Shareware software is very often up to the same high standards and quality as software that you see in a box in a store. Without all the overheads due to distribution and packaging, the cost of shareware software can be considerably lower in comparison to 'boxed' software.

Another advantage of shareware software is that you can very often try before you buy; typically during this trial period certain features of the software are disabled, or there are other limitations.

You can try out BTV and BTV Pro for 15 days completely free of charge. During this time all features are available; I decided not to disable any features to give you the best possible view of my software. You will, however, receive periodic reminder messages asking you to purchase.

After the 15 day trial period you must either purchase the software or stop using it.

All payments for my software are handled by my payment company, Kagi, who can accept payments by cash in all major currencies, USD cheque, and credit card. The easiest way to purchase is online using a credit card (Kagi uses secure servers), this process takes only a few minutes. Kagi takes great care to be as secure as possible, and is also consistently efficient and reliable. Click here for my online order page.

Every Macintosh video input device uses driver software written by the manufacturer; BTV and other video software access the device through these drivers.

My software can only work with devices that have Macintosh driver software provided by the manufacturer. If the device has Macintosh driver software written for it then it will work, otherwise it will not.

You need to have a full install of Apple's FireWire software and QuickTime, and a DV camera must be connected and switched on.

Make sure virtual memory is turned OFF. Also, this was more of a problem with versions of QuickTime below 5, so if you are not using QuickTime 5 please install it as it should improve this situation.

Yes, my software has a full implementation of channel changing for the TurboTV, ixTV and ixTV/FM cards. See the user manual for more information.

You are most likely missing the 'ixtv vdig' extension. This came with your ixTV software and is required for my software (and other video software) to access the card. You can download the driver software for this card from my download section.

This problem is due to a conflict with the Apple CD/DVD Driver software in OS9. To fix this problem you can download an older version of this driver by clicking here and put it into you Extensions folder instead of the newer driver (do not delete the newer driver, just remove it from the Extensions folder).

Alternatively you can connect a 3.5mm stereo jack connector from the ixTV card's sound output port to the sound input port of the Mac and then set the sound settings in BTV to the audio input of the Mac.

Most likely your video hardware has multiple inputs, for example 'Tuner' and 'Composite' for TV cards. Please make sure the right input is selected in the Video Settings window under 'Source'.

If you have QuickTime 4.1, OS9, and an HFS+ disk there is no limit to the size of captured files (except the limit imposed by the free space on your hard drive!). Otherwise the limit of captured files is 2GB, in which case BTV will automatically split captures into 2GB files.

Even if your system can capture files larger than 2GB it is often desirable to split the capture into separate 2GB files (for example for transferring the files over a network). BTV can do this if you wish.

BTV can also split up captured files to several different hard drives in sequence.

BTV cannot create MPEG streams; you will need a separate software product that converts movies into MPEG streams. There are several commercial products that do this such as M-PACK from Astarte, or there is a free one called Movie2MPEG.

The user manual is included in the software package of BTV and BTV Pro, both of which can be obtained from the download section of the web site. The user manuals are in PDF format and can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat.

There is an application that goes some way to achieving this: TV Reminder by Eerko Vissering. It is an application that works very closely with BTV to schedule your TV programs, reminding you when one is about to start and automatically launching BTV in the correct mode (full screen or window mode as desired).

This was a problem in early versions of the driver software. Please go to this web page and download the latest driver software:

http://www.pc-cameras.philips.com

It is also strongly recommended that you install QuickTime 5 from Apple.

This is a problem with Apple's USB Audio drivers. You can fix this temporarily by setting the sound input to anything other than USB Audio (or disabling audio altogether), or set the sound volume in the 'Sound Settings' window to a value 12 or below. A permanent solution to the problem is to install QuickTime 5 from Apple.

Yes, I am currently working on a Carbon (OSX) version and will have it released as soon as possible.

Please download HackTV by clicking here. HackTV is Apple's very simple video application. If HackTV has the same problem as BTV then it is likely that BTV is not causing the problem. If HackTV works fine and BTV does not then the problem is caused by BTV, in which case please let me know so that I can try to fix the problem!

If you have a question that I have not answered on this page, please contact me.