PVS 3.0 RC1 review by a ShowShifter user

[ptaylor]

Hi all, I'm new to this forum..

I'm a long time SS user - though, for me, SS has stood for ShowShifter, not SnapStream.. I've tried SnapStream 2.0 a long time back, but it didn't work well with my ATI card, so I ended up getting ShowShifter as it really seemed better than ATI's MMC, except for the EPG.

I found the link for the SnapStream 3.0 RC today on the Rage3d forums and thought I would try it out... I'm using an ATI 8500DV with an AMD 1700+ on an Abit KG7 motherboard with a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card.

Here are my comments..

First, the bad:

1. I'm using an ATI RF Remote and it's hard to navigate. One push of an up/down button jumps two or three items on a list. Hitting the button that I defined for ESC results in moving me back more than one level. I did find that the top navigator button on the ATI would let me move one position at a time, though, but the "OK" button still acts like I'm hitting Enter twice. Changing channels with the number buttons similarly gave me trouble. It seems like everything is geared toward another remote type and the ATI button mapping isn't clear Perhaps this is documented somewhere that I haven't seen yet. Note that later I restarted without ATI's toolbar app running, and some things worked better, except I couldn't find the ESC button and I still had the double button press issue.

2. Live TV image quality isn't what I'm used to. With ShowShifter and ATI's MMC, the Live TV image quality looks terrific, just about like watching TV with no PC involved. It's just not as crisp and clean looking as I'd like. Anything I can do here to improve this?

3. Changing channels doesn't work like I'd expect. I'm used to pressing the channel up/down button, and being on the next channel in under a second. It seems that I either have to hit the OK button when I'm viewing info about a channel that I want to move to, or wait for a timeout to happen. When it does start changing channels, it is sluggish.

4. Instability:
I had trouble exiting ShowShifter then starting SnapStream. I had to kill off the process as it locked up when starting Live TV, then restarted it and tried again, and it crashed again.. Got a pop up wanting me to tell MS about the second crash. After restarting again, it worked.

Another time, I don't recall what exactly I was doing unfortunately, but SnapStream locked up on me. I believe the disk was very active at the time.

From another PC I tried to watch Live TV. This worked okay on the first channel, showing me a small image of the program. I tried to change the channel, though, and it failed, just hanging out. I believe I opened another browser and was able to get Live TV running again on the first channel, but changing channels again failed, this time resulting in a pop-up on the SnapStream server wanting me to report the problem to MicroSoft.

Now, the good:

1. Awesome UI design. Love the placement of the date, time, volume, and program information. Love the "First Aired" dates on re-runs.

2. Like the FFing, Rewinding when timeshifting and watching prerecorded video.. The UI for that is great, letting you know how much you have before and after the current position.

3. The Video Library is about the best and easiest to navigate that I've seen. This easily beats ATI's Media Library, and is easier to use than ShowShifters. I also LOVE the fact that you can stop watching a recording, then later pick up where you left off. That's one of the really nice touches about SnapStream, that it remembers how far into a recording that you've watched.. I've interupted my wife watching her recorded soap before and (with MMC) it was a pain FF'ing back to 45 minutes into the show. With SnapStream, it's totally unneeded.

4. The fact that I can mark a program in the Program Guide and tell it to "Record all new episodes" is sooooo nice. It's a nice touch to show the vertical line on the program guide so I know what time it is in reference to what's on the guide. Since SS PVS is so integrated, I assume that the program guide is automatically updated. I've recently been trying out MMC 8.5 (until today), and it annoyed me that MMC was smart enough to know that the guide info was out of date, but not smart enough to go ahead and get the latest guide info.


Anyhow, if I can figure out how to get the default image quality to be a bit better for watching live TV (perhaps a setting change), and get some of the other issues and stability problems taken care of, I think the next version of this will be what I'll be using in the near future.

I've only had a couple of hours to play with SnapStream, so perhaps I can figure out some of these issues myself, but I'm wide open to any suggestions.

Paul Taylor

[EaranUSA]

If you are looking to change the quality defaults of your video, check out the Web Admin>Configure>Recording Preferences.

[ptaylor]

I've changed it to a higher setting and it does look a bit better, but I'll probably be upping it even further.

This morning I found another issue. I left PVS running overnight and it was still running this morning, but it was skipping frames badly.

Paul

[EaranUSA]

Originally posted by ptaylor
I've changed it to a higher setting and it does look a bit better, but I'll probably be upping it even further.

This morning I found another issue. I left PVS running overnight and it was still running this morning, but it was skipping frames badly.

Paul

Unfortunately, with any major multimedia system, there may be some skipping due to the speed of your computer, memory, and programs running. Another thing to note is, that if you have a screensaver running, you should really disable it, due to it could have a profound impact on it.

[pitcher23]

"1. I'm using an ATI RF Remote and it's hard to navigate. One push of an up/down button jumps two or three items on a list. Hitting the button that I defined for ESC results in moving me back more than one level. I did find that the top navigator button on the ATI would let me move one position at a time, though, but the "OK" button still acts like I'm hitting Enter twice. Changing channels with the number buttons similarly gave me trouble. It seems like everything is geared toward another remote type and the ATI button mapping isn't clear Perhaps this is documented somewhere that I haven't seen yet. Note that later I restarted without ATI's toolbar app running, and some things worked better, except I couldn't find the ESC button and I still had the double button press issue. "


I had a similar issue while using Showshifter. Make sure your ATI remote icon is not on the taskbar. Also make sure that Showshifters X10 RFAnywhere remote Daemon is closed as well. This should stop all of the double entries from the remote. I find ATI's remote works quite well under PVS 3.0.

