The Story of the GeekTonic iPad

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.  Five months ago I decided to purchase an Apple iPad.  My aim at the time was to do a little GeekTonic review of the iPad with a focus on it’s capabilities as an eReader and Media Player.

I went to the trouble of purchasing my Apple iPad from Best Buy which allowed for a return within 14 days with no restocking fee.  Well even with such good intentions I ran into a few problems:

• I became busy – really busy those next couple of weeks.  And didn’t find the time to write up that iPad review.  Not even time for a quick look or anything.  Never mind the fact everyone was likely sick of iPad articles due to the all-to-frequent Apple Gazing we see on the internet.
• I lost the dang receipt.  Yes, even though MrsGeekTonic probably still doesn’t believe this part of the story I really did intend to return that iMirror device.  I liked it some, but it wasn’t a must-have for me.  Unfortunately for my pocketbook the receipt was nowhere to be found and I haven’t found that thing even now.

So what’s a absent minded geek to do?  I did what any right-minded geek would have – I started using the iPad.  At first it was to try out some of those iPad-specific apps that used that extra screen real estate.  But after a while I found myself checking my RSS Feeds each night and morning using the iPad.  I then began using it to watch a little Netflix streaming. 

After a while I realized I used this iPad a great deal – way more than I ever intended. 

Today I’m not going to get into why this happened.  And I’m not going to say the Apple iPad is the greatest device you could get.  But I am going to explain what I like and dislike about it over the next few months.  And I’ll show you the apps and uses I think you would like about the iPad.  Other tablets will be here soon – likely with Android inside.  But for now I plan to share my iPad experiences just a little along with the HTPC and other media gadget stuff I enjoy. 

To be continued - Stay tuned.

In Depth Look at the Fall 2010 TV Season – Seen in HD Podcast

I joined Phil and Matt for the “Seen in HD” Podcast again this year.  We spent most of the podcast reviewing this Fall 2010 TV Season including a rundown of what TV Shows are new and returning and our picks for winners and losers for this year.

If you’re a casual or hard-core TV watcher, this is one podcast you’ll want to give a listen to.

If you want to follow along as you listen, open up the Fall 2010 TV by-Day Schedule at GeekTonic.

Check out the Seen in HD Podcast at this link or at iTunes or Zune.

Goodbye Old Friend – Snapstream BeyondTV Withers on the Vine

As I mentioned last year, Snapstream, maker of HTPC software BeyondTV and Enterprise TV Search Service changed their focus more and more towards the enterprise side of their business over the past several years.  During this time a continual defection of HTPC enthusiasts moved away from BeyondTV to other alternatives for various reasons whether it was need/want for new features, need for an update to fix an issue or just lack of attention.  I’ve continued to follow along on their forums over this time, but the activity there has almost entirely died out.  So today I have officially removed Snapstream from my web bookmark favorites.

I’ll continue to drop in every couple of months or so just to see if there’s anything new, but for now there just isn’t anything happening there.  Nine times out of ten, when I visit the Snapstream forums I am the only registered forum member there.  Worse is the fact that the number of unregistered, guests is usually less than 20!

Here’s other signs of BeyondTV’s end:

• The Snapstream.com website page has nothing about BeyondTV on the front page – nothing!  You can select Products and from the drop-down menu BeyondTV is still listed and yes, you can still purchase a copy of BTV if you don’t know any better, but the focus there is obviously the Enterprise – Search product.
• The last full version update of BeyondTV was BTV 4.9 back in November of 2008.  The last build release with any update of any kind was 4.9.2 in early June 2009.  Release Notes of BeyondTV
• An excerpt from a forum post last year posted by Snapstream:

“There have been a number of threads on the forums and emails directed to me recently about the future of Beyond TV and where SnapStream is headed.
As such, it seems like a good time to clarify our position going forward for consumer and beta releases.


What's SnapStream's focus these days?
Our focus (by which we mean "what we are working on now") is on polishing our technology to work in the enterprise space in support of our Television Search Appliance. In terms of current new development, this means a new backend tailored to expandability/reliability and writing a ground up new api.


As a consumer user, where does that that leave you?
Beyond TV is a mature DVR product that provides a simple user interface to a powerful recording engine. We still believe that if Beyond TV's feature set meets your needs, you will be a happy user. However, if you are not happy with Beyond TV as is, it means that you will probably not be excited about the changes from our upcoming work…”

• A dialog on Twitter between a BeyondTV user and the Rakesh Agrawal, the founder of Snapstream tells us that no updates are coming:

User: “@RakeshAgrawal I want to ask you straight out - are we ever going to see an update to BeyondTV? Win7 and HD-PVR are driving me bonkers here.”

Reply from Rakesh: Sorry for the late reply... The Beyond TV update you're looking for probably isn't coming. Our focus = TV search.

This conversation was last month.  Obviously this isn’t anything all that new – Snapstream has openly said over time that their focus was the Enterprise Search product but they always hinted that they still might offer some “trickle-down” updates to BeyondTV and they never ruled out returning back to BeyondTV updates some day.  But now it seems Snapstreams Search product is doing well enough they have no incentive to return to the consumer HTPC business.  That leaves names like Microsoft MediaCenter, SageTV, and MythTV as the three primary DVR-capable HTPC products.  It’s sort of sad for me to say goodbye, but I’m doing that today.  Snapstream thus far continues to provide guide data for BeyondTV as well as some Q&A type of support on the forums.  Beyond that it’s a “mature” program in their eyes that will get no attention.

Good luck to Snapstream as they continue to thrive with the Enterprise Search product.  And goodbye old friend – thanks for the HTPC memories BeyondTV.

SageTV HD300 Extender / Media Player Shipping Today

Multiple reports across the internet are confirming that the SageTV HD300 Extender/MediaPlayer is is shipping today, September 13th.  Update: Confirmed by SageTV

Check out the GeekTonic review of the SageTV HD300 for more info

Boxee Box Gets an Inside Look

Ganesh at AnandTech has a great writeup about the coming-soon D-Link Boxee Box.  He goes into more detail about the hardware than I’ve seen thus far so it’s a must-read if you’re at all interested in Boxee and their new extender.

Speaking of the Boxee Box, it just arrived on the Amazon site this week.  It isn’t yet available for preorder, but there is a “send an e-mail” link for when it’s available. UPDATE: Looks like preorders once live will price it at $229

AnandTech spends some time talking about what the move from NVIDIA's Tegra 2 to the Intel CE4100 means.  Here’s a little taste of what Ganesh had to say about the Boxee Extender:

For AnandTech to recommend a media streamer, it must strive to enable the consumer to watch whatever content he wants wherever he wants. Boxee Box seems to have taken this philosophy to heart, unlike some of the other recently announced media streamers.

Read the complete article about the Boxee Box at AnandTech