Vote Now! Top Feature Request!

[Papa Smurph]

Originally Posted by Brett

I would be curious to see how the option "DVD, Music, Photo, Plugin & Customizable Interface" would rank

One could easily argue that BM is split over two options "DVD playback integration" and "Photos, music, video integration". And that the biggest draw "True Plugin Support" is not even there

-Brett

When I first saw those survey questions, I remember being confused by why "Photos, music, video integration" was in the list as it was already in BeyondMedia, and did not mean "True Plugin Support" to me, which is the REALLY exicting thing about BTV/BM integration. (I've written a BTV plugin and have several ideas for more, but they won't work well without true plugin support.) Because of that, I remember ranking that low in my list, whereas a "BM/BTV integration" option would have unquestionably been my top choice if it had been there.

This makes me believe that the survey biased the results because of the way that the options were presented. Hopefully Snapstream will consider this possibility and perhaps initiate a new survey with more carefully phrased choices.

[cat6man]

Originally Posted by cat6man

an observation or 2

1. QAM is a strong 2nd here
2. QAM + DVB + firewire = 25 votes

looks like adding support for new hardware (QAM, DVB, firewire) is way up there in the aggregate

update: sept 30
looks like a clear split into two communities of users:

as of today,

72 votes for BM/plugin/integration
73 votes for enhanced tv tuner options

1/2 the users prioritize basic PVR functionality and want more options for tuners

1/2 the users prioritize integrating other functionality like music, cd, other media

p.s. i believe the above is an accurate way to describe the votes so far.....bm/plugin/integration includes a large number of distinct capabilties, just as enhanced tuner options describes qam/firewire/dvb

i wonder how much overlap there is between the two communities, if in fact they are relatively distinct......interesting marketing question for snapstream.....my guess is that they are relatively distinct groups, with some modest overlap (but what do i know??? )

[cfaslave]

Originally Posted by cat6man

update: sept 30
looks like a clear split into two communities of users:

i wonder how much overlap there is between the two communities, if in fact they are relatively distinct......interesting marketing question for snapstream.....my guess is that they are relatively distinct groups, with some modest overlap (but what do i know??? )

There is overlap. I want Beyond Media integration most, but QAM, firewire, DVB etc are right behind in second. I want SS to be the best because thats what I have now. I believe both featuresets are critical to SS's longer-term success but as you say (what do I know....)

Brent

[queonda]

I voted for intergration and BTV plugin (because I really want to see more plugins).
But I really want QAM!!

[Webbo]

For my money, it has to be adding additional formats to the lineup (QAM for the States / DVB for Europe and Australia).

If Snapstream does not embrace these, new users will start to dry up and exisiting users will migrate away.

[MarcP]

A competitor that I won't name just released the first beta of their version 6.0 product. Snapstream should seriously have a look at their release note to get an idea of the features BTV is missing...

[Webbo]

And it now supports DVB-T... Dont make me go down that route SnapStream!

[Bigbird999]

Brett posted

I just say we get 3000 votes here, and then we have some room for argument

Sadly I don't think that is possible. If you click on the forum members list and sort by the last visit date then go to the bottom of page 100 (30 per page) you have a list of the last 3000 members to visit the forum. That took from June 15 to now.

Some people (me) have far to much time on their hands, so I did a bit of data mining, counting and analysis on the data available from this list. I put it on a spreadsheet and it is posted below.

If we believe, even partly, what cfslave said

I don't think the average BTV user really understands what these things in the survey mean

and couple it with my analysis; I don't think this survey tells SS anything except what a small group of enthusiasts (call us what you will, power users nerds, etc) would like SS to add to their package.

Consider the following

There are 17,000 forum members
less than half have posted more than one time
284 (2%) have posted more than 100 times. Call them regulars.
The number of members voting so far in this survey is 283. Coincidence? Probably, but, IMO, it is a safe bet that the vast majority of those voting are regulars. If we look at the time the survey has been up, there are about 1000 visits, yet only 283 voted, again they were probably the regulars.
Even if we broaden the definition of regulars to 20 posts it is still only 8% (about 1300 people) of the total.

