TV and PC

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Is there an easy way to send tv programs over a network. Something like


TV -------- PC1 with TV-tuner-card (hardware
encoding?) ------LAN-------other PC2

Is this possible? Any ideas or things to pay attention to? System
requirements of PC1? Etc...
 
Is there an easy way to send tv programs over a network. Something like


TV -------- PC1 with TV-tuner-card (hardware
encoding?) ------LAN-------other PC2

Is this possible? Any ideas or things to pay attention to? System
requirements of PC1? Etc...
Click to expand...

Hauppauge WinTV Go card (about $50.00 -- try Best Buy or
Staples or maybe Circuit City) + Windows Media Encoder (free
download from Microsoft) + broadband to get decent outgoing
bandwidth + at least 1GHz CPU + Windows XP + at least
256 MB memory.

-- Bob Day
 
Nittaku said:
Is there an easy way to send tv programs over a network. Something like


TV -------- PC1 with TV-tuner-card (hardware
encoding?) ------LAN-------other PC2

Is this possible? Any ideas or things to pay attention to? System
requirements of PC1? Etc...
Click to expand...
On PC1 the tuner and rendereing
On PC2 a program to log in via lan to view and control PC1.
Depending on the OS you have such programs exist.

Draw back, is your lan fast enough?
 
On PC1 the tuner and rendereing
On PC2 a program to log in via lan to view and control PC1.
Depending on the OS you have such programs exist.

Draw back, is your lan fast enough?
Click to expand...

That won't work most of the time, since the picture is often using an
overlay that isn't visible at all except on the host's monitor, and
unless you have some mighty bandwidth on the LAN (Gb or better)) it
couldn't keep up with the framerate at moderately high resolutions.


Dave
 
Is there an easy way to send tv programs over a network. Something like

TV -------- PC1 with TV-tuner-card (hardware
encoding?) ------LAN-------other PC2

Is this possible? Any ideas or things to pay attention to? System
requirements of PC1? Etc...
Click to expand...
TV cards work by creating a bitmap image from the TV signal and then using
DirectDraw load this image into the display RAM. This happens 25 times a
second (in Europe, 30 times in US and some other places).
What you need is a software player that also encodes it into a streaming
format and broadcasts it across LAN. Such software is indeed being developed
for the consumer market. UK's digital terrestrial TV card maker Nebula
Electronics http://www.nebula-electronics.com is due to release its first
version at the end of this month for their own DTT cards. Nullsoft have a
free add-on for Winamp called Shoutcast that streams audio across LAN
http://www.shoutcast.com/ , video will hopefully follow. There are other
projects going on as well and I'm watching them as that's what I want for my
home too.
 
kony said:
That won't work most of the time, since the picture is often using an
overlay that isn't visible at all except on the host's monitor, and
unless you have some mighty bandwidth on the LAN (Gb or better)) it
couldn't keep up with the framerate at moderately high resolutions.
Click to expand...

What *will* work then. It's ok if the resolution is awful and the resolution
sucks.
I was thinking like: 730MB for a decent DivX-encoded movie, so the LAN has
like 90 minutes to send 730MB. Very feasable. Of course DivX encoding takes
a lot of time, so that's out of the question. But still I was hoping for
some other solution (hence my question in the above scheme: hardware
encoding?)
 
What *will* work then. It's ok if the resolution is awful and the
resolution
sucks.
Click to expand...

How about one of those video sender thingies to send from TV to other TVs
and monitors so that way you are doing it wirelessly and won't be stuck at
some sort of hardware bottleneck either.
 
What *will* work then. It's ok if the resolution is awful and the resolution
sucks.
I was thinking like: 730MB for a decent DivX-encoded movie, so the LAN has
like 90 minutes to send 730MB. Very feasable. Of course DivX encoding takes
a lot of time, so that's out of the question. But still I was hoping for
some other solution (hence my question in the above scheme: hardware
encoding?)
Click to expand...

Well I may have jumped to conclusions about what was meant by
"rendering"... You can't just "view" the remote system's desktop and
see the video if an overlay, or see it at 25-30FPS if it isn't an
overlay, that is too great a datarate. Even if the video playing on
the "server" system was compressed, it isn't being transferred over
the LAN as such through the remote control program.

If you instead used the remote-control program only for initiating the
video steam, changing channels and such, then it's possible.

Using a steaming, moderate to high compression codec like DIVX, a
common 100Mb LAN would be more than fast enough. It's not out of the
question to do Divx, the question is how, if it's possible, to set it
up to stream.

I had an Athlon XP220 doing realtime Divx capture at 640x480 w/MP3
audio, didn't try to underclock it to find the minimum perforomance
level necessary, but that's a suggestion for a minimal performance
target if you wanted streaming Divx, if you can find a way to stream
it. It might be good to assume there would be additional performance
needed for the streaming though.

