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A number of issues
By: Jason W
August 27, 2005 @ 2:37 PM
It works generally as described. Here are a few gripes besides those already listed:
1) No HDTV support
2) I should’ve bought a dual tuner.
3) IR Blaster does not reliably change channels for comcast digital cable. The channel must be typed, then the left key must be placed, because comcast will not select a channel when it displays a program playing in the future. I.e. it’s 4:55pm and the Comcast guide displays only 5:00pm programs. When you type “22″ with the remote, it shows the program which will begin at 5:00pm, but you don’t get this program just by pressing enter. Comcast will effectively ask “should we play this program in the future?” and Beyond TV doesn’t know what’s going on. So channel changing rarely works right, unless the time is within the first half of the half hour.
4) If you browse the Snapstream program guide you abandon the currently playing program. When you return all of the time-shifted programming is lost. Effectively if you choose live-TV, you must never intend to change channels.
5) The firefly remote isn’t intelligent to interpret the remote when another window becomes active. I.e. if the pause key is pressed, I do not intend to pause Internet explorer. Try to pause something useful. On dual-screen systems, it is cumbersome to actually browse the net or do other tasks on the other screen.
6) “Windows Media Center compatibility” is very misleading. Yes the remote works correctly with Media center (and many other programs). Also Beyond TV can be executed from Media Center. However the Windows Media Center TV functions do not recognize the Diamond PVR600, although there may be efforts to get a driver built. If I had my choice I’d use the Microsoft Media Center TV functions, because of the smarter guide browsing and the free guide service. Beyond TV looks nice, but has some UI issues.
7) It is difficult to use the Comcast remote during live TV, because there is about a 1 or 2 second delay in the MPEG encoder. You can’t simply just fall back to the Comcast guide if you don’t like the BeyondTV guide.
–Jason
Rating: 5 :: 0 out of 0 people found this user review helpful. Was this user review helpful? Yes | No