If we look at the members with just a few posts say less than 2 or 3, we can pretty safely assume that these people had a problem or question that they need help to resolve and either got what they needed or gave up and don't use the software. These folks (0, 1, 2, or 3 posts) amount to more than 70% of the forum members.

So this is the way I see it. A small number of BTV/BM users (pick your own number but it is somewhere around 300) are regulars, who are enthusiasts, (power users, whatever) spend a lot of time in this forum helping newbies and folks who just want a Plug and Play HTPC (lets say, TIVO without the restrictions) get their SS equipped rig running.

Do some of these newbies become enthusiats with +100 posts? Absolutely, I am one, and we were all newbs to this at one time.

I am sure that none of this is news to rakesh and the SS gang and I am sure that they value the input of this group of enthusiasts, but I don't think that they can base their marketing plan and business strategy on what 283, like minded, users want them to add to their software.

Anyway just my 3 cents (Canadian)

BB

[ZetaVu]

There's a big difference between forum members or registered owners and actual BTV users. How does one calculate the number of btv users? By forum membership? By Snapstream.net accounts? Probably the only way to accurately measure btv active users is by studying snapstream.net downloads into computer (which then bypasses xmltv) or measuring unique registrations when btv turns on (Or if it is done periodically) unless the computer is always on...

So, 17000 people registered, a fraction of them actually own the software, another fraction actively use it, but of all those, I'd say the ones that post most actively reflect the active development interestes of Snapstream. Those not posting are either satisfied with current features or cannot be bothered.

So, I think that makes this almost 300 unit survey far more relevant than a random email survey with fixed questions. This survey not only let us choose the important topics in the survey, but allowed us to comment and change the dynamics of the results as it grew.

Of course, one of my big wants has since dropped way back in voting, but that's democracy for you.

[Brett]

Forum membership is in no way an indication of usage.

From my days at tech support I can tell you SnapStream has the data to know if a SnapStream.NET account is active, and what version the user is running. I am not sure if its tallied, I just know its present on every profile. Its used for debugging & troubleshooting.

-Brett

PS: So at what percent do I fall in these groupings?

[Bigbird999]

Brett
Don't get me wrong. I fully support what you are doing/trying to do. I was merely pointing out that the "enthusiast crowd" forms a very, very small percentage of the total BTV users. As a group, the features we would like to see in future renditions of BTV are obviously important but it they are not necessarily what future customers who are not familiar with BTV (or just thinking about getting into PVR on a PC) would want/need.
My presumption is that the largest market for SS is the guy or gal who wants a "FREEVO" (TIVO without the BS fees and proprietary format) that works out of the box. That is a far different and much less feature rich system than those voting here want/need.

I realize that not all of those registered are BTV owners, but I would think that most are (otherwise why register?). Since BTV is a private company its sales revenue (copies sold) is not public. But again I presume it is a lot higher than 17,000.

I believe I saw a post where rakesh said that for now they were not working/going to work on DVB because they were concentrating on the North American market. Is that the answer the European enthusiasts wanted? Obviously not, but "No" is still an answer.

It does not suprise me that the results from the enthusiasts are much different from the results obtained from 1500 random users.

BB

PS With 3800+ posts, I would guess you are an uber enthusiast who has forgotten more than I will ever know about BTV.

BB

[rakeshagrawal]

I just wanted to jump in here and say that Bigbird999 did a pretty interesting analysis by stratifying the community by their post frequency. This actually isn't data that I had ever looked at before so it was eye-opening that the core of our community is approximately 300 people.

[jkirk]

rakesh the question begs asking. does this info bigbird posted change any viewpoints previously held about the forums/polls/feature requests/etc?

[rakeshagrawal]

jkirk, I don't think bigbird999's data changes anything we've said about integration up until now. TV is still the priority. But, we also know that there are a number of TV-specific features (like displaying television while in the program guide) that realistically will only happen when we move Beyond TV to a more flexible UI infrastructure. So don't lose all hope here.

On the topics of community participation and getting product feedback from customers, see this Nielsen article on participation inequality that I read earlier today:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/partic...nequality.html

[Bigbird999]

From the Rakesh's link

Summary:
In most online systems, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

That is exactly what I was trying to say. At least I think it was.

BB