BeyondTV: Watching TV from home anywhere in the world!
Mar 20, 2011, 8:02 pm
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Digital Nomad
Programs: AA2MM LIFETIME PLT, Turkish Miles&Smiles Elite, Marriott Plat
Posts: 1,024
BeyondTV: Watching TV from home anywhere in the world!
Before we moved to Germany I researched how to get US television while living abroad. I preferred to set up something legal vs. torrenting shows illegally from the Internet. The solution that I ended up with has worked great for two and a half years now. Our friends would come over to our house in Germany and not believe that we had all the latest episodes on our TV. We would turn on our Apple TV and we could chose from a list of all the latest shows like we used to do on our TiVo. It’s like we never left the States.
Obviously we could have purchased the episodes from Apple at $2 each but that seemed like it would get to be quite expensive. So I looked for a free solution or as close to free as possible.
Setting it all up is not difficult but you need some basic technical knowledge. If you’ve had flashing 12:00 on your VCR for 10 years, this project might challenge you a bit. Most people can set this up and the result is wonderful.
Basically, shows get recorded at my in-laws house onto a computer in their TV room. From there it’s formatted as a podcast. Then from anywhere in the world, I open up my iTunes and all the shows download as a podcast. I then can watch them on my computer, my iPhone/iPod/iPad or through the TV. It works great. To chose which programs are downloaded, I simply log into a website and chose the shows from a grid just like using a DVR.
People often ask me why not just use a Slingbox? For those of you that are unfamiliar with what a Slingbox is, it is device that you hook up to your cable or satellite and it streams to you whatever is playing on your TV. You can change channels or watch programs on your DVR. The problem is that you must have a decent Internet connection wherever you are in the world. If you connection is less than wonderful, the shows stutter and are hard to watch. It’s like watching YouTube at your grandma’s house where it keeps starting and stopping. With my system, the whole show downloads and then you get to watch it in its entirety stutter-free.
The software program that creates the video file and sets up the podcast is called BeyondTV. I paid $99 and it was really worth it! I’m going to explain how to set up the all the hardware and what you need to get recording and watching.
First let me explain how the TV shows reach us:
1. A PC is connected to a satellite box in my in-laws TV room.
2. It records the shows I wants and saves them in podcast video form.
3. I open my iTunes anywhere in the world and download the shows I want from a list of all the shows recorded.
4. I watch the shows either on my computer, portable device or TV.
5. Optionally, we had two Apple TVs which made watching them on a real TV very simple.
If you are interested in setting this up, the first thing I would do is to go the BeyondTV (http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/) website and look around. They have a great FAQ to help you understand what you’ll be doing.
There are three basic steps to setting this all up:
1. Setting up the hardware in the US
2. Setting up BeyondTV on the dedicated computer
3. Setting up your laptop to receive and watch
1. SETTING UP THE HARDWARE IN THE US
A. SET UP A DEDICATED COMPUTER
You need to get a Windows PC with a TV Tuner card. Most PCs do not come with a TV tuner so you’ll have to add it. I often watch for computer deals at http://www.slickdeals.net. That’s where I picked up my computer with a TV tuner built in for $350. I think it’s a better idea to have a dedicated computer for this process rather than a computer that other people use. Converting video is a CPU intensive process.
If you have a computer without a TV tuner card, you can purchase one for under $100. Be sure to check the list of compatible cards on the BeyondTV website (http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/sysreq.asp). For simplicity, I would look at the USB TV tuners which are easier to install than the PCI card tuners.
I would warn you at this point, do not use a computer than is older than FIVE years old. The video processing might be difficult on a CPU that is too old. Slickdeals has such great deals on new computer. I think it’s worth setting this up on a virgin computer to avoid many problems.
If you bought a separate TV tuner, install the software that came with the tuner. Connect the tuner to your cable or satellite box to check that your computer is receiving the signal by running its software.
