Snapstream and Girder VS Plutohome

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I was wondering what is the benefit of Plutohome VS Snapstream and Girder?
Granted Snapstream and Girder must run on windoze, but does Plutohome offer anything more?

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what is Granted Snapstream and Girder?

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They are 2 products that basically make a M$ windoze machine behave like snapstream.  Here are links to the software.

http://www.snapstream.com/

http://www.promixis.com/products.php

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From what I can gather, the first product that you mentioned is a windows based PVR and the second is windows based control software.

The key difference, I think, with plutohome is that plutohome is a complete home framework that incorporates all electronic devices including of course PCs and utilises a variety of software to do what that software does best. It is not software that you install and run on a single PC to do something in particular, like the products that you mention.
Instead it is a complete home solution that utilises PCs where appropriate and gives a single interface to the software that does things like device control and PVR functionaility.

It treats everything electronic in your home as a device. This includes things like light switches all the way to software PVRs (like MythTV). Each device exists in a heirarchy and there will be controlling (smarter) devices in this heirarchy that know how to interface with the dumber devices. The root of this heirarchy is a server type PC (the Core). Plutohome allows management and configuration of all the devices and the addition and creation of new ones. Once a device exists then it can be controlled with direct commands or can take part in pre programmed scenarios.

It does this by incorporating the abundance of software available in the public domain but could also (theoretically) control the software that you have mentioned as well.

So there is a great deal of difference between it and the software you mentioned. If you just want to use an existing PC to record TV or control some lights then Plutohome is effectively overkill and you are probably more interested in products like you have listed (or public domain equivalents).

Hope that sort of makes sense. This is all my interpretation and opinion of course and the Pluto staff may not necessarily agree with this.

Regards
Darren

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I have to agree with Darren. Besides what Darren mentioned i add another one.
Another difference is that Pluto comes with it's own operating system and it's free, and that piece of software needs windows to run.
with pluto you have no limit regarding devices support. a new device can be programmed (by us or by community) and create support for it with minimum effort.
You have to understand Pluto as a Core, the main router does all the tricks, communicating with devices (network, bluetooth, ir, rs232, usb, firewire), sending alerts, media streams, etc.; so the main frame is there and working. That makes adding new devices just a routine.
=
For example you want to control a new tv that just came from the factory.
You just need to create a new device in Pluto, that inherits data from a device template, give a name, choose the way how it works (lets say ir) and later learn the ir codes from remote in pluto. that way you can control the tv without having to use the remote again. plus that you can share the codes to other users so they benefit too from your initial effort to learn ir codes.

hope make sense,
dan

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You have very good points.