Beta 4.4 - Vista Support! (please)

[Bilar Crais]

Now that Vista Beta 2 is readily available to the public for download, what say we make BTV Vista ready? I've tried BTV with the last several Vista beta 2 candidates, and while iit mostly works, the WebUI reports that BTV is not running, and displays the WebUI BTV management screen instead. Otherwise, from the setup wizard, LiveTV, and recording jobs, it all works.
Vista is locked down pretty tight out of the box, so there are some security issues that need to be worked around, like user permissions.

[Khris]

Why would SS waste time trying to support a BETA OS?

There's much better things they can concentrate on *ahem*INTEGRATION*cough*.

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by Khris

Why would SS waste time trying to support a BETA OS?

There's much better things they can concentrate on *ahem*INTEGRATION*cough*.

You're right. They should wait until well after it's released so people can bitch and moan that it's not supported.

[PaulF]

Originally Posted by Bilar Crais

Now that Vista Beta 2 is readily available to the public for download, what say we make BTV Vista ready? I've tried BTV with the last several Vista beta 2 candidates, and while iit mostly works, the WebUI reports that BTV is not running, and displays the WebUI BTV management screen instead. Otherwise, from the setup wizard, LiveTV, and recording jobs, it all works.
Vista is locked down pretty tight out of the box, so there are some security issues that need to be worked around, like user permissions.

The WebUI is now open source. So fix it!

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by PaulF

The WebUI is now open source. So fix it!

If I only had the talent! All I'm saying is that it couldn't hurt to be prepared.

[Jon Hancock]

Bilar Crais
You can leave me out of that beta! Why would you want to install a beta on a beta just because you can. If M$ then change something SS would have wasted valuable time on something that very few people would currently gain anything from. BTV is currently extremely stable, I don't understand why you would want to compromise that for the latest offering from Mr Gates. I for one will not be "upgrading" to Vista on my HTPC.

Jon.

[Bilar Crais]

Alright then. Nevermind.

[PaulF]

Originally Posted by Bilar Crais

If I only had the talent! All I'm saying is that it couldn't hurt to be prepared.

I was trying to make a joke and point out that we users can fix that. In any case, I'm betting it wll work on Vista eventually. Especially since you pointed out it has problems.

[ZetaVu]

I for one am in no hurry to switch over to Vista. It is going to be a massive resource hog and I am willing to bet will have lots of landmines for htpc software that competes with mce and their version of drm. More importantly, there will be a lot of changes between the beta and the main release, and I'm willing to bet there will be a ton of bugs when it does get released what, NEXT YEAR!

The last thing SS needs is a distraction now for a problem next year. For now, let's get BM fixed and working with btv, and lets get this product to work perfectly with the existing versions of Windows. Apart from new PC sales, I don't expect to see a lot of people throwing money away right from the start for what little Vista has to offer over XP, so really it should be well into 2007 before this becomes something that needs to be seriously addressed.

And again, Vista will have MCE (except for home and business applications), which is one of M$ reasons why you should upgrade. I think SS is a damn good reason why I don't want to upgrade. It's been a while since XP cam out, has everyone forgotten how long it took to get software that worked properly on XP or how many screwups came with that? I didn't switch from 98 to XP until well over a year later, and my work took another two years after that (until they were forced by gunpoint). Now, I don't see much my stripped down XP with Opera/FIrefox and Snapstream needs that Vista has to offer.

[cfaslave]

While I won't be switching to Vista any time soon, Snapstream should still work towards supporting it as many people who buy new PC's will have Vista on their PC already and thus its just a good business decision to support it.

That being said, someday Snapstream should support Linux as well. Make the software as accessible as possible. I do think integration of BTV/BM should come first though.

[wxboy]

on Vista 5384.4 right now. and with the correct tweaking BeyondTV SHOULD work according to some research I've done. If I get it working, I will post my steps. NOTE: the steps will be designed for the GM release of 4.3

[HomeyFour]

I'm 100% behind you Bilar. While I personally will probably not run Vista any time soon (Q A M.. Q A M) I would assume SS is actively pursuing the OS to get BTV/BM to run smooth as silk on it. As pointed out, new PCs will have Vista preloaded on them come the 2nd quarter of 2007.

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by HomeyFour

I'm 100% behind you Bilar. While I personally will probably not run Vista any time soon (Q A M.. Q A M) I would assume SS is actively pursuing the OS to get BTV/BM to run smooth as silk on it. As pointed out, new PCs will have Vista preloaded on them come the 2nd quarter of 2007.

Yep. Vista is as inevitable as death and taxes. Way back when, I railed against Windows XP and hung on to W2K for dear life. It was for the very same reasons people list for disliking Vista...bloat, excessive resource use, too much eye candy, blah blah. Would I switch back to W2K? Not on your life.

I can tell you that rumours of Vista's piggishness are greatly exaggerated. My machine is very middle of the road performance wise, yet with fifteen minutes of tweaking, Vista can be made to be every bit as speedy if not more so than XP. As stable? Hardly. Not yet. I don't think developing BTV for Vista has to come at the expense of the application's stability. A year ago, many of you were clammering for Server 2003 SP1 compatiblity. That was accomplished. Did the sky fall? No.

I'm sure SnapStream is well on the job of the BTV/Vista marriage. They don't need me to tell them what is clearly coming down the turnpike. I'm just excited about the future...not shrinking from it. And that is all I'm saying on the subject.

Good Luck on your endeavor, Wxboy!

[Bigbird999]

I posted this link in the other thread. I'm not sure that anyone can even say that M$ intends for Vista to support 3rd party PVR type software if it has anything to do with HD content. They can't put the "worms back in the can" with the whole scene of SD media digitizing, P2P sharing, recording, archiving, etc. But they can avoid, at least for a while, opening the HD can of worms. It seems clear to me that their intent is to "lock down" all HD content on Vista machines. You will be able to get HD into a Vista machine but getting it out will be harder. You can bet that Vista will be full of landmines that will cripple most of what we (PVR enthusiasts) consider to be "fair use" of HD content.

IMO, in 2007, a very often googled question will be "Can I remove Vista from my new computer and replace it with XP?"

At this point, the media providers consider the only fair use of HD content to be watch it now on an approved (by them) HDCP device or store it on an approved proprietary device (no copying, no streaming, no capturing for editing, etc) to watch it later. Until this situation is legally resoloved/clarified or widely accepted cracking methods become available to circumvent these DRM issues, I will stick with what I have. As is normal with new technology, a lot early adopters will get burned.

BB

[USArcher]

Hopefully SnapStream has code already running on the beta OS.

I don't like to be negative but this feels like a lost chess match. Instead of DIVX support and some relatively minor enhancements, SnapStream should have been looking at ways of extending their product to new areas. I had mentioned over a year ago, that they should be working with other manufacturers and vendors. Tivo, Orb.com, Hauppauge, BuffaloTech, DLink, Linksys, MediaLogic, etc.. It comes down to this, without pc-less client hardware to playback Live & Recorded HD TV they are screwed. Sure there are plenty of UPNP playback devices but what they all suffer from is the lack of a common user interface and none playback Live TV. Microsoft figured this out and the result is media extender software/hardware and XBox 360 built-in features. Even Sage has this from what I have seen, although nothing more than the limited hauppauge hardware. I think SnapStream should start thinking about ways of extending Vista Media Center as a backup plan. If their PVR product is to survive it has to come with some really compelling stuff. Perhaps be 1st to support cable card tuners and surprise us with hardware client device. I doubt either will happen though