Parents Take Caution
Before I start this section, let me make it clear that I don't consider the V-Chip or television ratings a substitute for good parenting. In fact, I'm generally uncomfortable with Hollywood deciding what is and isn't appropriate for my kids. With that said, however, I can say without trepidation that if Hollywood believes a show is not appropriate for kids under 14, it's not appropriate for my kids at any age! That's one of the reasons that parental controls are a nice feature for a PVR application. Unfortunately, Beyond TV has no parental controls at all.
In today's age, parental controls are a necessity. More and more content on television is not appropriate for kids, and having a way to lock out these shows is critical. Locking out specific channels is simply not good enough. On Dish Network in my area, channel 169 is Noggin, a great channel for young kids. However, at a certain time in the evening, Nogging becomes "The N", a network that shows content not appropriate for any kids . . . or anyone else in my opinion. Noggin goes from showing cute shows like Little Bear to showing programming about teenage girls experimenting with homosexuality slanted in the direction of approval for such activities.
My kids don't watch television when I'm not around, and they don't have a TV in their room. However, it's all too easy for kids to wander into content they shouldn't watch even for a moment. Beyond TV's failure to provide parental controls makes that even easier. The absence of parental controls loses Beyond TV a full point from the review score. SnapStream tells me that they're not sure if or when parental controls will be added.
Watching TV
Television performance in Beyond TV is in par with what you see in other PVR applications. In my testing, I did notice that 3D accelerated performance was sometimes not as good as I would have liked, and I was testing it on a powerful machine with a new, high-performance video adapter. News tickers were hard to read and jittery.
I researched this and found that others are reporting the same thing when using 3D acceleration. The solution is to switch to overlay mode, but in doing so, you lose transparency in the on-screen controls. This kind of thing must be a thorn in SnapStream's side. Unlike TiVo, they have an almost endless number of hardware combinations to support. It sometimes takes a bit of tweaking (changing video decoders, etc.) to make everything look just the way you want it to look. I've spoken to others who own BeyondTV, and they seem to have no problems.
 BeyondTV has the best on-screen controls of any PVR application I've seen. 
The on-screen controls (see figure 6) are clear and informative. In 3D accelerated mode, these controls slide on and off the screen in a nice effect. BeyondTV has the best on-screen controls of any PVR application I've seen. They don't take up a lot of screen real estate and they're intuitive to operate. Notice also (see figure 6) that the date a program first aired (something often difficult to locate in other PVR applications) is prominently displayed.
Figure 6 - On-Screen Controls
Web Interface
In addition to the settings available in the BeyondTV interface, you can access additional settings using the Web administration tool as shown in figure 7. However, some settings are only available in the Web interface and not the Windows interface and other settings are available in both places but use different terminology in the Web interface than they do in the Windows interface. While that can sometimes lead to confusion, it is nice that SnapStream has kept some of the more technical settings out of the main BeyondTV interface. In doing so, they've effectively prevented inexperienced users from inadvertantly changing a setting and blowing things up.
Figure 7 - The Web Interface
You can access the program guide from the Web interface, but your channel lineup is not honored. In other words, you see all channels instead of just those in your lineup. The reason for that is that the program guide available in the Web interface is coming straight from SnapStream.Net based on your TV provider. Using this method, there isn't a way for SnapStream to take your lineup into consideration. If you use the Web interface, you'll need to keep in mind that some of the channels you see might not be available to you.
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