PVR Wire

Snapstream has put out a call for beta testers for BeyondTV version 4.5. Snapstream has a long history of inviting users to beta test each release, so I can only assume that they've lost a few of their regular testers, or they're really looking for some serious feedback for the next release of their PVR software.

BeyondTV 4.5 is described as having "some very cool new features," but there's no word on what those features are. In recent releases BeyondTV has added support for HDTV, automated DivX compression, and searching for programs by category. I've had some problems with that DivX compression feature, so I've gone back to using Windows Media compression for now (allowing me to store hundreds of hours of programming on a 250GB hard drive), but BeyondTV seems to get a bit better at DivX with each new release.

Personally I'd love to see Snapstream implement XviD support. And there's been high hopes of a merger between BeyondTV and Beyond Media (a separate program for music, pictures, videos, weather and all those other things that Windows Media Center does natively). I doubt we'll see a combined BeyondTV and Beyond Media product until version 5.0 at the earliest though.

Oh yeah, and if you're beta testing Snapstream's community-based Columbus project, there's a special email address to use if you want to sign up for the BeyondTV beta. Either that means Columbus will be integrated into the next release, or there's just less paperwork to fill out since you're already in the system.