I love SnapStream PVS. Been useing it for quite some time. Nice to see a more Tivoish system, but still way out of my grandparents legue. They have been looking for a DVR/PVR system. Anyone know of a good set box they wouldn't have to pay service for?

I tried the SnapStream PVR and I was very disapointed with it. I really liked the interface, but the display and recording quality was totally unacceptable. I did change it to use the highest quality codecs, but it was still much worse than the other PVR packages I've tried. I have a ATI Radeon 9800 AIW and it doesn't seem to work real well with the Radeon cards. The other aspect that I didn't like was that it always has the stream caching on. In other words, if you don't use the PVR (pause live TV, etc...) and just want to view live TV it is still thrashing the CPU and hard drive trying to cache the video stream. It's probably not a big deal, but I got annoyed seeing the CPU meter and hard drive lights going full tilt when watching live TV. I prefer other packages that only cache the stream when PVR is turned on.

On the positive side, the interface is one of the best I've used. Although I think a better one could be made with DesktopX. Anyone up for it? Brazen??? And the Media server and ability to stream to other PCs in your home (or on the Internet) is very cool. Also, it doesn't work with HW decoders.

Just my 2 cents worth...

Carpe:
Always timeshifting is easily disabled in the config. It's in the Web Admin page (http://localhost:8129) so you may not have found it. As far as video quality, I have mine configured were I can't tell the difference between live TV and recorded TV on a properly calibrated 32" Wega.