B. GET A DEDICATED TV SOURCE
You’ll want your computer to record independently of what anyone at the house is watching. For this reason, you will want your computer to have access to its own receiver. Setting up the signal depends on how you get your TV: satellite or cable
SATELLITE:
For example, my in-laws have DirecTV. I purchased an additional receiver off of ebay (Sony DirecTV Satellite Receiver SAT-B65A) for only $20. I had my father in-law call DirecTV and they sent him an access card that I installed in the Sony receiver. He pays $5 a month for this extra receiver on top of what he was already paying. NOTE: You want the receiver to be a basic receiver. DO NOT GET A DVR. The computer software needs an “always on” signal.
CABLE:
Call your cable computer and ask for an additional receiver WITHOUT A DVR. You want just a basic receiver that outputs ONE signal.
At this point connect your TV source signal to your TV tuner card and confirm that you have a signal.
C. CONTROLLING THE TV RECEIVER
You need your computer to be able to change channels on your TV receiver. So you will need a cable/device to do this.
I use the IR Blaster (USB-UIRT) that I ordered from the BeyondTV website (http://store.snapstream.com/usb-uirt.html). It can control many different devices. Make sure yours is listed before you buy.
You will test that this is working once you’ve installed the BeyondTV software.
2. SETTING UP BEYONDTV ON THE DEDICATED COMPUTER
Purchase and download the Beyond TV program. Be sure to get the version that makes H.264 files (http://store.snapstream.com)
Set up a static IP address on the dedicated computer. Search Google on how to do this.
Go into your router’s admin web settings pages and set up the Port Forwarding for Port 8129 to go to the dedicated computer. Lots of information on this can be found on the BeyondTV website.
Next you’ll want your computer to have an address that’s easier to remember than it’s current IP address. Sign up for a free DynamicDNS account and you’ll be able to access your computer using something like “http://carltv.dynamic.nu” instead of “10.234.234.10”.
Run the software and then during its installation you will be asked many questions about your setup. Specifically you will need to tell the program what kind of TV receiver box you have and that you are using the USB-UIRT IR Blaster.
Next you’ll set up the channels that you receive. This way it doesn’t display shows that your receiver can’t show.
I have found that by setting the quality resolution to “iPhone”, it is a decent quality picture with a smallish file size. For example a half hour sitcom is about 200MB. As we have traveled around the world, I can usually download this in less than thirty minutes. When we lived in Germany, I was downloading about 1GB a day! Sitting in an airline lounge I can usually get two or three shows depending on their length.
Make sure to set up a password in the BeyondTV software to be able to access your BeyondTV computer from the worldwide web.
At this point you might be getting a bit scared. All of these steps are not difficult and lots of support exists online. BeyondTV has a great support forum where you can get help from other members.
3. SETTING UP YOUR LAPTOP TO RECEIVE AND WATCH
Once you have set up your dedicated computer then you should be able to access it from any computer worldwide. For example to get to your computer’s BeyondTV, type into any browser: http://carltv.dynamic.nu:8129 . BeyondTV uses port 8129 to access its web pages. Next you’ll type in your username and password and you’re directly connected to your dedicated computer back home.
You will begin by selecting TV shows from the Program Guide. You can choose to record the show once or record it every time it comes on. It is similar to programming your DVR.
From within the web pages, you will find “Basic Settings” and then “iTunes Integration Settings”. All you have to do is click on the iTunes button next to the “All Recordings” label and it will add your podcast to your list of podcasts in iTunes.
You can set up iTunes to download all the episodes of the podcast or let you select which ones you want. When we are traveling I usually need to select only my favorites since they do take a while to download.
4. TIPS FROM THE EXPERIENCED
The first thing you’ll need to do is train whoever lives at the home of the dedicated computer how to restart it. From time to time computers like to be restarted. About once every four months, I have to have my father in-law unplug the computer, count to fifteen and then plug it back in. It’s a Windows thing. When I notice that the feed has gone silent and restarting it has always solved the problem.
The other thing I would set up is a free version of http://www.logmein.com. This will allow you to see the desktop of your dedicated computer from any computer worldwide. I primarily use this to manually restart the computer every couple of months as a preventative measure.
The bottom line is that I haven’t physically touched the dedicated computer since I set it up. My father in-law has restarted it a few times but I have been able to handle any other problems remotely using Logmein and the BeyondTV web pages.