You will probably need to do this backwards, find the streaming
solution you want to use and THEN determine what it's compatible with,
and THEN determine the system specs needed to do it.

Why not just put a tuner card in the remote system(s)?


Dave
 
You will probably need to do this backwards, find the streaming
solution you want to use and THEN determine what it's compatible with,
and THEN determine the system specs needed to do it.
Click to expand...

What streaming options do I have? :/
Why not just put a tuner card in the remote system(s)?
Click to expand...

The only place we have TV-coax-cable is where the TV set is currently
standing. 10 feet away is a table with the wireless 54g router on it and
printer connected to a LAN port of the router. Since I was planning to get a
new computer, I was searching for uses for the old one. I thought of placing
it under the TV table, connecting it to the TV and to the router somehow,
and watching some tv upstairs, or at least getting an idea of what show's
are on :)

I have no experience in PC-TV linking/hardware/software or streaming. So I
came for help here...
 
What streaming options do I have? :/


The only place we have TV-coax-cable is where the TV set is currently
standing. 10 feet away is a table with the wireless 54g router on it and
printer connected to a LAN port of the router. Since I was planning to get a
new computer, I was searching for uses for the old one. I thought of placing
it under the TV table, connecting it to the TV and to the router somehow,
and watching some tv upstairs, or at least getting an idea of what show's
are on :)

I have no experience in PC-TV linking/hardware/software or streaming. So I
came for help here...
Click to expand...

I'm not sure whether you want to encode AND stream realtime, or just
encode, THEN stream.... The latter could be accomplished with any ATI
or Hauppage VIVO card encoding realtime into MPEG2 - it's really quite
good quality; you will have control over the bitrate, down to about
1170 Mbit/min. The file sizes would be about 0.5-1 Gbyte/hour. That'd
be about VCD quality; good enough for some (but still very
blocky/blurry - I'd suggest a low DVD rate like 3000 mbit/min). You'd
have to find some kind of serving software; you could "publish" your
video to an intranet website, then serve it with your desktop to the
client computer as a streaming video.

However - I note that you have WiFi 54G - don't expect it will be fast
enough to stream any reasonable video at all - the actual transfer
rate isn't 54 Mbit - it's more like 22 Mbit total. You'd need at least
a 100 Mbit wired connection to stream a reasonable video. You could
encode (using something like tmpeg, I guess? I don't know) into the
Microsoft Media format; at about the 128-512 Kbit/sec (ie ISDN to low
broadband) setting it might stream ok.... but it'll be very small on
your screen!

Good luck in your search!
ECM
 
I'm not sure whether you want to encode AND stream realtime, or just
encode, THEN stream.... The latter could be accomplished with any ATI
or Hauppage VIVO card encoding realtime into MPEG2 - it's really quite
good quality; you will have control over the bitrate, down to about
1170 Mbit/min. The file sizes would be about 0.5-1 Gbyte/hour. That'd
be about VCD quality; good enough for some (but still very
blocky/blurry - I'd suggest a low DVD rate like 3000 mbit/min). You'd
have to find some kind of serving software; you could "publish" your
video to an intranet website, then serve it with your desktop to the
client computer as a streaming video.

However - I note that you have WiFi 54G - don't expect it will be fast
enough to stream any reasonable video at all - the actual transfer
rate isn't 54 Mbit - it's more like 22 Mbit total. You'd need at least
a 100 Mbit wired connection to stream a reasonable video. You could
encode (using something like tmpeg, I guess? I don't know) into the
Microsoft Media format; at about the 128-512 Kbit/sec (ie ISDN to low
broadband) setting it might stream ok.... but it'll be very small on
your screen!
Click to expand...

I found this in a Hauppage FAQ:

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/stream.htm

Comments on this? Will it work? Possible problems?
 
For 2Mbps streaming (that's lower than VHS LP quality) Windows Media
Encoder
requires a minimum of dual 2GHz processor PC. Is your "retiring" PC up to
it?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/sysreq.aspx

Do you have digital terrestrial TV in your country?
Click to expand...

I think digital TV is still in a test phase over here.

The problem using Windows Media Encoder is that the encoding is already done
by the hauppage-card, albeit in the MPEG-2 standard. Is there nothing you
can do with that?
 
I think digital TV is still in a test phase over here.

The problem using Windows Media Encoder is that the encoding is already done
by the hauppage-card, albeit in the MPEG-2 standard. Is there nothing you
can do with that?
Click to expand...
One of my current projects is streaming of DTT across LAN so I have not
investigated or experimented with analogue TV streaming at all.
The Hauppauge card only does mpeg2 compression when recording to hard drive.
The display data is not compressed therefore the streaming software needs to
do the compression.
 
I found this in a Hauppage FAQ:

http://www.hauppauge.com/html/stream.htm

Comments on this? Will it work? Possible problems?
Click to expand...

