Friday, April 20, 2007

Two more things That Would Make BeyondTV Nearly Perfect

I recently put down my top Seven Things That Would Make BeyondTV Nearly Perfect - lets call it my personal wishlist, but also the things that I think would make BeyondTV sales improve as well. I think it was pretty complete, but there are a few things I think I should add.

8. First, I think allowing those people who want to build an HTPC with a tiny footprint and free operating system would be happy with support for Linux or more specifically Ubuntu. Sage has moved this direction and I think it would benefit Snapstream's BeyondTV as well. It would allow people to build cheaper HTPC's and it would create an additional demand for BeyondTV as an easier-to-setup alternative to MythTV.
9. Second, how about DVB-T card support? Opening up BeyondTV to those in Europe and other non-US/Canada places would certainly help with demand would it not?

Thursday, April 19, 2007

HTPC Build Problems

My HTPC build hit a stumbling block last night as I couldn't power up

More info here if you can help, feel free to post and help a poor guy out.

EDIT: I've narrowed my problem to a bad PSU. I'll be getting a new PSU from Newegg Wednesday and will finish the HTPC build then.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

New HTPC Build Parts Are Here

Today I received a pile of new Computer components delivered by UPS. After chomping at the bit for quite a long time, I've finally decided to build a new HTPC for the bar/basement room. This PC will be using BeyondTV Link & Beyond Media and will receive streamed TV, Video, DVD, Music etc content streamed from my BeyondTV Server PC.

I toyed with three different ideas for this room:

1. Putting the PC in the unfinished portion of the basement and using the wiring already in place to get to the TV. I'm currently doing this with a very old, underpowered PC in that room. I have all wiring run through a drop ceiling down to the TV. This actually was a pretty good solution, and I'll be keeping the wiring in place for now. In the end though, I wanted to try my hand at making PC with a true, HTPC case that could handle DVD and CD play when wanted.

2. My second thought was to buy a used or off-lease dell optiplex. I've done this in the past with good results, but the desire to use a HTPC case was too strong.

3. HTPC case built to be quiet and fit into the environment. This is the solution I settled on.

Thanks to the help of snapstream forum members including cmcquistion, I chose the following components:

Case - Antec NSK2400 (includes the power supply)
Motherboard - ASUS M2NPV-VM Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Lima 2.2GHz 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 Processor

Memory - 1G (512mb X 2)

Kingston ValueRAM 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 533 (PC2 4200) System Memory
Hard Drive - I have a spare Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Video - I'll use onboard for now and see how it handles things
Sound - onboard
LAN - onboard
Fans and heatsinks - I'm using the stock fans and heatsinks for now and might upgrade for silence later

The forum thread where I asked for and received much help on the build decisions can be found HERE

I'll post more on how the build goes as well as some pictures once the project is complete.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Orb Launches 2.0 API and a new Developer Network Site


If you are one of those that use Orb to stream your TV and other Media over the internet, you might be interested in Orb's latest announcement. Orb Networks has released Orb 2.0 API to the public. From Orb's blog,


"The Orb API is a set of Web Services that let developers create or enrich desktop and web applications with Orb functionality including TV streaming and recording, media playing and sharing, file browsing, contacts, etc. This means that anyone can write or customize a program to search, present, play and manage content from an Orb-enabled computer, using any programming language they like."


I can't wait to see what developers come up with as I use Orb occasionally to watch videos and tv over the internet streamed from my home HTPC Setup.

The developer site is at http://developer.orb.com/

Monday, April 16, 2007

Internet radio dealt severe blow: Copyright Board rejects royalty appeal

The Copyright Royalty Board has rejected an appeal of last month's ruling governing royalties paid by Internet broadcasters. The new rules will now take effect on May 15. Internet Radio is now officially in big trouble.



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Joost thinks its piracy proof

Joost, the new broadcast quality internet TV platform, has gone and said it is completely PIRACY PROOF! That’s a bold statement coming from the guys who made Kazaa. If this type of media distribution is to be the future, content protection is one of the things that would drive the content makers to Joost and others.



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