More Feature Ideas

[sean_snider]

Ok now that I have all the hdtv and satellite analog stuff happily going along,
I'd like to beg snapstream for some features that would make life so much easier.

1.) Guide with small picture rather than overlayed guide. Currently if you are running in overlay mode, you don't get transparent menus for the guide or info. Most people are running in overlay mode with HD setups b/c that seems to be the best performing option. But if you hit the guide button, then you can't see the picture at all. . . totally lame. ...

2.) A toggle button on the guide for different channel lineups. Just like when you view recorded shows by Series, All Recordings, Movies, etc. It'd be nice if you could view only the guide with only 1 particular lineup.

3.) More advanced show squeeze rules. For example, I show squeeze all recorded TV shows that are not movies, b/c I usually don't care about keeping them, whereas movies or sports I do care and therefore don't want them show squezzed, b/c I will burn them to a DVD. But having to manually select Showsqueeze for every show sux. It'd be great if you could apply rules to say, only auto showsqueeze TV series shows, or only auto showsqueeze shows that are longer than 1 hour in length.

4.) Visualizations for radio. . . seems kinda lame to just have a blank screen.

5.) Tune radio while watching TV at same time. If you are watching sports and don't care about the sound it be awesome if you could turn on the radio while watching a tv show (multi tuners assumed of course).

6.) I still want more control over suggested priority of hardware to use. For example, I don't like watching live TV on my TV Wonder Elite card, but recording with the card is fine. Right now my Hauppauge card is in first priority, but that is for both watching and recording. If I schedule a recording, then I'm stuck watching live tv on the Elite card b/c the Hauppauge card was first in the que. I'd rather have the Hauppauge card always used for live tv, and recording by default first go to the TV wonder card and second to the hauppauge card.

7). I think everyone still wants the ability to record radio. . .

[cmcquistion]

Bump for item #1, 2, & 7.

I'm designing a home network, including HTPC's, for a client of mine and they want to have custom channel lineups, like they had on their old satellite system. I've been racking my brain for a way to achieve this with BTV, but haven't come up with anything, short of having multiple BTV servers.