Beyond Media no longer being sold.

[Rich A]

As was stated in the announcements area, BM is not going to be sold after November 1st. And they are going to continue to provide service for the existing base of users.

My question is, "Are you going to continue to have a Beyond Media forum area?". With or without official sales, that forum is a wealth of information and a place for those of us still using BM to exchange ideas etc. I hope it continues to be an available reference and discussion area here in the forums.

[rakeshagrawal]

Rich, yes, the Beyond Media sections of the forums will not be going away. We're just going to stop selling it, removing the marketing pages for the product from the website and from the store. The support section will still be there and the Beyond Media sections of these forums will remain intact.

So to recap:
* all we're doing is stopping new sales of the product
* we'll be removing the product pages, the corresponding store pages, the download pages.
* the support pages (along with download links for Beyond Media for existing customers) will remain intact
* the Beyond Media sections of the forums will also remain intact (though we might move them into an "archive" section or something)

Thanks for creating this discussion thread, I'm going to link to it from the announcement that Joel made earlier so people can ask any other questions they might have.

[cfaslave]

I'm going to link to it from the announcement that Joel made earlier so people can ask any other questions they might have.

Ok. Since the door for questions was cracked open I'll ask a few questions I have (knowing full well some probably can't be answered) but hey - it never hurts to ask...

• Any future plans to add this "beyond media" functionality into BTV? I know we were told before that adding the ability to have true "plugins" for BTV would require a major UI re-write. Is that on the table or has it been cobwebbed for the time being?
• Any possible plans to open or shared-source Beyond Media?
• How about making it easier to add a true menu item to BTV that executes an external program such as BTV, Meedio, Media Portal as was suggested in the BM forums this week?

The reason I think these questions (and their answers) are important is this: I would like to recommend BTV to all who ask me for recommendations for good HTPC solution, but for the past year I always tell them this. "If you want a great PVR software and don't care about movies, music and photos BeyondTV is a great solution as well as SageTV, GBPVR etc etc. But if you want a complete HTPC and are interested in the media (non PVR) aspects of an HTPC solution BTV might not be the best solution for you." Obviously many are using other front-ends with BTV to get a complete HTPC, but its not a total solution.

I would like to answer that question differently, but can't right now.

[Nick Burns]

Any chance on getting a bargain-basement price on BM before it's discontinued?

[rakeshagrawal]

Originally Posted by cfaslave

• Any future plans to add this "beyond media" functionality into BTV? I know we were told before that adding the ability to have true "plugins" for BTV would require a major UI re-write. Is that on the table or has it been cobwebbed for the time being?
• Any possible plans to open or shared-source Beyond Media?
• How about making it easier to add a true menu item to BTV that executes an external program such as BTV, Meedio, Media Portal as was suggested in the BM forums this week?

The reason I think these questions (and their answers) are important is this: I would like to recommend BTV to all who ask me for recommendations for good HTPC solution, but for the past year I always tell them this. "If you want a great PVR software and don't care about movies, music and photos BeyondTV is a great solution as well as SageTV, GBPVR etc etc. But if you want a complete HTPC and are interested in the media (non PVR) aspects of an HTPC solution BTV might not be the best solution for you." Obviously many are using other front-ends with BTV to get a complete HTPC, but its not a total solution.

I would like to answer that question differently, but can't right now.

Brent, the short answer to all of your questions is "No".

No plans to add Beyond Media-like functionality to Beyond TV.

No plans to take Beyond Media in the direction of open source or shared source software (it would require too much to work to do and then to maintain on an on-going basis-- open/shared source projects do no manage themselves).

And no plans to extend the Beyond TV menu'ing system to enable the kind of launcher that you describe.

We're just focused on the TV side of things and not on any kind of "general media center" functionality.

[rakeshagrawal]

Originally Posted by Nick Burns

Any chance on getting a bargain-basement price on BM before it's discontinued?

Make me an offer! Just kidding. Nope, we don't have any inventory to "blow through" or anything like that. We're planning to just keep selling it at the current pricing until we get to November 1st.