BOTTOM LINE:
Because of this setup, I always have the ten latest Daily Shows on my iPhone ready to watch. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I listen/watch old episodes of Frasier on my iPod. I can download any show that my dedicated computer recorded about 30 minutes after it was on! Once the shows are downloaded to my laptop, I can watch them anywhere even when I’m not connected to the internet.
As I mentioned before we had two Apple TVs in Germany that received these programs via the podcast feed and presented them to us in chronological order just like a TiVo would. It was great having all our TV programs available to watch whenever we wanted on a real TV.
Currently we are in month nine of a year of travel. After my laptop downloads the TV shows via the podcast, I copy them to a thumb drive and watch them on the TVs in each of the rental houses using a tiny WD Media Player that we also travel with. The quality when watching them on a big TV is a bit fuzzy but very acceptable.
For people that travel a lot or live abroad, you will find this system to be very useful. It gives you the flexibility to choose what to watch and when to watch it. The best part is that you don’t have to be connected to the Internet when you watch it.
Feel free to ask questions in this thread if I can clarify something or give advise. Post the question in the thread and don’t PM me so that others can learn from the question.
Happy TV watching!
Obviously we could have purchased the episodes from Apple at $2 each but that seemed like it would get to be quite expensive. So I looked for a free solution or as close to free as possible.
Setting it all up is not difficult but you need some basic technical knowledge. If you’ve had flashing 12:00 on your VCR for 10 years, this project might challenge you a bit. Most people can set this up and the result is wonderful.
Basically, shows get recorded at my in-laws house onto a computer in their TV room. From there it’s formatted as a podcast. Then from anywhere in the world, I open up my iTunes and all the shows download as a podcast. I then can watch them on my computer, my iPhone/iPod/iPad or through the TV. It works great. To chose which programs are downloaded, I simply log into a website and chose the shows from a grid just like using a DVR.
People often ask me why not just use a Slingbox? For those of you that are unfamiliar with what a Slingbox is, it is device that you hook up to your cable or satellite and it streams to you whatever is playing on your TV. You can change channels or watch programs on your DVR. The problem is that you must have a decent Internet connection wherever you are in the world. If you connection is less than wonderful, the shows stutter and are hard to watch. It’s like watching YouTube at your grandma’s house where it keeps starting and stopping. With my system, the whole show downloads and then you get to watch it in its entirety stutter-free.
The software program that creates the video file and sets up the podcast is called BeyondTV. I paid $99 and it was really worth it! I’m going to explain how to set up the all the hardware and what you need to get recording and watching.
First let me explain how the TV shows reach us:
1. A PC is connected to a satellite box in my in-laws TV room.
2. It records the shows I wants and saves them in podcast video form.
3. I open my iTunes anywhere in the world and download the shows I want from a list of all the shows recorded.
4. I watch the shows either on my computer, portable device or TV.
5. Optionally, we had two Apple TVs which made watching them on a real TV very simple.
If you are interested in setting this up, the first thing I would do is to go the BeyondTV (http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/) website and look around. They have a great FAQ to help you understand what you’ll be doing.
There are three basic steps to setting this all up:
1. Setting up the hardware in the US
2. Setting up BeyondTV on the dedicated computer
3. Setting up your laptop to receive and watch
1. SETTING UP THE HARDWARE IN THE US
A. SET UP A DEDICATED COMPUTER
You need to get a Windows PC with a TV Tuner card. Most PCs do not come with a TV tuner so you’ll have to add it. I often watch for computer deals at http://www.slickdeals.net. That’s where I picked up my computer with a TV tuner built in for $350. I think it’s a better idea to have a dedicated computer for this process rather than a computer that other people use. Converting video is a CPU intensive process.
If you have a computer without a TV tuner card, you can purchase one for under $100. Be sure to check the list of compatible cards on the BeyondTV website (http://www.snapstream.com/products/beyondtv/sysreq.asp). For simplicity, I would look at the USB TV tuners which are easier to install than the PCI card tuners.
I would warn you at this point, do not use a computer than is older than FIVE years old. The video processing might be difficult on a CPU that is too old. Slickdeals has such great deals on new computer. I think it’s worth setting this up on a virgin computer to avoid many problems.
