I built my own DVR (Digital Video Recorder) and it’s working quite well. A few years ago I had asked Desi for a TV Tuner for Christmas (Hauppauge’s WinTV-PVR-250) for the old motherboard (750 Athlon paired with a Asus K7V mobo) I had laying around. I checked out this software from SnapStream called ‘Beyond TV’. Things worked fairly well but system was just scratching the minimums. So for my birthday I asked for an upgrade to the old motherboard (ECS K7S5A PRO mobo paired with Athlon XP 2.4). After that things rocked. I turned all the Beyond TV options on and the system still rocked. The system works just like Tivo. You can pause live TV, you can record remotely (meaning you can log into your account at SnapStream and tell your system to record a show) – all just like Tivo – WITHOUT the monthly Tivo fee. Plus you can pull the files off the recording PC and burn them to DVD. Snapstream has recently added a plugin (for $30) to allow you to burn your recorded shows. You don’t edit them but it is very simple. Below is the admin page…

Well, enough talk, check it out here. You can’t log in anymore as a guest (since upgrading to version 3.5, they must have had too many security issues). So I have taken any security off so you come the server. PLEASE don’t mess with things. Desi will get mad if you delete any of her shows. If you want to record a show go ahead but at least send me an email letting me know what you did.

Right now I don’t have any Windows Media Files, required for streaming pictures, but I will get some out there. You can download any of the shows we have out there but be prepare for a long download – an hour show is well over a gig in mpg format. Go for the divx format – they are a bit more than half of that. Check out SnapStream’s site for more information about Beyond TV. They definitely get my thumbs up!

John Z