What I wish was in btv 4.0

[spaceghost]

Integrated support for the media mvp. A solution that does not require a pc near the tv would be great. The plugin for 3.5.1 was almost there. This would be more attractive to me than hd support - I would pay to upgrade for that.

[rakeshagrawal]

hey spaceghost, thanks for the feedback. it's always hard to decide which features to add and which features not to add -- at least for me because I'm one of those typical early adopters who wants every little feature and capability (native support for the video iPod? anyone? anyone? ). but of course, it's critical to the quality of the product and the success of the company to make those trade-offs intelligently.

just to give you a look behind the scenes on our feature decision making process, we took a poll a couple of months ago (to which a couple of thousand of our registered users responded) that was designed to force people to rank features most important to them. in that poll "extender" support ranked low in terms of user demand. on the flip side, we managed to implement three of the top four features (as ranked by users) in Beyond TV 4.

in my opinion a lot of the extender experiences out there, with the off-the-shelf DMAs from Hauppauge, Digital 5, D-Link and even with the MCE extender, aren't that great. responsiveness and richness hasn't been there. with MCE, xbox 360 might change that but we'll see.

[spaceghost]

I hear what you are saying - it only makes good business sense to give the majority of customers what they want. I have found that I rarely am in the mainstream anyways

But having said that...one guy in New Zealand (I know you know what I am talking about here but I will not name the product) has a solution with integrated mvp support that really is not bad - even over a wireless G network. Admittedly the gui is not too fancy - but it works (if running on a powerful enough server). If one guy can do that...

[rakeshagrawal]

There are things that aren't "mainstream" but represent a disruptive trend, ie something that the mainstream will trend towards (just as often, there are things that aren't mainstream and will never be mainstream).

And sometimes it also makes sense to give people something that they don't explicitly want. There are often features that represent a new way of doing things where it's hard for people to say, "Yes, that's a feature I would want" before they actually have the feature in hand.

[John Sparks]

So is there a list of what features will be available in version 4?

I am hoping for:

H.264 playback support (I download videos from the internet)

I would also like XML Feed support for video 'podcasts'

I have some favorite shows like Digital Life TV and This Week in Tech that publishes their weekly shows as video feeds (in H.264 for example) and it would be nice to be able to have BTV 4 go out and download the weekly shows.

---

on a separate question... BTV4 is said to be integrating BTV and Beyond Media.

Beyond Media will NOT work on the secondary display in full screen mode (because of a directshow limitation I was told) but BTV 3 does work in full screen mode on the secondary display because apparently your programmers did something right. Will BTV4 work on the secondary monitor in full screen mode like BTV3 does, or will it be limited by the beyondmedia code and I will lose my TV as my full screen display of choice?

[HomeyFour]

John,

I do not believe that BM and BTV will be integrated for 4.0. I believe in the Blog, it states that this will happen sometime down the road, after 4.0 is released.

[spaceghost]

Now I see a competitor is offering integrated mvp support. Please please add it.

[nicholja]

I wish I could use the "show squeeze" for recording HD. (HDTV Wonder card)
(I'm told that this may work in a future patch)

[queonda]

Originally Posted by spaceghost

Now I see a competitor is offering integrated mvp support. Please please add it.

Yes, I saw that yesterday! I was going to post but didn't want to name the competitor because I'm sure my post would have been deleted. But MVP doesn't have HD out, only composite (i don't think it has s-video either).

[Grasshopper]

I'll second (or third, or fourth, or ....) the MVP support request. It is high on my priority list since the MediaMVP has a very high WAF. The computer in the bedroom (as quiet as it was) was still too loud for the spouse. When I hooked up the MVP and installed the BTV skin the WAF greatly increased.

[queonda]

Does anyone know if Hauppage is going to upgrade or comeout with a different model of MVP? I'd like HD outputs. <dejavu?>

[ultrajones]

What software has the integrated Media MVP support? I suggested the Media MVP support before... doesn't sound like Snapstream is listening.

[queonda]

I believe it's against forum rules to mention compeitors names. Is that right?

Does anyone know of good websites about PVR news? I use PVRBLOG.com and www.htpcnews.com

I didn't mean to hijack the thread.

[wizzy]

Originally Posted by ultrajones

What software has the integrated Media MVP support? I suggested the Media MVP support before... doesn't sound like Snapstream is listening.

Heck, we can't even get a sleep function. You fall asleep with a show playing, your monitor glows all night long until you get so PO'd you wake up and turn it off.

It just seems a function to exit the viewscape in XX minutes so your screen saver can kick in and power off the monitor is a necessity.

First time I've had a "TV" without a sleep timer in like 25 years, I feel like it's 1975 all over again.

W

[KyleK29]

Originally Posted by wizzy

Heck, we can't even get a sleep function. You fall asleep with a show playing, your monitor glows all night long until you get so PO'd you wake up and turn it off.

It just seems a function to exit the viewscape in XX minutes so your screen saver can kick in and power off the monitor is a necessity.

First time I've had a "TV" without a sleep timer in like 25 years, I feel like it's 1975 all over again.

W

Not a bad idea. I always exit out of BTV, even with my TV's sleep timer set, simply because I don't like taxing my harddrive if I'm not even watching anything on it (the timebuffer is constantly recording data to the harddrive if you're in "Live TV" mode - I'm assuming).

So far, on the top of my wishlist that could probably be done in a timely fashion, I have:

- Easy way to switch between "Record All Episodes" and "Record All New Episodes" without having to delete the entry and recreate it.
- "Record All Unrecorded Episodes", I've recently started getting duplicate Simpsons (the ones that record during the day) since I'm using "Record All Episodes".