The future of Beyond TV and SnapStream

[Zack]

There have been a number of threads on the forums and emails directed to me recently about the future of Beyond TV and where SnapStream is headed.

As such, it seems like a good time to clarify our position going forward for consumer and beta releases.

What's SnapStream's focus these days?
Our focus (by which we mean "what we are working on now") is on polishing our technology to work in the enterprise space in support of our Television Search Appliance. In terms of current new development, this means a new backend tailored to expandability/reliability and writing a ground up new api.

As a consumer user, where does that that leave you?
Beyond TV is a mature DVR product that provides a simple user interface to a powerful recording engine. We still believe that if Beyond TV's feature set meets your needs, you will be a happy user. However, if you are not happy with Beyond TV as is, it means that you will probably not be excited about the changes from our upcoming work.

Are you working on feature ____?
We are not working on the following:
(This list is not comprehensive, but should clarify many questions.)
*Media Items(photos,dvd,music)
*Upnp/DLNA
*Cablecard
*Dvb (or other international support)
*A new Full Screen Interface
*Further hd-pvr support past its current state

Did you sell out to the man and become part of the system?
Nope. The things we're working on right now are as bleeding edge and disruptive as the original pc based dvr.
We're very excited about where this new technology will lead us in the Enterprise space.

Will there be new betas of the consumer version of Beyond TV?
Yes, but with four main caveats.
1. The new features will be mostly under the hood, so you shouldn't expect a new Full Screen Interface. A new Web Interface is being worked on, however.
2. There is no set schedule as of yet for the next Beyond TV Beta.
3. Since our TV search customers are driving our development, these new releases may or may not interest you as a "consumer" user.
4. Some of the things we're working on may not ever be released to the consumer space.

So what kinds of new development is happening?
*A new, database driven ground up re-write of the base services.
*A focus on increased stability and scalability. For instance we expect our business customers will be able to have more than one machine clustered together to have distributed libraries, tuners and showsqueeze machines. As mentioned above, we haven't decided yet which (if any) of these features will be released to the consumer space.
*A new, web Interface that focuses on simplicity and speed.

I'll be here to answer any questions in the comments.

[cfaslave]

So based on those facts a "BeyondTV 5" is pretty unlikely right?

Can we expect the EPG service for existing BTV users to continue? Is the EPG subscription Snapstream provides the same for enterprise and consumers so that there isn't the risk of that EPG going away for consumers?

[Zack]

The guide date is same for consumer and enterprise, so it's not going away as a result of the new work.

As for something called "Beyond TV 5" being released, the question "Will there be new betas of the consumer version of Beyond TV?" is the answer. There will be betas at some point. Past that, we don't have a defined plan for a release.

[bradrellinger]

While this is certainly sad news for consumers - I appreciate you clarifying Beyond TV's future.

[chillspace]

This is very unfortunate. The HTPC/PVR space is just now gaining a tiny bit of steam and this is something Snapstream could have capitalized on if they had still kept up the development of the consumer product to keep pace with the likes of SageTV or even GBPVR. Ah well. I will look for another solution that is keeping up with this area. In the meantime, BeyondTV will stick around since it does have a high WAF :P I just hope that we do see some significant updates down the road.

Eric

[ZetaVu]

I'm glad you put a lot of these questions to rest. Not thrilled by the answers but getting an answer is definitely better than staying in the dark.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not trying to jockey some development onto the consumer side... For instance, "this means a new backend tailored to expandability/reliability and writing a ground up new api.: well, what does this mean particularly, is this the tv engines, etc? Will this improve things like OTA signal handling (reduce freezes/skips on low signal, pixelation)? Will this lead to a change in the viewscape where one could add plugins (expandability)

Web interface - I think a really improved interface specifically one that is user configurable will help with placeshifting, especially those of use wanting to use this in linux.

HD PVR - my system is pretty stable, but that's on xp and using the arcsoft decoder. Would be great if SS had their own decoder that did HW accel, but that's not a dealbreaker for me. Biggest issue I see is that Arcsoft loses HW acceleration in Windows 7 (and I assume vista, but who cares about that anymore?). I don't see that being a high priority for Enterprise, but then again without cablecard what will you do for premium HD capture?

