ability to copy recorded BTV MPGs to DVD or VCD? That would be a great way to keep shows that you want to save. Doing this manually is a bit of a pain right now, and certainly not for novices. Making Beyond Media, BTV, and the Hauppague MVP work with a consistant user interface would be a much more powerful combination than Windows Media Center Edition!

Brett

02-07-2004, 11:50 AM

BeyondTV has the ability to have the a selection option be "Archive To CD/DVD" within the fullscreen interface already. To turn it on you have to go in the web interface and define a thirdparty application that is actually responsible for the burning part, if you search the forums for DVD, and filter out the ones that are the opposite (rip DVDs) you will see what I am talking about...

-Brett:p

gblinckmann

02-07-2004, 02:28 PM

I'd still like to see an easy-to-use interface for this. I did look at a lot of the threads. People are having even more problems with this than I am!

Brett

02-07-2004, 11:28 PM

...well thats probably why its not a documented feature :)

-Brett :p

grillcheese

02-16-2004, 11:37 AM

I think whats missing is an easier way to edit out commercials. I know its been discussed time after time...but really it would help.

Sure I can load up <not putting name cause program sucks> but I'd think it would make sense, to have BTV have a built in mpg editor that just takes the commercial breaks one step forward by actually applying them to the video. While they aren't always right on, they are close. What you could do then, is have a way to manually adjust the Time In/Out of the commercial breaks, then apply it, then it would provide you with a show without commercials. Right now, using the Archive feature to burn a show to cd/dvd would still have the commercials...and the point of that would be?

There has to be an easier way to edit mpgs, without a 3rd party app's (that dont work) Spending $extra money$$ for utilities that do this seems a little unfair since IMO it should be apart of the BTV App. Theres too many programs out there that do it that Snapstream could license from...or learn from to create their own.

This has been my biggest issue. Currently I have to copy my show over my .b network (for-ev-er) to my desktop pc, edit out commercials, then copy back over to my mediapc (cause it has the dvd burner), then I burn it with about a 60% success rate (due to the authoring software I use).

Is it really that big of a deal to include a stripped down simple editing tool? Im not talking about recreating Adobe Premiere, just something that can do simple mpg edits. Surely if some programmer with some free time out there can do it you guys can do it as well (with a better gui too).

Thanks

Brett

02-16-2004, 12:05 PM

Originally posted by grillcheese
I think whats missing is an easier way to edit out commercials.I am like 99.7% sure this will never happen. Its just too risky, and the guys at SS realize this fact. Cutting the commericals automatically has been proven by Television Stations as infringing on copyrights (as your modifiying the original aired show). Now ofcourse SS would enjoy having the feature, and it would be easy to implement, or atleast autoskipping would be, but I just do not see it happening.

There is a program on here called CutAds I am not sure if that is what your talking about that I think scripts and cuts the files automatically.

-Brett :p

grillcheese

02-16-2004, 12:09 PM

Im not suggesting that they 'automatically' cut commercials. Just include a simple to use, integrated mpeg editor...which could use the smartchapter info.

If the user does the editing I think that releases SS from all copyright infringement.

gblinckmann

02-16-2004, 02:07 PM

Even without the commercial editing, it would still be useful to have the archive feature.

Just burning it to a DVD would allow you to save shows that you want to keep for a long time. This is no more or less functional than a VCR, so networks shouldn't have any problems with it. I'd be real happy to see that in 3.5 and wait until 3.6 or later for some simple editing.

grillcheese

02-16-2004, 02:08 PM

There already is an archive feature.

gblinckmann

02-16-2004, 05:39 PM

There's not really an archive feature currently. That's just a button that calls a command line.

If that's an archive feature, would you buy a car with a stereo system that consists of just wires going to a hole in the dash? I'll bet that you would claim that the car had no stereo and that it wasn't a feature if you had to buy it separately and install it yourself.

So, again, I would like to see an archive feature in 3.5. Not just the ability to add my own achive feature.

Brett

02-16-2004, 05:58 PM

Originally posted by gblinckmann
So, again, I would like to see an archive feature in 3.5. Not just the ability to add my own achive feature. Hehehe, not quite sure what this has to do with Beyond Media anymore, but a "archive" feature where the burning is done within SS is not going to happen for 3.5, I could pratically promise that. My strict suspision is that a complete burning solution will be a feature one day, but probably will miss the 3.x cut. And no if my car came with the wires but not a stereo you call it "prewired" not nonexistant. And in the same sense bTV is "prewired" for archiving.

-Brett :p

Cayars

02-16-2004, 06:41 PM

Actually if you have Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator installed on your computer then BTV will fire this up and use it to archive.

