Intigration of Rhapsody Music Service

[robmill]

Hello,

I am just about to jump and purchase Beyond TV, but have a question. I utilize the Rhapsody Music Service on my network at home, and plan to have it on the Beyond TV machine once its up and running.

Is Beyond TV capable of controlling or interfacing with the Rhapsody Service.

Robert

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by robmill

Hello,

I am just about to jump and purchase Beyond TV, but have a question. I utilize the Rhapsody Music Service on my network at home, and plan to have it on the Beyond TV machine once its up and running.

Is Beyond TV capable of controlling or interfacing with the Rhapsody Service.

Robert

I just went through something like that myself. In my case I was trying to get a program to even work in the background with BTV. This particular program was called Replay Radio. It comes with a large listing of web based radio programs. Sort of an EPG for web radio. You could set it like a PVR to record shows unattended. Worked great on one PC but would not play in the same PC as BTV. Well, actually it played okay .. but destroyed the BTV audio. It had it's own audio drivers and they sort of took over the whole audio environment. So it had to go. Mind you this wasn't even being integrated into BTV. I just wanted it to run in the background and save the shows.

Don't know about the program you are looking at, but from my experience if you are dealing with anything that is going to use your sound card, make sure it plays nice with the existing environment. If it requires added special sound drivers, it could mean trouble.

Even after I uninstalled and removed the radio program, I had to re-install the BTV to get everything back in order. I'm waiting for the other Snap Stream product that's coming out (Beyond Media) or something like that which I believe will integrate with BTV and give you full multimedia access .. sound, digital still etc. Maybe someone who might be working with the beta guys will comment on that for you.

[attisb]

Beyond TV does not allow third party programs to be in the interface yet. That said you can use FireFly which allows third party programs to put into the menus and can also be controlled by the remote. However Beyond TV will play almost anything that Windows Media Player will play except for streaming audio/video. You can tell Beyond TV to look to the Rapsody folder and it will then list the files in there which you will be able to play. 3.5 will add the ability to view by folders which will come in handle for what you might be doing.

[berg]

Even after I uninstalled and removed the radio program, I had to re-install the BTV to get everything back in order. I'm waiting for the other Snap Stream product that's coming out (Beyond Media) or something like that which I believe will integrate with BTV and give you full multimedia access .. sound, digital still etc. Maybe someone who might be working with the beta guys will comment on that for you.

Rich A -

Ouch, now I almost feel bad suggesting Replay .... Sorry

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by berg

Rich A -

Ouch, now I almost feel bad suggesting Replay .... Sorry

Thanks but no need to feel bad. Re-installing SS was no big deal. I was just disappointed that I couldn't use it in that dedicated A/V server. I might just buy the program after all and use it on another machine. They had EPG listings of all the shows I'd like to record. I'm always too busy to listen when they air.

[Baylo]

You bring up a pet peeve of mine: programs that think they own the system. I came across this again last night when I wanted to play a DVD file in the background on my second monitor while also checking another file using Windows Media Player. However, muting the audio in the DVD app muted the entire system, thus cutting out ALL audio. At least muting WMP only mutes that app, letting other programs continue doing what they want...

I know this was kind of a strange scenario, but you get the point. Developers: please stick to decent programming rules, and stop taking short-cuts!

Of course, none of this applies to Snapstream as far as I can tell. I'm just ranting.

Mark