I'm not worried about epg, I figure as long as SS is in business (even if they were all enterprise) they'd honor our EPG. New tuner support will need to be updated. The biggest negative I see is that more of the hard core developers in the community will be migrating away, meaning these forums are going to get quieter and quieter.

Too bad you guys insist on running on .net, you could save a lot of licensing costs making a linux based tv appliance for your enterprise customers. You could probably make a great linux based consumer appliance for less than a thousand (depending on tuners) and link that up with a linux extender. Oh well.

[nrf]

I find it curious that cablecard is of little interest to your new customers (the ones you have forsaken us for.) imagine 6 channels from one cable input and allowing people to 'search' their ads or whatever on channels that are normally encrypted!

I certainly look forward to things like stability, efficiency, and clustering, no matter which customers you are catering to, and I consider the current web and fullscreen interfaces to be adequate, if not superior to the alternatives.

It's been a long run, and you have certainly lasted longer than ShowShifter. I hope you stay in business a long time and at least provide rudimentary support for those of us who supported you when you were just starting out.

nrf

[tmar89]

This saddens me but I am relieved to finally hear something definite from SnapStream. I've invested alot into SnapStream products and now find myself at the crossroads of sticking with a dead end product or investing even more money and learning how to use SageTV. Because, face it. Even thought BTV works, SageTV will continue to evolve and we hear all demand a product that evolves with the times.

[RiderFan]

I don't know why anyone would be surprised at anything Zack stated in his post. Snapstream has been very consistant (albeit sparingly), about their future plans with Beyond TV. Basically, what you have now is all your going to get, or at least notice anyway with any new development being the backend, that we might not notice anyway.

Hopefully this will quiet down all the Beyond TV 5 posts, that is until a new batch of "suckers" buy BTV before they realize there are not going to be any new features.

BTV still works great, and I am fine with that.

[ZetaVu]

In my opinion BTV will last at least as long as XP does, so a couple more years at least, assuming no major shift back to consumer or updates from SS. If they do keep incremental improvements, then longer. For all I know, that's how much life we can expect from the HD PVR. Hell, that might be longer than TV as we know it lasts. Cable, Satellite, and OTA may become unnecessary, all shows may be available from subscription download services (future Hulu, Netflix) so we can dump cable/Satellite and just sign up for whatever $50/mo plan offers the shows we want, watch them at our leisure, something else for archiving. But then again if this is the case, there won't be a market for the enterprise appliance so SS is screwed anyway.

But in the meantime, my BTV system has been working fine (except the previously mentioned epg glitches, damn, gotta look up those logs) so I'm not planning to switch to anything. Even then, probably linux based (although I did get my W7 disks today)

[richt]

"The future of Beyond TV and SnapStream"

Grim

[jptheripper]

On a positive note, I for one would love to see distributed tuners (i am sooo out of slots, and i hate external tuners) and a better web interface. I hope these both come to the consumer version.

And with the popularity of Windows Media Center, alot of other functionality (a la SAGE) is unimportant. Now, if SS would make BTV a media center plugin / intergration , that would be great

[Zogg]

Thanks, Zack, for being up front with Snapstream's plans. We've been asking to hear this for quite a while so thanks for the update. This news does not surprise me, however, although it was still hard to read.

My system works pretty well, and the family is happy with it. But I really don't want to build more Link boxes for the last few rooms that I want to watch shows in. So I have to admit that I'll have to take a look at Sage one of these days to see if I can make it work the way I want. If it does then that will make their HD STB very attractive.

[YogiBaboo]

It's time to say goodbye. You will be closing your shop soon.

[bnflaherty]

Not totally suprised by the direction -- Thanks Zack for the heads-up.

Since my original purchase back in 02 -- it has certainly served me well over the years.

That being said, I have no time these days to even consider any alternatives.

Right now -- the only "maintenance" I need to do -- is keep adding more disk space

The back-end changes Sound great -- if rolled into the consumer version -- an over-hauled Web Admin would certainly be appreciated.

-- Staying Tuned..