SnapStream Personal Video Station SnapStream PVS Up Close And Personal Douglas Smith
If your household is anything like mine you probably have at least one VCR for recording those programs that you just can’t be at home to watch every time. For us sports fanatics, getting a TV to view our freshly recorded sports events is like pulling teeth. When we finally get a TV to view our shows it is probably late at night, long after the outcome has already been established. Until now this was pretty much the way it was for me around my house--until I tried SnapStream PVS (PVS), now in final beta and due out later this month. PVS turns a PC into a personal television-recording studio with the ability to program any number of shows to watch any time.
Of course, a VCR will do this, but PVS offers more than the average VCR. PVS recordings are viewable from just about anywhere in the world accessible to the Internet. PVS stands for Personal Video Station, and the only thing needed besides a PC is an inexpensive video capture card--about $50. Just imagine being at work, or for that matter across the country, and wanting to see a PGA golf tournament recorded using your PVS a few days earlier. Just log on to the PVS running on the home PC, plug in the password and select Watch from the menu, and all available recordings are cued up for viewing.
How this works is simple: all recordings are captured using a streaming media format and then viewed via a built-in streaming media server. This basically allows access from just about anyplace in the world. View recordings over home networks, the Internet, or LAN systems at work. Note, to watch recordings over the Internet requires some type of broadband connection at home where the video recordings are stored.