So it's more then "hard wired" as the logic actually does use other software that is on your computer to actually write the information to your Discs.

Carlo

Brett

02-16-2004, 06:58 PM

I think the complaint was that the BTV itself does not do the burning, so for those that do not already own Roxio it would only be "prewired", I think, as it is setup to archive, but not completely there. Then again, I am never good with metaphors so maybe I am wrong.

-Brett :p

Cayars

02-16-2004, 10:02 PM

Actually it's a pretty good metaphor. I just wanted to point out that you don't have to use the "command line" and that if you have Roxio already installed it does some of the work for you. Some being the key word.

Carlo

Glyndwr

02-21-2004, 09:22 AM

Is there a beta program or Beyond Media, and if so how does one join ?

I signed into the betaprogram page but I could not see any information there

Brett

02-21-2004, 09:34 AM

The current beta program is a closed beta to some longtime beta testers. Its not quite ready for a public beta test yet. I seem to recall that this will happen eventually, but do not hold me to that.

The betaprogram that you signed up for was for BeyondTV though.

-Brett :p

Wuukie

03-03-2004, 03:42 PM

I've read through the threads in the FAQ/Forum and haven't seen one feature that's on MS MCE and ATI 9600 Pro MMC, but not in the forthcoming BM and that's the ability to receive broadcast FM radio signals. Both MCE and MMC 9600Pro allow you "timeshift" the radio broadcast but only MMC allow you to schedule a time to record the broadcast like a PVR. Not having this feature is not a deal breaker but it would be nice to have since BM is pegging itself as the all inclusive media center of the future.

By the way, other companies are trying to get into the timeshifting of radio too besides the ones I've mentioned. Griffin Technology (http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/radioshark/) is one such company but the product has been "coming soon" for the last year and have nothing really to show for it.

dequire

03-04-2004, 08:40 PM

Originally posted by Wuukie
I've read through the threads in the FAQ/Forum and haven't seen one feature that's on MS MCE and ATI 9600 Pro MMC, but not in the forthcoming BM and that's the ability to receive broadcast FM radio signals. Both MCE and MMC 9600Pro allow you "timeshift" the radio broadcast but only MMC allow you to schedule a time to record the broadcast like a PVR. Not having this feature is not a deal breaker but it would be nice to have since BM is pegging itself as the all inclusive media center of the future.

www.radio-replay.com

Works awesome. Listening to Bill O'Reilly from 1:00 today (It's 10:30 PM now ;)

dequire

03-04-2004, 08:42 PM

Originally posted by dequire

www.radio-replay.com

Works awesome. Listening to Bill O'Reilly from 1:00 today (It's 10:30 PM now ;)

DUH...Ummm... it's www.replay-radio.com. Sorry :eek:

Eric3a

03-04-2004, 09:33 PM

Cool software.
Might have to put my TV/radio card back in (was thinking of waiting for 3.5) and give it a try.

I think worst case scenario if Beyond Media doesn't support radio direct at some point in the future, you will still be able to use it as a front-end for Radio Player.
Eric

Wuukie

03-05-2004, 06:31 AM

Thanks for the heads up dequire :)

jfroebe

03-09-2004, 11:48 AM

For the music player... I hope that it is able to integrate with iTunes and can play mp3, ogg, and AAC (iTunes).

===========
New Music Sharing feature
iTunes 4 has a Music Sharing feature that uses Rendezvous to give you remote streaming access to your personal music library from any room in your house. Let’s say, for instance, that you have thousands of AAC and MP3 music files stored on a Mac or Windows computer in your home office. The iTunes software works so smoothly on both platforms that you can share music with any combination of Macs and Windows PCs on a local area network — regardless of whether you’re running iTunes off a Mac or PC. And you won’t have to manually configure anything, either.
===========

jfroebe

03-09-2004, 11:54 AM

What I'm interested in besides the list you already gave us is Weather, Web Browser, Game (Mame?), etc.

The Weather module from MythTV is actualy VERY handy

MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures)

AceOfAces

03-11-2004, 10:52 PM

I am very interested in this but the main kicker would be MAME support.

Jiffylush

03-12-2004, 10:24 AM

Back to the Audio formats,

Will it support APE? Specifically Ape's & cue's.

What is APE? A lossless compression for digital audio

http://www.monkeysaudio.com (http://www.monkeysaudio.com/)

portal45

03-14-2004, 10:43 PM

Originally posted by jfroebe
What I'm interested in besides the list you already gave us is Weather, Web Browser, Game (Mame?), etc.

