Things to do with the new TV engine (1 Viewer)

knutinh

Portal Pro
September 4, 2005
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I have one idea. Would it be possible to use the TVEngine 3.0 for builing a light-weight passive diskless VIA pc close to analog/DVB-T/sat antennas that did all the "detuning", then run a single ethernet cable from that computer into a HTPC?

-k
 

Nightmare77

Portal Pro
July 5, 2005
531
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Canberra
Home Country
sounds like a plan to me, will be interesting to see how much grunt the server machine will need , you would think not a huge amount, as it sounds like it just sends the transmission over the LAN to the htpc, i know i can't wait
 

knutinh

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September 4, 2005
558
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Even better, can this be used to replace cable tv systems? In my appartement we have a really crappy internal cable tv distributed by analog modulated regular signals, fed by sat. and a rack of regular sat decoders. By setting up a server with 10 sat. tuners and this TV engine service running, we should be able to serve 20 appartements with only a ethernet cable lan.

But then one would probably need "Mediaportal embedded" in a $50 box, and still some would complain about the expense. Why arent everyone as hung up on quality and features as my self? =)

-k
 

Buzzard

Portal Member
July 5, 2006
18
0
Sunshine Coast, Australia
Congrats to the Devs on a job well done on 0.2

The new engine sounds very cool, and cant wait for it, just wondering though.

The server client idea, am i going to get away with this with a wireless (access point 54mb) setup supporting 3 pc's

Should i wire up? would that be enough?
 

knutinh

Portal Pro
September 4, 2005
558
2
I guess the first guesstimate would be looking at the available wlan bandwidth and the bandwidth of the data that you expect to carry.

I dunno the typical available bandwidth of a 54mb 802.11g, but I know that its no 54mb :) Lets say 25mbit continous for starters. Then you would have enough to transfer +/-:

-a single MPEG2 HD stream
-3 DVD-quality MPEG2 SD streams
-~25 DIVX streams
-perhaps 2 HD h264/AVC/MPEG4p10 streams (depending)
-perhaps 12 SD h264/AVC/MPEG4p10 streams (depending)


Add to this that you always have to have some bandwidth to spare, that spurious interferences could cause a loss of video etc. I would go for ethernet, possibily having wlan as a "plan B" for otrher rooms etc.

regards
Knut
 

infinite.loop

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    knutinh said:
    I have one idea. Would it be possible to use the TVEngine 3.0 for builing a light-weight passive diskless VIA pc close to analog/DVB-T/sat antennas that did all the "detuning", then run a single ethernet cable from that computer into a HTPC?
    i would not do that.

    Client:
    you can build such a small form PC to be used as HTPC since you do not need to install tv-cards.
    you only need a DVD drive, hdd and a vga card.

    Server:
    if you want to use more than one TV-card and host videos on this system you should use a standart atx case which is easy to cool. an because it can be stored everywhere (i.e. in the basement) you do not need to use an eyecandy case.
    if you have "only" one server, it also needs to run the database.

    generally speaking i always try to get a wired LAN (cat5) done. and only for areas i can not reach i use a WAN in addition.
    wired networks are always fast and reliable
     

    knutinh

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    September 4, 2005
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    infinityloop said:
    knutinh said:
    I have one idea. Would it be possible to use the TVEngine 3.0 for builing a light-weight passive diskless VIA pc close to analog/DVB-T/sat antennas that did all the "detuning", then run a single ethernet cable from that computer into a HTPC?
    i would not do that.

    Client:
    you can build such a small form PC to be used as HTPC since you do not need to install tv-cards.
    you only need a DVD drive, hdd and a vga card.
    But for HD playback and ffdshow it may not be ultimate. Also, I dont know if DirectShow 9.0 support is common (or fast).
    Server:
    if you want to use more than one TV-card and host videos on this system you should use a standart atx case which is easy to cool. an because it can be stored everywhere (i.e. in the basement) you do not need to use an eyecandy case.
    if you have "only" one server, it also needs to run the database.
    I follow you. However, I think that an "always on, never seen" solution should use little power, have few moving parts (fans/harddrives). An industrial, passive VIA C3 solution with a flashdrive and sufficient USB/PCI would be ideal provided that the server doesnt take a lot of horsepower - and I cant see that it should.
    generally speaking i always try to get a wired LAN (cat5) done. and only for areas i can not reach i use a WAN in addition.
    wired networks are always fast and reliable
    Of course. In practice it is always a pain to install cable though. Perhaps Power Line Communications, if no neightbors are HF radio amateurs ;-)

    -k
     

    Buzzard

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    July 5, 2006
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    Interesting thought on the power line set up.

    could a quasi x10 like set up provide better results

    Screw radio get with the times, especially those who rely on it rural fire brigade, aussie thing.
     

    infinite.loop

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    knutinh said:
    An industrial, passive VIA C3 solution with a flashdrive and sufficient USB/PCI would be ideal provided that the server doesnt take a lot of horsepower - and I cant see that it should.
    at first i would bever buy anything from VIA. ;)
    we used smallform and integrated systems at work, always problems very unreliable.

    2nd. TV-server is doing the recordings, so you need a HDD.
    atm. we are not 100%sure how powerful the serverside system has to be, that needs to be tested.
    if you are going to use more than 1 TV-card you have to use a bigger case.
    knutinh said:
    Of course. In practice it is always a pain to install cable though. Perhaps Power Line Communications, if no neightbors are HF radio amateurs ;-)
    powerline is not worth the money. bandwith only allows you to use it for ADSL. (not speaking about the theoretically bandwith ;) )

    powerline has many flaws, i.e. you never know on which socket it will work, and it can also happen that if your neightbor turns on his washing machine your powerline dies.
     

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