How Snapstream’s Enterprise Appliance Works

Have you ever wondered how an HTPC system would work in an enterprise/business environment?  Snapstream, the makers of Beyond TV have been making major strides in leveraging their success in the Home Theater PC arena into the business and enterprise arena.  TV stations, Radio stations, education, government and political groups all have been using Snapstream Enterprise as an appliance to monitor and manage media.

The Snapstream Enterprise Blog has a great write-up on how their TV search technology works with a focus on the Enterprise customers.  I think it was a great move for Snapstream to get into the Enterprise business – it definitely expands their network of customers into a less-competitive field.

Read more on the Snapstream Enterprise Product

Monitor Stocks with Your Home Theater PC

You’ve had a long day at work, come home and want to see how your stocks and the market have been doing.  Okay, maybe you don’t want to know at the moment given the current market conditions but still, bear with me… 

You sit down on you couch, fire up the HTPC TV and click on Your Stocks Plugin from the HTPC menu.  You can now get a snapshot of your selected stocks and indexes for the day right from the 10-foot interface using a new plugin for the SageTV HTPC software named JVL Stock Manager (named after the username of the creator jvl711).

The main menu shows you the stock symbol, the change, price and days’s low:

If you select a stock ticker with your remote, you’ll get a graph with the options of various periods to view:

This is the one-year view:

When you hit your options button, you’ll have the option to refresh the data, add a new stock ticker or remove the selected symbol:

Read more about the JVL Stock Manager and get the download at the SageTV Forums

 

OTHER STOCK PLUGINS FOR HTPCS:

There’s also a Stocks Plugin for GBPVR for users of the GBPVR HTPC Software.

When pulling up the stocks, the data for each stock is retrieved in its own thread so the app is still responsive while waiting on the data.

The GBPVR plug-in is skinable with the look, colors, fonts, positions, shapes, etc. all pulled from skin file. The data displayed is configurable as well.

Another option is the old Stocks Plugin for the stagnant Beyond Media HTPC front-end software program by Snapstream.  There used to be a MCE plugin called Stock Ticker, but it doesn’t seem to be available any more.

Hauppauge HD-PVR for Linux

Are you a Linux user dying to try out the new Hauppauge HD-PVR component recorder with your MythTV HTPC?  Janne Grunau has posted his alpha version of his HD-PVR Linux Drivers this month. 

It's bleeding edge (read: a work in progress), but has been working very well for Janne with multiple hours of recordings.  Janne reports there have been some problems with channel changes which changes the resolution on the component inputs, but other than that, it’s working quite well.  Note:  Janne has only tested with 576i (PAL-B in Germany).

If you want to get started in testing with your HD-PVR and Linux HTPC, read the driver how-to at the MythTV.org HD-PVR wiki and download the latest version of the drivers at Janne’s website.

For more on the HD-PVR check out my HD-PVR Unboxing and First Look.  I'm hoping to have the complete review ready for some time next week.

Netflix Plugin for SageTV V2.0 – Easier Control of Netflix Watch Now

 

Many have been enjoying the Netflix Watch Now service on their own TVs from the comfort of their couch thanks to the Roku Netflix set-top box ($99).  I too have been enjoying this feature since February (my original post on this plugin can be found here) – but without the set-top box.  I’m using SageTV (SageMC Required) and a plug-in developed and updated by Morgan111 on the SageTV forums. 

Today an update was released for the SageTV Netflix plugin that makes the plugin crazy easy to install and use.

SAGEMC NETFLIX 2.0 UPDATES INCLUDE

• Update html parsing to account for change in website that caused inconsistent detection of Trailers and Watch Now.
• Added Blu-Ray Logo that is displayed on movie details screen when the movie is available in Blu-Ray format.
• Update parsing to fix display of User Rating stars on movie details page.
• Added custom viewer for Watch Now movies that is launched and controlled via Sage remote and shortcut keys. IE viewer is still an option.
• Add capability to select one of four possible bitrates for movie streaming.

 

When you select a Watch-Now Title to view, a submenu pops up and asks you what stream quality you prefer.  I’ve been choosing the 1600 bps connection and the delay is minimal, but the quality is very good.

I should note that the “dowwnload for…” menu item was originally inteneded to download the videos for later playback, but is nonfunctional.  That menu item will likely be removed.  Instead Morgan plans to add a Watch-Now queue for saving movies you want to view later.

The player has an on screen display which shows up until the video has downloaded enough of the file to begin playing or whenever a remote or keyboard command has been sent. The OSD contains the following information:

• Video Title and playing/buffering status
• Playtime progress bar
• Current playtime into video and video duration
• PREV and NEXT legends that indicate if the Prev or Next (Ch Up/Dn) buttons can be used to step to a new episode

Here’s a screen-shot of the info display that shows at the top of the screen when loading the video or when you hit a remote button.

Morgan has updated the plugin so that it now runs without opening an Internet Explorer window.  This means the play, pause, fast forward, rewind, stop, next episode, previous episode and info functions will natively with the remote control you use with SageTV (no need for girder).

No support for viewing Watch-Now on the SageTV extenders is included, but a workaround has been discovered by a crafty SageTV user this week.  I’ll post more on that once I give it a try.

Information and download for the SageTV (SageMC required) Netflix Plugin at SageTV Forums

More Vista Media Center DRM Issues

Mike Garcen at MissingRemote.com is reporting that his Vista Media Center gave him the following message when attempting to record American Gladiators:

Recording Canceled

“American Gladiators” cannot be recorded.  Restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator of the content prohibit recording of this program.

Mike was running a CableCard VMC HTPC in San Jose when this happened.  And it’s likely this was a glitch between the broadcaster and VMC somehow.  Still, I worry that this copy protection is there for a reason and will be used intentionally eventually.  Consider the case of the Superbowl game, the NCAA championship, the finale of your favorite Television show is blocked to CableCards to “protect” their content from those thieving HTPC users.

You can call me paranoid if you want, but I think it’s a valid concern.  I’ve leaned towards finding an alternative to CableCard for this very reason and now with SageTV (or BeyondTV) and the HD-PVR, I have that solution.

Andreas says on his blog that he believes this is a Media Center issue and not a broadcast error.  Regardless of the cause, I’m sure it is frustrating for VMC users.

I think MissingRemote puts it best in their conclusion:

There's no excuse for a person to spend $1500 on a cable card system to then be told they cannot record content which is available for FREE without ANY protection with a $5 Over-the-Air antenna. I hope that's not the case, but in the meantime, I'm left watching something NOT called American Gladiators due to this.

Read more on this at MissingRemote.com