The Weather module from MythTV is actualy VERY handy

MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures)

I second this! What can you tell us about current (or future) developement to include such features as Web, Weather, Games, etc.....????? :confused: :confused: :confused:

dequire

03-18-2004, 06:27 AM

Originally posted by Wuukie
Thanks for the heads up dequire :)

No problem :cool:

dequire

03-18-2004, 06:34 AM

Originally posted by jfroebe
What I'm interested in besides the list you already gave us is Weather, Web Browser, Game (Mame?), etc.

The Weather module from MythTV is actualy VERY handy

MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures)

MythTV totally rocks! I was running Knoppmyth, a Debian all-in-one CD Myth distro. I loved it - BUT, I have a via chipset MB that Linux just doesn't like which causes mucho headaches. Unfortunately, the product still needs a few more versions to become a trully viable open-source solution like, say, OpenOffice, which rocks as well (as an aside, I can't beleive that more people don't use OpenOffice considering it runs XP and is FREE!!!!).

In the end, I scrapped Linux for now and that's when I found out about BeyondTV 3. So far, I love it. I am just waiting for word on when we might see BeyondMedia. I mean, it's been 10 weeks since the announcement! I am ready...bring it on :)

mgleason007

03-26-2004, 05:06 AM

Originally posted by Jiffylush
Back to the Audio formats,

Will it support APE? Specifically Ape's & cue's.

What is APE? A lossless compression for digital audio

http://www.monkeysaudio.com (http://www.monkeysaudio.com/)

FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net)!!

nmirza

04-04-2004, 02:33 PM

I currently have BeyondTV running on a dedicated PVR. I also have a dedicated Home Theater system. On the theater, I'm using myHTPC, but I would be interested in BeyondMedia. However, I need a TV module that will allow me to watch TV in realtime, and allow me to switch to the Svideo input easily (i.e. something I can map with Girder). The Xbox doesn't work to well unless you are watching in realtime ;-).

Will BeyondMedia be a good solution for me?

nmirza

04-12-2004, 06:37 PM

Anyone??

rakeshagrawal

04-12-2004, 06:53 PM

Beyond Media should work for you, though I don't specifically understand how you are using Girder to automate selection of your S-Video input. Would you describe this in some more detail? Then someone can reply to you about whether it's something you'll be able to do with Beyond Media.

nmirza

04-14-2004, 11:30 AM

Yeah, in hindsight, I guess I didn't word that too well. I just want to make sure that I can hit a button on my remote control to switch to the S-Video input. Not too worried about the Girder stuff, I'll figure that out later...

Soooo... How soon is soon :-)

richt

04-19-2004, 01:28 PM

Does SnapStream have a general ETA for the Beyond Media release? Not looking for a specific date, by a general timeline. Will it be next month, next quarter, etc.?

richt

04-26-2004, 09:41 PM

Since no one has replied to my inquiry, how about some wild, unfounded speculation?
Is Beyond Media dying a slow death? There is no forum for it in the re-organized forums, so release MUST be quite a ways off in the timeline!! Maybe Meedio will even beat it to market.

rakeshagrawal

04-26-2004, 09:49 PM

Beyond Media is not dying any kind of death. :) We're just not in a position to put the release on a timeline... yet. Actually, maybe it would be a good idea to create a product forum for Beyond Media so people have a place to discuss it, make feature requests, etc.

ScAtMaN

04-27-2004, 11:36 AM

Actually, maybe it would be a good idea to create a product forum for Beyond Media so people have a place to discuss it, make feature requests, etc.

Very Much agreed. :)

Rich A

05-22-2004, 04:44 PM

Came across this thread searching for a related problem (radio recording). I see mention of the Radio-Replay (or was that the other way around?) Anyway, I think that this is a WEB BASED radio station recorder. It works with streaming radio content off the WEB .. and not from a real time radio TUNER.

Can someone confirm that?

What got me here was a quest for a time-shifting recorder that would work with the PVR-350 card's radio.

Last night I tried two, one of which seemed to trash my BTV. (ended up re-installing it which kinda bummed me out as I'm always bragging that my BTV appliance has been running 24/7 for nearly a year. Guess that record is broke now .. :)

I look forward to the first release of the new multi-media software. It's gong to be nice to integrate it with my BTV to provide the "whole" multimedia experience.

berg

05-22-2004, 06:06 PM

I see mention of the Radio-Replay (or was that the other way around?) Anyway, I think that this is a WEB BASED radio station recorder. It works with streaming radio content off the WEB .. and not from a real time radio TUNER.

