Thanks to the recent abandonment of the infamous Broadcast Flag, (may it long rest in peace) we can now use our hardware to capture high definition, over the air television broadcasts, that are unfettered by this annoying digital rights management flag. Due to this recent legislation, we already have a new product on the market to take advantage of the improvement over standard definition programming. High definition can offer us six times the resolution and also provide 5.1 surround sound. Enter Beyond TV 4, with DivX support, which can enable us to save shows in much less space than before and can be handy when archiving to optical.
In addition to the HD capture, Beyond TV now supports those cards with dual tuners, so that you can record 2 shows simultaneously such as TiVo does, or record one show as you watch another, only there is no subscription fee! Also, another feature added in this fourth generation product, is the ability to record FM broadcasts.
| The major highlights of version 4:
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ShowSqueeze is a method of converting a recording from one format and size to another to save disk space or make your shows more portable. This is where DivX can come into play. However, Beyond TV 4 allows you to ShowSqueeze (convert) both Windows Media files (.wmv) and MPEG-2 (.mpg) recordings to the Windows Media format as well. This can be set up to be done automatically at off hours.
According to the Snapstream web page, Beyond TV 4 currently supports every BDA-compliant ATSC tuner card on the market. In case you didn't know, the acronym BDA stands for Broadcast Driver Architecture. This is a standard that has been created by Microsoft and it speaks to how a TV tuner card device driver should be written for their operating system. Specifically, this DirectX standard (DirectX 9 required for Beyond TV 4) is a big part of the logic behind how a tuner card driver is to be written for correct functioning in Microsoft's Media Center Edition for Windows. Below you can read a short list of tuner cards that Snapstream recommends for their software.
- ADSTech InstantHDTV PCI
- ATI HDTV Wonder
- AverMedia AVerTVHD MCE A180
- Dvico FusionHDTV5 Lite
- Dvico FusionHDTV3 Gold
- Dvico FusionHDTV5 Gold
- Dvico FusionHDTV5 Gold Plus
- Dvico FusionHDTV5 Gold USB
- Kworld ATSC-110
- VBox DTA-151
- VBox USB-A 3560
Obviously, due to the nature of the drivers, this software will only work with Windows XP or Windows 2000. Mac and Linux users will probably never see a port for this software. In addition, if you decide to try this product, I recommend setting a restore point prior to the installation, as it requires the use of the Microsoft .Net architecture, a hefty 24 megabyte download of it's own. You can read more about Beyond TV 4 and find a free 14 day trial download here. If you decide to register the product, it's $69.99, if you are upgrading from version 3, it's only $29.99. You can find TV tuner card bundles on the website for less than 100 dollars, that include a 6 foot cable and an indoor antenna. Not bad, if you are close enough to a HD broadcasting transmitter! A listing of system requirements for the software can be found on this page.
Source: Snapstream
