Product Requirements:
Device:
Compaq iPAQ, Casio Cassiopeia, HP Jornada (if using PocketPVS module)

Desktop:
Windows 98/ME/2000 (Windows 95/NT currently not supported)
Pentium II-350MHz or faster PC, with at least 1 GB of hard drive space, 16 MB of RAM, a TV tuner or video capture card

Picture if you will, you're in a boring meeting or class. You stare at the speaker's lips as they move but nothing they are saying is sinking into your brain. You have just entered the Zone-Out Zone (I visit this place quite frequently). How do you escape it you ask? You pull out your Pocket PC and watch a classic rerun of Three's Company! No, I'm not kidding, you can watch video on your Pocket PC using a software/hardware solution from SnapStream Media. 

The hardware side of the solution involves a TV Tuner card for your desktop PC. Some cards that the SnapStream software supports are:

Hauppauge WinTV series PCI cards
Matrox Marvel G200-TV and G400-TV cards
AVerMedia TV98 cards
ATI All-In-Wonder and TV Wonder cards 
Pinnacle Systems Studio PCTV-USB 
Winnov Videum cards 
Viewcast Osprey cards 
any WDM video capture/tv tuner device 

I used the Hauppauge WinTV series PCI card for this review. SnapStream Media sells this card with the software in an optional bundle. Installation was a snap.

The software side of the solution is a software package called SnapStream PVS. PVS stands for Personal Video Station. This software in a very basic sense is a recording and watching interface (aka VCR) for video recorded thru the video/TV tuner card in your PC. There's quite a bit more to the package than that though.... or there will be.... 

Installation of the software is pretty simple. A nice hardware wizard detects the TV tuner card that you are using and helps with the important settings. Once the software is installed, it will put an icon in the task tray that you can use to initiate recordings etc.

(Right most icon)

The interface to the software is actually a web page. A very cool feature to be is the ability to actually set up recordings and view recordings across the net. I had no luck in getting this to work during my testing, but supposedly you can log into SnapStream (if it's running on your PC and your PC is online) and setup new recordings. This is great if you happen to have forgotten to set up a recording and are at work. Imagine this... you're talking to your friend Bob and he says "Don't forget to watch Survivor tonight" and you say "Oh darn! I won't be home in time to watch and I didn't set the VCR to tape it!" With the network features of SnapStream, you'll be able to sit down at any PC connected to the internet and program your PC to record the show. How cool is that?

You are also supposed to be able to watch your recorded shows via the net or other networked computer. Again, I was unable to test this and there weren't any good instructions that I could find on their site explaining how to do it.

Recording setup is done by clicking on the Record webpage button. From this page, you can set up a recording. Doing this is pretty easy. You just give it a date, time and channel. You can also set it up so that the recordings will repeat Once, Weekly, only on Weekdays or Daily. Unfortunately, there isn't an electronic program guide to aid you in the setup. I think this program would be great if it could interface with the TV Guide website and allow you to click on a show and have it automatically set up to record. 

The Advanced recording settings page allows you to change the recording quality, show genre, ratings etc. 

Recording quality is an important consideration. The better the playback quality, the more space a recording takes on your hard drive. If you look at the list below (there are more quality settings available than are shown), you'll see a BIG difference in quality vs. space.

Near DVD: 2200 kbps, 30 min = 495.0 MB
VHS: 1200 kbps, 30 min = 270.0 MB
iPAQ High: 192 kbps, 30 min = 43.2 MB
iPAQ Standard: 128 kbps, 30 min = 28.8 MB
Casio, HP: 124 kbps, 30 min = 27.9 MB

One 'gotcha' with this program is that you can NOT watch a show (even the one being recorded) while the software is recording a show. You actually can't use any application that would use the TV tuner card while it's trying to record something. There also isn't an interface to watch live TV thru the software. You can only watch recorded shows.

I tested this software on an 800Mhz Athlon system with 256MB of RAM. I didn't have any system slow downs while shows were recording. The only problem that I had was that the display would flicker when a show began recording. This would only happen the first second or two at the beginning of the capture process.

Although I didn't have any slow downs, I did have frequent computer lock ups. I'm talking total lock ups where even the cursor wouldn't move and CTRL-ALT-DEL would have no effect. I'm pretty sure this was due to the SnapStream software as the problem stopped once I exited the application. I think there are still quite a few bugs in the current version (1.2). One night during my testing, it caused me to lock up about 5 times in a row.... interrupting my MSN Messenger jabber-jaw session with Judie which annoyed both of us.

Once shows have been recorded, you can watch them directly on your desktop or send them to your Pocket PC. This review is going to focus more on viewing shows on your Pocket PC instead of a desktop, but I do want to talk a little bit about it. 

A nice listings page is created that displays the recorded shows. From there, you can launch them into Windows Media Player which does a pretty good job of displaying them. You can also delete shows thru this list.

It would be great if there was an option in Media Player that would allow you to fast forward 30 seconds. It would be quite handy for skipping commercials!

To view a show on the Pocket PC, you need the PocketPVS module.... The PocketPVS module is a seperate module that syncs the recorded shows to your Pocket PC. This module will convert the recorded file into a format that the Pocket PC can read and will then ActiveSync it to the Pocket PC. However, I found that as long as I chose one of the Pocket PC quality recording settings, I could just take the file and copy it straight to my compact flash card using a CF card reader. This was MUCH faster than ActiveSyncing it!

That's the problem with having video content on a Pocket PC, it takes up a LOT of space. You pretty much have to have a CF card since a 1hr show recorded in standard quality will need about 57MB of storage space. And a high quality formatted show will need about 86MB on the iPAQ.

I tested the two iPAQ quality settings and found them both to be quite adequate. Actually, I couldn't tell a whole lot of difference between the iPAQ Standard and iPAQ High quality recordings. They seemed pretty comparable to me. So, I used the standard quality more often than not to do my testing. 

To play back the shows on the Pocket PC, you need one of the latest versions of the Pocket PC Media Player (the built-in version will not work). 

Playback while a tiny bit fuzzy, was still smooth and not jerky. Audio quality was also nice. But like desktop viewing, I would really like to see a 30sec skip button. Also, a place marker would be great so if you didn't want to watch the whole show at one time, you could mark your place and come back to it later.

There is a huge gee-whiz factor to carrying around the latest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on your Pocket PC. Being able to watch your favorite show while waiting for a flight at the airport, or waiting in line at the grocery store is just too cool for words in my book. 

We are in the era of Dick Tracy gadgets and gizmos folks! And once SnapStream works out the kinks, I think it's going to be a very popular application.

Price:  
$49.99 SnapStream PVS
$29.99 PocketPVS module
$89.99 SnapStream PVS & Hauppauge WinTV GO-PCI TV Tuner Card
Freeware version available with 2GB storage limitation

Pros:
The ability to watch TV shows on your Pocket PC

Cons:
SnapStream software has quite a few bugs
Video content takes up precious storage space
Syncing shows to the PocketPC take a LONG time.