If you bought a separate TV tuner, install the software that came with the tuner. Connect the tuner to your cable or satellite box to check that your computer is receiving the signal by running its software.
B. GET A DEDICATED TV SOURCE
You’ll want your computer to record independently of what anyone at the house is watching. For this reason, you will want your computer to have access to its own receiver. Setting up the signal depends on how you get your TV: satellite or cable
SATELLITE:
For example, my in-laws have DirecTV. I purchased an additional receiver off of ebay (Sony DirecTV Satellite Receiver SAT-B65A) for only $20. I had my father in-law call DirecTV and they sent him an access card that I installed in the Sony receiver. He pays $5 a month for this extra receiver on top of what he was already paying. NOTE: You want the receiver to be a basic receiver. DO NOT GET A DVR. The computer software needs an “always on” signal.
CABLE:
Call your cable computer and ask for an additional receiver WITHOUT A DVR. You want just a basic receiver that outputs ONE signal.
At this point connect your TV source signal to your TV tuner card and confirm that you have a signal.
C. CONTROLLING THE TV RECEIVER
You need your computer to be able to change channels on your TV receiver. So you will need a cable/device to do this.
I use the IR Blaster (USB-UIRT) that I ordered from the BeyondTV website (http://store.snapstream.com/usb-uirt.html). It can control many different devices. Make sure yours is listed before you buy.
You will test that this is working once you’ve installed the BeyondTV software.
2. SETTING UP BEYONDTV ON THE DEDICATED COMPUTER
Purchase and download the Beyond TV program. Be sure to get the version that makes H.264 files (http://store.snapstream.com)
Set up a static IP address on the dedicated computer. Search Google on how to do this.
Go into your router’s admin web settings pages and set up the Port Forwarding for Port 8129 to go to the dedicated computer. Lots of information on this can be found on the BeyondTV website.
Next you’ll want your computer to have an address that’s easier to remember than it’s current IP address. Sign up for a free DynamicDNS account and you’ll be able to access your computer using something like “http://carltv.dynamic.nu” instead of “10.234.234.10”.
Run the software and then during its installation you will be asked many questions about your setup. Specifically you will need to tell the program what kind of TV receiver box you have and that you are using the USB-UIRT IR Blaster.
Next you’ll set up the channels that you receive. This way it doesn’t display shows that your receiver can’t show.
I have found that by setting the quality resolution to “iPhone”, it is a decent quality picture with a smallish file size. For example a half hour sitcom is about 200MB. As we have traveled around the world, I can usually download this in less than thirty minutes. When we lived in Germany, I was downloading about 1GB a day! Sitting in an airline lounge I can usually get two or three shows depending on their length.
Make sure to set up a password in the BeyondTV software to be able to access your BeyondTV computer from the worldwide web.
At this point you might be getting a bit scared. All of these steps are not difficult and lots of support exists online. BeyondTV has a great support forum where you can get help from other members.
3. SETTING UP YOUR LAPTOP TO RECEIVE AND WATCH
Once you have set up your dedicated computer then you should be able to access it from any computer worldwide. For example to get to your computer’s BeyondTV, type into any browser: http://carltv.dynamic.nu:8129 . BeyondTV uses port 8129 to access its web pages. Next you’ll type in your username and password and you’re directly connected to your dedicated computer back home.
You will begin by selecting TV shows from the Program Guide. You can choose to record the show once or record it every time it comes on. It is similar to programming your DVR.
From within the web pages, you will find “Basic Settings” and then “iTunes Integration Settings”. All you have to do is click on the iTunes button next to the “All Recordings” label and it will add your podcast to your list of podcasts in iTunes.
You can set up iTunes to download all the episodes of the podcast or let you select which ones you want. When we are traveling I usually need to select only my favorites since they do take a while to download.
4. TIPS FROM THE EXPERIENCED
The first thing you’ll need to do is train whoever lives at the home of the dedicated computer how to restart it. From time to time computers like to be restarted. About once every four months, I have to have my father in-law unplug the computer, count to fifteen and then plug it back in. It’s a Windows thing. When I notice that the feed has gone silent and restarting it has always solved the problem.