[aurigus0]

I was saddened to see that you guys are discontinuing Beyond Media. I always thought it had a lot of potential in the HTPC arena. That being said, I understand you are not in the media center business and this product does not match up with your television domination goals!

If not going open source with it, why not release it to the community? There are plenty of us out there that would be willing to take over the management of such a project.

It just seems like such a waste for a program like this to go into the dead pool!

[ZetaVu]

Rakesh, you really know how to hit a guy low. I cannot for the life of me understand your state of mind but I hope it works for you. I would have thought since you were able to add the DVD plugin you could add others to btv, not sure why you can't, more importantly, no idea why you don't think its important to try. How about working with someone like Media Portal or another front end so it can mesh with btv? (I've had resoure conflicts when both are running) Either way, I am again disappointed.

[spaceghost]

It' is not that they can't open source it...or add features to btv to replace it...they don't want to. I have learned to live with btv running in MCE 2005 and using MCE for the non-tv related things - for me playing back dvd's & and music management. My beyond media is not even installed because it was so poor at handling large music collections. But if it had been upgraded or integrated, it would have come back off the shelf. Probably one of the least used programs I have ever purchased.

I can't think of any other software that I ever bought that was discontinued with no upgrade path. There must have been some, but I can't think of any.

From being told it would be integrated to being discontinued with no integration is disappointing to say the least. They should throw us a bone - free link licenses or dvd burning plug in or something - we were definitely mislead on this one. Leaves kind of a bad taste in my mouth.

[RiderFan]

Snapstream should have stopped selling BM crapware 2 years ago. It would have saved quite a few people a lot of money.

[kandlg]

I am not really excited about the answer, but I appreciate Rakesh addressing the issue in a conclusive way. It helps a lot with planning my system. Thanks.

It would be nice to see some knowledge bases or threads on making BTV play with various front ends - MP, Meedios, Media Center, etc.

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by spaceghost

I can't think of any other software that I ever bought that was discontinued with no upgrade path. There must have been some, but I can't think of any.

Our upgrade path is the competition. I installed Sage on a test box last weekend with remarkable ease. So many features and easily set up through the wizard. BTV might be simple for the interface, but the back end is a bit challenging to figure out the quirks. The competition has too many features we have all wanted in BTV to be ignored.

Originally Posted by spaceghost

From being told it would be integrated to being discontinued with no integration is disappointing to say the least. They should throw us a bone - free link licenses or dvd burning plug in or something - we were definitely mislead on this one. Leaves kind of a bad taste in my mouth.

Agreed!

[Rich A]

Gawd, I'm sorry I brought this up. I just wanted to insure that the forums area for BM would continue so those of us using the BM product would have a reference source and a way to compare notes.

This whole Beyond Media thing has been discussed and re-discussed time and time again.

Just search for "Integration" and you will see every question asked here a hundred times over. Beyond Media is dead. SS has said ten times over it had no intention of going further with it many months ago. So let's move on okay? I just don't understand why the same arguments keep popping up over and over. Sorry I brought it up .. but like I said, MY query was only about the forum area and if they were going to continue to leave the Beyond Media forum open.

[cfaslave]

Rich,
I think that was my fault - not yours. Sorry to drum up the hornets nest again.

Snapstream has made it very clear (as early as over a year ago) that TV/PVR is their focus. There has been no question about this since then. That being said, I'm always looking to be sure they haven't changed their mind and I think the questions I asked above were all relevant to BeyondTV and SS's direction for that software. Didn't mean for my comment to bring up the bad stuff so sorry

And I agree the BMedia forum should remain available as there are still a few who will find it useful. I have a bunch of posts in there that I still refer to from time to time.

[ZetaVu]

I even changed my sig, to show I've given up hope on the matter. Too bad, that's an awful lot of effort to toss away. Maybe after a few months they can release BM as open source unsupported (assuming it does not affect BTV, which I think it won't since that has evolved so much). I see no reason to not do that, if there is no development, no sales, and once released there will be no support necessary. The only question is whether or not to give it to the community as a gift or not.