My notes/comments now that I have setup BTV.

[Cal]

I got my snaptream combo pack 2 weeks ago. (software and PVR250 card)

If you are from Canada don’t order the combo pack directly from snapstream. UPS sucks. They charge an extra duty fee that is truly outrageous. It would have been cheaper and faster to just get the download version and buy the card at full price locally. (After all I never even opened the software package, just used the number on the back.)

I’ll Never never never use UPS again. If that’s the only shipper someone uses then I’ll just look elsewhere.


My hardware is as follows, this is a dedicated BTV box.
Running XP Pro.
P3-800Mhz
Motherboard is an Asus CUSL2-C
512MB Ram
200GB Drive
Sound Blaster Live.
Ethernet card.
PVR-250
GeForce FX 5200 Video Card


I did a clean winxp install and then I pretty much used this thread by Hurin as my starting point.
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=13712

I used this thread by Cayars to give me my settings to use for recordings.
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=11998

I used his 3.25 GB/Hr setting. I actually started off with this setting and have not used any of the others or any of the default ones yet. The quality is fantastic.

In case anyone cares my original post is here before I started buying stuff and deciding what I was going to go with.
http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=13542


My issues. Pretty minor really.
I use the USB-UIRT to control my Bell 5100. The onscreen beyondtv setup instructions say to press and hold the key on the remote for each number. If I did this then the setup would crash. I found that if I just held the button for approximately 3 seconds and then let go it went though the setup fine.

Fist time I turned it on I had no sound. Opps. I just had my cable in the wrong output on my sound card.

That’s it. No other setup issues. It was pretty easy.

I’ve gone though a few hundred-channel changes because I was concerned about not having direct serial control of my satellite box. I’m happy to say that beyondtv using the USB-UIRT that I bought has not missed a single channel change. No tweaking either. Just picked it when I was asked in the setup and kept the defaults.

No keyboard, mouse or monitor on this box. I’m using VNC to control it if needed. I’ve got it set to boot directly into full screen mode. Other then that I’m just using the silver remote that came with the PVR 250 card. It sits behind glass beside the TV. Doesn’t look bad but I may have to paint it black at some point this summer.

Using snaptream.net is a big wow factor. I like it very much. Very nice to be able to set stuff up from work. The saved favorites seem a bit limited but that might be just me. Are there any instructions anywhere for using these? I know its not possible yet but I’d like to have it autorecord stuff if certain condions are met. IE record “stargate” but only if the episode title is “between two fires”

Copying stuff from the beyondtv box to my main machine, editing the mpeg and copying it back is also very very cool.

Overall I’m very impressed. I’m glad I bought it.

I’ve still got a few things to work on. I still need to look into DVD burning and DVD playback, I’m hoping to do that on my main machine using files copied over from the btv box. I’ve edited them no problem so I’m sure this will work fine once I get around to installing the software.

Myhtpc looks good. Girder looks interesting. I’ll have to give them a try.

VNC works great on the internal network, I have not opened the ports to try it from work. Would this be safe?

I looked into VPN a bit. It works fine if I connect my laptop while on the internal network but not from work. From work I get connected, it verifies my username and password then just sits there saying opening port. Must be the work firewall preventing something. Anyone know how I can find out?

Now that I’ve used it for a bit I’ve noticed a couple other issues.
One is guild data. It does not auto update like its supposed to. I have to tell it to manually update. I see several other people have the same issue so It must be something wrong with this build.

I do have a small black bar on my right hand side of my screen. No flicker on the bottom like some people have reported with the prv250 card. I never even noticed it the first couple of days. Is there a setting I missed or should I try a few other recording settings other then the 3.25 GB/hr one I’m using?

Anyone know of a good bandwidth monitor that ignores local traffic. I am copying stuff between boxes and it makes my monitor for monitoring my monthly Internet traffic meaningless.

Bmextreme does what I want but its kinda expensive for a monitor and it seems to keep crashing on my box, so its not for me.

That’s all the notes/comments I can think of at the moment.

[Twood]

Cal,

To remove the black bar on the right side of the screen follow the instructions on this thread:

http://discuss2.snapstream.com/vb/sh...threadid=12516

Terry