The other thing I would set up is a free version of http://www.logmein.com. This will allow you to see the desktop of your dedicated computer from any computer worldwide. I primarily use this to manually restart the computer every couple of months as a preventative measure.
The bottom line is that I haven’t physically touched the dedicated computer since I set it up. My father in-law has restarted it a few times but I have been able to handle any other problems remotely using Logmein and the BeyondTV web pages.
BOTTOM LINE:
Because of this setup, I always have the ten latest Daily Shows on my iPhone ready to watch. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I listen/watch old episodes of Frasier on my iPod. I can download any show that my dedicated computer recorded about 30 minutes after it was on! Once the shows are downloaded to my laptop, I can watch them anywhere even when I’m not connected to the internet.
As I mentioned before we had two Apple TVs in Germany that received these programs via the podcast feed and presented them to us in chronological order just like a TiVo would. It was great having all our TV programs available to watch whenever we wanted on a real TV.
Currently we are in month nine of a year of travel. After my laptop downloads the TV shows via the podcast, I copy them to a thumb drive and watch them on the TVs in each of the rental houses using a tiny WD Media Player that we also travel with. The quality when watching them on a big TV is a bit fuzzy but very acceptable.
For people that travel a lot or live abroad, you will find this system to be very useful. It gives you the flexibility to choose what to watch and when to watch it. The best part is that you don’t have to be connected to the Internet when you watch it.
Feel free to ask questions in this thread if I can clarify something or give advise. Post the question in the thread and don’t PM me so that others can learn from the question.
Happy TV watching!
Last edited by olafman; Mar 20, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Mar 20, 2011, 8:23 pm
#2
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: YYZ
Posts: 6,138
Great post!
We had BeyondTV way back in the day - two Hauppauge analog tuners and a 80 GB hard drive... good times...
I went the SlingBox route a few years back and I've been happy with it, but this podcast feature is very interesting....
We had BeyondTV way back in the day - two Hauppauge analog tuners and a 80 GB hard drive... good times...
I went the SlingBox route a few years back and I've been happy with it, but this podcast feature is very interesting....
Mar 20, 2011, 8:26 pm
#3
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Digital Nomad
Programs: AA2MM LIFETIME PLT, Turkish Miles&Smiles Elite, Marriott Plat
Posts: 1,024
I actually have both Slingbox and BeyondTV and MUCH prefer BeyondTV. Traveling internationally, I got tired of bad Internet connections which make the stream stutter.
I watch stuff from BeyondTV about 98% of the time. I only use Slingbox for live events like Superbowl, Oscars, Miss America Pageant... (Just kidding on the latter!)
I watch stuff from BeyondTV about 98% of the time. I only use Slingbox for live events like Superbowl, Oscars, Miss America Pageant... (Just kidding on the latter!)
Mar 21, 2011, 7:55 am
#4
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: BCN
Programs: BA Gold · A3 Gold · DL Gold · VY apologist
Posts: 8,545
That's an impressive setup! I decided to go an easier way, with a subscription to TV Torrents and a copy of Automatic. When a download finishes it gets copied to a LinkStation NAS, and Media Center Master cleans up the file names, downloads metadata and artwork, and organizes everything into the right folders. We can watch it with whatever software but use Windows 7MC on a Mac Mini most of the time.
This way we get HD versions of everything and don't have to worry about messing with another machine.
This way we get HD versions of everything and don't have to worry about messing with another machine.
Mar 21, 2011, 6:36 pm
#5
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Seattle
Programs: AS MVPG 75K
Posts: 2,574
That's an impressive setup! I decided to go an easier way, with a subscription to TV Torrents and a copy of Automatic. When a download finishes it gets copied to a LinkStation NAS, and Media Center Master cleans up the file names, downloads metadata and artwork, and organizes everything into the right folders. We can watch it with whatever software but use Windows 7MC on a Mac Mini most of the time.
This way we get HD versions of everything and don't have to worry about messing with another machine.
This way we get HD versions of everything and don't have to worry about messing with another machine.
