Snapstream Beyond TV is a digital TV recording software. It had what has always been my favorite interface. The application for public consumption was discontinued in 2010, when Snapstream decided to develop only for professional media clients such as Network TV, news media, and late night talk shows. To their credit Snapstream continues to provide TV guide updates to this day. Unfortunately for many when Microsoft released Windows 10, the application had to be mothballed. Recently I decided to purchase a new TV card to record OTA TV. I purchased a quad tuner Hauppauge for no other reason than to have to option of recording multiple channels all at same time, but the software that comes with the Hauppauge is primitive and spartan compared to Beyond TV (BTV). So I decided to try and make it work. At first it failed to install, which required me to download some older versions of .net, and then try installing it in compatibility mode, and it was a success. I set it up and everything seemed to be working, until about 2 hours later. Then I received the error Beyond TV failed to open Port 8129. So I began a net with little success. A common solution was to open manually open Port 8129, which I had already done. So I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it, and again it worked for about 2 hours before I received the Port 8129 failed message. So kept at it and then I discovered what I think is the problem. BTV required Internet Explorer to be installed. MS Edge would not work so I downloaded a copy of MS IE 11, and installed it, reinstalled BTV again, and then sat and waited, and then I noticed that IE tried to open and then failed, and then Edge opened, and I again received the Port 8129 failed message. From there I began experimenting with trying to uninstall Edge, but at first with little success. I then used the uninstall instructions in this link. It didn't uninstall but with a little extra effort I was able to make edge back off, and was then able to open IE on its own, but when I closed it, about 2 hours later I again got the error message. And then a thought occurred, why close IE? Why not leave it open and minimized? So I did that and BTV, has been running and recording successfully for three straight days now without an error. To the point, BTV, requires a functioning copy of Internet Explorer to work. There is one other setting in BTV that seems to be required. Under Settings, Playback Settings, preferred MPEG-2 decoder, I set it to "Snapstream Video/SP Decoder. It seems to require that setting as well as IE. See the image. https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-uninstall-microsoft-edge/
It is, but I had previously removed it since MS Edge can't be removed, and since I didn't see a need for it and Edge, that is until now. I never really liked IE, until I suddenly found myself in need of it. I wasn't recommending that others download it, I just mentioned that a did, but if other users like me had removed it then they will now know they need it. I think a lot of people will have removed it as well since its support ends on Aug. 2021. When I began looking for a solution I navigated to the Snapstream media install folder>beyondtv folder>wwwroot>app_browsers>CSSFriendlyAdapters and I found a single icon, indicating IE. I opened it as an Notepad++ document and examined the code. So the real question is, can I edit the code and have BTV look for Firefox, Edge, or Chrome instead?
I'm going to, along with a couple of other ideas. It still seems to be working as it should which is a plus. I scoured the net looking for a solution, and I saw a lot of suggestions, but didn't find a one that actually worked. So I figured it might be a good idea to post my experiences on AD, just in case someone looking for a solution stumbles upon my post.
