ShowShifter Digital Media Gateway ShowShifter Puts It All Together Douglas Smith
ShowShifter sports some really advanced features like pausing live broadcasts, a Digital Video Recorder, DVD Playback, and Music and MP3 playback. We put these features to work as soon as we loaded the program on our system (AMD Duron 700 with 128 Mb of RAM). However, we will let you know up front that you need to run Windows 98/ME/2000; NT4 is not supported at this time. Also necessary are DirectX 7 or higher and DirectMedia Runtimes, along with a copy of Windows Media Player 6.0 or higher. You should have some sort of graphics capture card; the ones that have been tested are the Hauppauge/WinTV, ATI, and Matrox. If you intend to use DVD, you will need a suitable DVD player, and Home Media Networks recommends using CineMaster 99 OEM codecs or WinDVD. We did notice that interacting with the DVD is by keyboard or remote control only, since in this beta the mouse is not functional. Help is via HTML documents that come with the program, using the F1 key or Help on the program interface.
During the setup phase Home Media Networks recommends starting up in the Safe Mode from the menu. While in Safe Mode, set up Channels, Picture, Sound, Tuner, Capture Driver, Picture, Sound, and, based on your configuration, there may be several other settings. The intricacy of setup could make a novice feel a little shy, and certainly it is possible to get in trouble quickly with only F1 Help on hand. We felt there should be more documentation or assistance for installation. We were told by Home Media Networks officials that an Installation Wizard will ship with the final version and should take care of any questions that might arise.
Remembering that ShowShifter was still in beta did make us feel better, however, presuming that when the program arrives in January 2001, a lot of installation woes will go away.