Your understanding is correct - Replay Radio is only a web streaming content recorder in addition to recording from a line in or something like that.

I have been using Replay for some time and I really like it. It work really well. They advertise it as a Web radio TiVo and it works pretty much like that.

I don't have a PVR 250 with tuner (mine is sans tuner) but it would be interesting to see if Replay could record from it. It would certainly not be able to tune the card.

Anyhow, they have a free trial you could try. http://www.replay-radio.com/download.php

I have suggested to them in the past to have a Web interface to allow programing from a Web page. They thought it would be a good idea but I have yet to see it ... I would be interesting to integrate it to Beyond Media.

berg

05-22-2004, 06:11 PM

Oh, yeah ....

I don't recall where I heard about another such application - iRadio - it might even be in this forum ... but it seems like another good application in the same category as Replay Radio.

I haven't had time to play with it yet, but want to give it a go for a bit.

http://www.3alab.com/iradio.shtml

Rich A

05-23-2004, 07:20 AM

Your understanding is correct - Replay Radio is only a web streaming content recorder in addition to recording from a line in or something like that.

I have been using Replay for some time and I really like it. It work really well. They advertise it as a Web radio TiVo and it works pretty much like that.

I don't have a PVR 250 with tuner (mine is sans tuner) but it would be interesting to see if Replay could record from it. It would certainly not be able to tune the card.

Anyhow, they have a free trial you could try. http://www.replay-radio.com/download.php

I have suggested to them in the past to have a Web interface to allow programing from a Web page. They thought it would be a good idea but I have yet to see it ... I would be interesting to integrate it to Beyond Media.

Thanks .. I've been dismissing those Internet radio recorders because I wanted to use the PVR-350's built in radio. But I checked out the Replay-Radio web site, and they have most of the shows listed as available over the web (that I'm interested in) So I downloaded the trial. Works fine here. But I have a couple questions for you (since you've been using it for a while)

Is it possible for it to do it's recording as a minimized application or "in the background". I see only two options, both of which start the recording session by opening a window. This would cause problems with my BTV full screen display and also increase CPU use (to manage the additional display)

My other question is in regard to the setup and it's install of custom audio drivers. How does this impact the BTV operation? I guess to sum it up, I could ask, "Does the install of this program affect the BTV operation in any way?"

I've installed it on one of my other computers (without BTV) for testing, as I don't want to cause any problems with my HTPC) At least not until I'm pretty sure it won't create problems. And so far I believe it will do the job for me. But it needs to be transparent to the BTV environment.

Thanks ...

berg

05-23-2004, 07:34 AM

Is it possible for it to do it's recording as a minimized application or "in the background". I see only two options, both of which start the recording session by opening a window. This would cause problems with my BTV full screen display and also increase CPU use (to manage the additional display)

I won't be much help, but here it goes -

I don't believe so. I have never found a way to do so, but it was never a priority for me, and you will understand why in a second.

My other question is in regard to the setup and it's install of custom audio drivers. How does this impact the BTV operation? I guess to sum it up, I could ask, "Does the install of this program affect the BTV operation in any way?"

I have Replay running on another computer which is running as my Music Server, running and feeding my Slim players (www.slimdevices.com), so I have no clue of its interaction with BTV.

Sorry I couldn't help you any more than this.

Velcroman

05-28-2004, 03:17 PM

Regarding audio files, will it be able to pull music from networked computers? I've got a G network, so there's plenty of bandwidth for this. I also have like 40GB of MP3s that I don't want to duplicate onto my HTPC, but it would be neat to be able to play 'em over at the TV.

Likewise, my photos are all stored at the PC, where my digital camera, photo printer, and photo editing tools are. Will Beyond Media be able to access those files over my WiFi network?

Velcroman

06-01-2004, 07:43 PM

anyone?

rakeshagrawal

06-01-2004, 08:52 PM

Network access (as in network clients that seamlessly enable access to content anywhere on the network) isn't planned for the first version but is most definitely planned for a version after that.

That said, it won't be hard to map network shares on a machine running Beyond Media and access content over the network that way.

rakeshagrawal

08-12-2004, 12:32 AM

FYI to anyone that hasn't already seen it, we've posted an official Beyond Media 1.0 feature list here:
http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=17222

And you can discuss the official feature list here:
http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=17180

And, if that wasn't enough :), you can suggest/request new features here:
http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=17226

SwordPlay

09-22-2004, 10:11 AM

Will there be a Pocket PC interface for BM? I would like to launch my music from a remoter interface without having to turn on my TV to navigate to my music files.

LukaBuka

04-11-2005, 01:44 AM