This BeyondTV setup looks very interesting, I may put it together for my RTW this summer, as I already have most of the requisite hardware.
Mar 21, 2011, 7:39 pm
#6
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 11,439
That's an impressive setup! I decided to go an easier way, with a subscription to TV Torrents and a copy of Automatic. When a download finishes it gets copied to a LinkStation NAS, and Media Center Master cleans up the file names, downloads metadata and artwork, and organizes everything into the right folders. We can watch it with whatever software but use Windows 7MC on a Mac Mini most of the time.
This way we get HD versions of everything and don't have to worry about messing with another machine.
This way we get HD versions of everything and don't have to worry about messing with another machine.
Mar 22, 2011, 3:40 am
#7
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: BCN
Programs: BA Gold · A3 Gold · DL Gold · VY apologist
Posts: 8,545
No, it isn't: I'm circumventing the American TV networks' control over where their programming can be watched. There is nothing unethical about it. End result is exactly the same: I'm watching TV shows from the US in a country where they don't distribute them. Ethically there is zero difference.
Mar 22, 2011, 3:42 am
#8
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: BCN
Programs: BA Gold · A3 Gold · DL Gold · VY apologist
Posts: 8,545
Automatic: http://codingcurious.com/automatic/
Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Media Center Master: http://www.mediacentermaster.com/
Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Media Center Master: http://www.mediacentermaster.com/
Mar 22, 2011, 6:30 am
#9
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 11,439
Automatic: http://codingcurious.com/automatic/
Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Media Center Master: http://www.mediacentermaster.com/
Transmission: http://www.transmissionbt.com/
Media Center Master: http://www.mediacentermaster.com/
Thanks, googling for "automatic software" was not very productive.
^
Mar 22, 2011, 7:10 pm
#10
Original Poster
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Digital Nomad
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I'd like to repeat that the point of me writing about BeyondTV is to offer people a legal way to watch TV abroad.
FYI, Germany has far too many lawyers graduating each year. So the most recent unemployed recent graduates have been pursuing people who torrent. Kabel Deutschland happily gives them the list of people dabbling. The fines are now going out. I know two people who got nabbed for over 1000 euros in fines.
Torrenting any sort of copyrighted material regardless of where you live seems illegal to me. With BeyondTV I don't have to enter into this debate.
FYI, Germany has far too many lawyers graduating each year. So the most recent unemployed recent graduates have been pursuing people who torrent. Kabel Deutschland happily gives them the list of people dabbling. The fines are now going out. I know two people who got nabbed for over 1000 euros in fines.
Torrenting any sort of copyrighted material regardless of where you live seems illegal to me. With BeyondTV I don't have to enter into this debate.
Last edited by olafman; Mar 22, 2011 at 7:23 pm
Mar 22, 2011, 7:20 pm
#11
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Seattle
Programs: AS MVPG 75K
Posts: 2,574
No, it isn't: I'm circumventing the American TV networks' control over where their programming can be watched. There is nothing unethical about it. End result is exactly the same: I'm watching TV shows from the US in a country where they don't distribute them. Ethically there is zero difference.
Whether you believe torrenting ethical is certainly something only you can determine, but it is categorically illegal.
And I'm really not trying to condescend, I have torrented an enormous amount of media and view it as an ethical failure on my part. I completely understand the draw and if I had not found a good way to legally record tv to my computer probably would still be doing it
Mar 23, 2011, 3:09 am
#12
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: BCN
Programs: BA Gold · A3 Gold · DL Gold · VY apologist
Posts: 8,545
Actually, yes, Beyond TV most certainly does strip commercials from TV shows. It's even listed as a bullet right up there in the very first screenshot. And while Germany may be cranking out legions of lawyers to sue people, where I live it's not illegal.
The OP and I are doing exactly the same thing; the end result is exactly the same. We're using slightly different software to accomplish it. I just wanted to point out an alternative for those who don't have in-laws willing to share their internet connection.
The OP and I are doing exactly the same thing; the end result is exactly the same. We're using slightly different software to accomplish it. I just wanted to point out an alternative for those who don't have in-laws willing to share their internet connection.