BTV really ready for prime time? or did it jump out of beta too soon?

[jip]

I have been seeing lots of issues w/ BTV from reading the forum. Is BTV really ready for prime time or did marketing push to get the product out of "beta" too soon?

What's everyone's impression on that?

- J

[Terminal]

To me it's been ready for prime time for some time now. There are a few features I wish they had put in earlier, but as they say you can't please all the people all the time. There are a few minor bugs, but hell that never stopped Microsoft.

[imf4]

I am with Terminal on this. I have found a couple smaller things but nothing major.

[elneckio]

I haven't found anything terrible yet. The new front end seems bug free and the upgrade process worked very well. Slightly slow at some of the effects but thats likely be to do with the recompressions I'm testing out in background

[jkoon]

Not to mention that a large percentage of the bugs reported here in the forums are actually problems with a users’s pc not being up to date (out of date drivers, don’t have directx9 installed, etc).

[Eric3a]

I had been running a working Beta for a while with all reported problems corrected, and the product is fine and ready for Final release in my opinion.

I guess it's always difficult to know if users have BTV problems or Computer problems.

Mine sure is running fine and dandy as is.

Anyway final is as final goes....
Eric

[blitzkrg]

everything is fine on my setup. except every now and then when i go to the guide (the overlay version) and pick a channel. the guide goes away and the screen just freezes up for like 2 minutes. than it switches channels. but it then runs at like 3 frames per second. it's super slow.. so i have to exit the app and restart it. then it's fine for a while.. not sure whats causing this..
anyone else know?

[MannyTC]

Originally posted by blitzkrg
everything is fine on my setup. except every now and then when i go to the guide (the overlay version) and pick a channel. the guide goes away and the screen just freezes up for like 2 minutes. than it switches channels. but it then runs at like 3 frames per second. it's super slow.. so i have to exit the app and restart it. then it's fine for a while.. not sure whats causing this..
anyone else know?

I have had that problem and experienced it on and off through most of the 3.4 beta. I reported it but I could never figure out the steps to reproduce it every time and it apparently did not get fixed. The other thing about the overlay guide is the starting channel that it displays is a crapshoot. You never know if it is gonna start with showing you the currently viewed channel or some other point where you might have been looking at the guide previously.

[Rita]

I think they should have waited till after Christmas. They would have had a much more peaceful holiday!

Personally up till beta 825 it worked beautifully for me. Then it went downhill with the latest version usable but not as stable as beta 825 was... <sigh>

[blitzkrg]

oh good so it's not just me..
it happens at least 2-3 times a day..
exiting full screen (so the app i still running in the traY) and going right back to fullscreen fixes it.. but still it's a problem.

i also have the random channel issue..
i thought it was just me as well..
seems like some pretty big issues to me..
can someone report this???

Originally posted by MannyTC


I have had that problem and experienced it on and off through most of the 3.4 beta. I reported it but I could never figure out the steps to reproduce it every time and it apparently did not get fixed. The other thing about the overlay guide is the starting channel that it displays is a crapshoot. You never know if it is gonna start with showing you the currently viewed channel or some other point where you might have been looking at the guide previously.

[mvaughn]

Originally posted by blitzkrg
everything is fine on my setup. except every now and then when i go to the guide (the overlay version) and pick a channel. the guide goes away and the screen just freezes up for like 2 minutes. than it switches channels. but it then runs at like 3 frames per second. it's super slow.. so i have to exit the app and restart it. then it's fine for a while.. not sure whats causing this..
anyone else know?

I too am having the same problem. It only happens upon choosing a channel in the transparent guide. When it finally wakes up it goes back to a normal framerate.

[jip]

I guess for most people, btv is "good enough". I have to give the dev teams props for making a really solid release of 3.3. I will wait for a bit longer to see if there is a service pack for 3.4 before upgrading.

I have been using 3.3 since it was released, and have not lost a single show yet. I am still a bit hesitant to move to 3.4. This is probably because I had a lot of issues w/ Snapstream prior to 3.3.

Keep up the good work.

- J

[Terminal]

Originally posted by blitzkrg
everything is fine on my setup. except every now and then when i go to the guide (the overlay version) and pick a channel. the guide goes away and the screen just freezes up for like 2 minutes. than it switches channels. but it then runs at like 3 frames per second. it's super slow.. so i have to exit the app and restart it. then it's fine for a while.. not sure whats causing this..
anyone else know?

Well I have to say I have seen this as well. It's only happened a few times, but just as you described it.

[Zack]

For users with the long channel change time, please download the installer from the snapstream.com website and install again.

Build 899 is now posted and it has a fix for this problem.

If you still have a problem, please (PLEASE!) email tech support to report further problems.... as I will be out of town until next week.

Thanks
-zack

[Maladin]

I imagine there will always be an increase in the number of reported issues immediately following a release, and often a new release will introduce problems on a previously stable system, simply because of new features which depend on newer drivers than the user may have installed.

Having said that, I am a new (trial) user and found 3.3 to be a bit more stable than 3.4. Props to SS for so quickly addressing the worst issue (stuttering during playback) with the 3.4.1 release, but I still have a few unresolved issues with the new version. Even so, I am leaning toward buying BTV over SageTV. (Frey still has a chance to win my business if they release 2.0 before my BTV trial period ends, and even then it has to impress me more than the current release.)