I think this might (as long as it's stable software) work fine to help
encode your captures to Windows Media format, but you'd still need to
publish them to your intranet. This software from Hauppage doesn't
encode then stream at the same time - I'm getting the feeling that
this is really what you want.... it IS tempting - watching TV on your
WiFi Tablet or laptop PC anywhere in the house you want to. The
technology isn't up to the challenge yet, though. We'll need
gigabit(or at least 100 Mbit async) WiFi, and some serious software
and hardware development before this'll happen.

Good luck! If you find a solution, post it - I'd be curious as to what
you eventually find....
ECM
 
ECM said:
<Nittaku> wrote in message

I think this might (as long as it's stable software) work fine to help
encode your captures to Windows Media format, but you'd still need to
publish them to your intranet. This software from Hauppage doesn't
encode then stream at the same time - I'm getting the feeling that
this is really what you want.... it IS tempting - watching TV on your
WiFi Tablet or laptop PC anywhere in the house you want to. The
technology isn't up to the challenge yet, though. We'll need
gigabit(or at least 100 Mbit async) WiFi, and some serious software
and hardware development before this'll happen.
Click to expand...

This I don't understand.

Encoding a TV signal in real time is possible, the hauppage card does it.
Sending data across a 100Mb network should be enough too. I don't see why
technology isn't up to the challenge yet.
 
This I don't understand.

Encoding a TV signal in real time is possible, the hauppage card does it.
Sending data across a 100Mb network should be enough too. I don't see why
technology isn't up to the challenge yet.
Click to expand...

Well, I think you could stream VCR quality (352X240, 30fps) across a
wired 100 mbit network - that's about SVCD quality. My comment was
that a wireless network, even 802.11g (or .11a), would not be adequate
for that kind of bitrate.

I think we'll have to see what the next 5 years holds for wireless LAN
- I'm not sure we'll see much of an increase in data transfer rates.
Remember that a lot of the bitrate increases we saw in the 90's (for
instance with modems) was due to better hardware compression BEFORE
transmission, not to more raw data being transmitted through the same
pipe. Video is already pretty optimally compressed - try "zip"ing an
MPEG file sometime - and it won't respond to this strategy. We need a
quantum shift in technology to be able to effectively stream high
quality video wirelessly, not tweaking of the current stuff.

And as for software, it usually is developed in response to available
hardware. The hardware is not really up to the task yet, so very
little software is available to do what you want. Even the "bleeding
edge" types wouldn't spend a lot of money on technology that would
allow them a small blocky picture with lots of pauses on $2000+ worth
of equipment, when they can turn on a sub-$100 TV and get a far
superior image.....

Anyways, an interesting thread!
Good Luck!
ECM
 
Well, I think you could stream VCR quality (352X240, 30fps) across a
wired 100 mbit network - that's about SVCD quality. My comment was
that a wireless network, even 802.11g (or .11a), would not be adequate
for that kind of bitrate.

I think we'll have to see what the next 5 years holds for wireless LAN
- I'm not sure we'll see much of an increase in data transfer rates.
Remember that a lot of the bitrate increases we saw in the 90's (for
instance with modems) was due to better hardware compression BEFORE
transmission, not to more raw data being transmitted through the same
pipe. Video is already pretty optimally compressed - try "zip"ing an
MPEG file sometime - and it won't respond to this strategy. We need a
quantum shift in technology to be able to effectively stream high
quality video wirelessly, not tweaking of the current stuff.

And as for software, it usually is developed in response to available
hardware. The hardware is not really up to the task yet, so very
little software is available to do what you want. Even the "bleeding
edge" types wouldn't spend a lot of money on technology that would
allow them a small blocky picture with lots of pauses on $2000+ worth
of equipment, when they can turn on a sub-$100 TV and get a far
superior image.....

Anyways, an interesting thread!
Good Luck!
ECM
Click to expand...


We don't really need any of that.
All that's needed with current technology to achieve better than VCR
quality is a server-side app that can use a conexant chipset card as
input, compress to divx and stream it, and a client-side app
"expecting" the format details communicated to it by the server app,
so it can pick up the stream at a keyframe.

Current CPUs sold are fast enough, 10Mb lan as well as 802.11g is fast
enough, even 802.11b is "almost" fast enough for 640x480 at reasonable
bitrate, a few dropped frames if the signal is degraded. The
applications just aren't there yet.

There really isn't any good reason to use SVCD unless you need to play
it in a modern DVD player. The other codecs can have increased
bitrate if that level of quality is desired, but bitrate chosen as
necessary to fit the available network. Old systems benefitted from
hardware-compression cards but today higher quality can be had (and
more control over it) with software compression. It's just not
something that could be done with a system that's slow, therefore
being semi-retired but expected to do this demanding task.


Dave
 
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