[ptaylor]

Thanks... The ATI Remote icon was the main issue I had. The ShowShifter one worked a bit, but when I hit some keys it started showshifter up while PVS was still running.

One thing though - What button on the ATI Remote is the ESC key?

Paul

[ptaylor]

Originally posted by EaranUSA


Unfortunately, with any major multimedia system, there may be some skipping due to the speed of your computer, memory, and programs running. Another thing to note is, that if you have a screensaver running, you should really disable it, due to it could have a profound impact on it.

EaranUSA,

I disabled the screensaver a little while ago, so perhaps that was related to the problem I saw this morning.

Today I set PVS to the highest quality MPEG setting trying to get the Live TV looking more like ShowShifter, but my machine couldn't handle it. It skipped frames quite regularly when viewing live tv.

I've got an AMD 1700+ with 256 Meg of RAM running on a clean install of WinXP SP1 (Reinstalled Saturday night), so I would think that it could handle just about anything I wanted to throw at it. This machine isn't used for anything else except video.

Anyhow, I dropped it back to the second highest quality level and the dropped frames stopped. The quality still isn't like watching live TV on ShowShifter though. Is there any way to make it not "timeshift" by default when watching TV? Normally, if I want to timeshift, I'm aware of it and will manually enable it. Otherwise, I'd rather see the clearer, sharper image of the live signal instead of the MPEG encoded signal.

Paul

[pitcher23]

"One thing though - What button on the ATI Remote is the ESC key?"

I am using a Radeon 9700 AIW Pro. I am assuming if you don't, at least the remotes are configured the same. Directly to the left of the "0" button there will be one that looks like a page. Click that and it should bring you to the main menu at any point in PVS. It will also allow you to exit fullscreen.

[ptaylor]

That works for exiting each screen.. It looks like the remote issues are almost wrapped up.

Minor issue.. when I first go into the Program Guide, it acts like I've hit OK twice because it bring up the "record episode" dialog for whichever show is highlighted, but once I'm the program guide, I can move to other shows and hit "OK", and it doesn't act like I've hit it twice.

Other than that, it seems to be fine everywhere else that I've tried it.

Anyone else seeing this upon entering the Program Guide via remote in RC1?

Paul

[Scotto]

"when I first go into the Program Guide, it acts like I've hit OK twice because it bring up the "record episode" dialog for whichever show is highlighted"

Yeah, Im having the same problem. I have disabled the ATI Remote Wonder software in the taskbar so that it doesn't do the "double responses" like arrowing up twice for each press...yet when I go into the program guide, it acts like I have pressed "OK" twice. ...it's pretty frustrating.

[EaranUSA]

ptaylor-

I believe timeshifting is disabled by default, unless you changed it when working with some other settings. You can obtain these settings by using Web Control then going to Configuration>TimeShift. It should be one of the primary items there in the Configure screen.

Also, please note that quite a few changes have been made to Snapstream since RC1 and you may want to check them out. RC2 is currently the latest.

Michael

[ptaylor]

Is RC2 available for download anywhere?

Paul

[pitcher23]

Has anyone that tried RC2 noticed a better picture while watching live television? I have used both ATI and Showshifter and noticed fantastic live television quality. WIth PVS RC1 the picture is noticeably less than great. The settings only seem to pertain to recordings and not what you see live. I also notice the picture is a little stuttery at times.

I am currently using a pentium 4 2.8Ghz with 512MB RDRAM and a Radeon AIW 9700 Pro. I have very little on my system tray and no screensaver. So resources aren't an issue.

I find the interface of PVS 3.0 far superior to Showshifter and ATI Media center as well as the options and flexibility being better. I have noticed only two drawbacks. One being the poor picture quality, the other being the sluggish channel surfing. I hope there are noticeable changes in RC2.

[ptaylor]

I totally agree... Those are the two main things that I dislike about SnapStream.

The reason for the overall poor quality of Live TV is that it's not really live. What you are actually watching when you view "Live TV" in PVS is really recorded moments earlier. Basically, it's like timeshifting is the default mode when watching Live TV. That's why you see the "stuttery" video occasionally.

In fact, that's also the reason that channel surfing is so slow with PVS. Though, in all honesty, if you have the EPG info right on the screen, it isn't as neccesary to channel surf. Chances are you'll be able to tell if you are interested in most shows just by looking at the EPG info.

I think SnapStream would be about the perfect app if the Live TV were more like ShowShifter and ATI's app. ATI has made strides with MMC 8.5, but they still have VERY far to go to catch up to the usability of PVS.

Paul

[pitcher23]

Do you, or anyone else know, if the default mode of prerecording and immediate playback, timeshifting, can be disabled? I would prefer to watch it in realtime if it actually provided a better picture and channel surfing. As for the quality of the recordings, I can always tweak those to have a decent playback quality.