Things to do with the new TV engine (2 Viewers)

[infinite.loop]

Gigabit uses the same cables as Megabit (i.e. 1000BT uses same cable as 100BT). So all you need is a gigabit switch/router.

it could happen hat old or very cheap cat5 cables may not work with gigabit, or only on very short distances. (allready had such cables at work :roll: )

if you plan to use 1gb network-components you should buy cat6 cables or at least cat5e.
if you want to know more about cat5 look here

 

[ASiDiE]

Has there been any thought on adding the ability to stream live and pre-recorded shows over the internet at a lower bit-rate depending on your connection? This would also work for people using slower WIFI. The quality might be a little lower, but at least it would work. There is only one Media center that has this as far as I know (sagetv) and a stand alone product called Orb. If your connection is very good (Lan) it would just play the file as is. If the connection is a little slower, it could still play the file. Streaming your shows to your PDA using MPBLUE or your laptop when you are out on the road would be KILLER

 

[Frodo]

Has there been any thought on adding the ability to stream live and pre-recorded shows over the internet at a lower bit-rate depending on your connection?

But offcourse. however i dont think that will be in the first sneak preview of the new tvserver. Still got loads of stuff todo.
My idea is to first release a 'simple' version which can do all the basics
and then add more advanced features to it like:
- re-encoding the stream to lower the bandwidth
- integration with comskip/comclean
- support for multiple backends
- etc etc

But keep those idea's coming!!

Frodo

 

[ASiDiE]

Damn Frodo... that' sweet. Glad to see you back. I have been walking around with a smile on my face all day... just thinking about what is to come. Keep up the good work and I am looking forward to seeing your new TV engine in action!

 

[Buzzard]

Wired speed stagnant? I know time where 10 MBit was great (and I am not tooooo old ).
Flip.

haha, didnt have to push 4Gb+ files back then though.

I have a reasonable wifi set up going on here, but I'm way behind on networking

need to learn more

 

[knutinh]

The main benefit of 802.11n seems to be MIMO with the promised ability to:
-avoid local variation due to fading
-optimally use of the "envelope" given by max radiated power and max bandwidth usage through spatial mechanisms

In all radio communications, the received signal level is important because it is what allows us to receive a waveform that can be decoded into ones and zeros. Actually, it is usually the system signal-to-noise ratio that is most important, but since signal and noise is uncorrelated, and noise may either be white noise from electronics or interference from other radios, we cant do a lot about it.

Anyways, the signal level is usually a function of distance. Greater distance means that a radiated wave "thins out" just like the sun is weaker on Pluto than on Earth. The signal level will also drop if we have an object blocking the free line of sight to the transmitter. Try closing the window to a (acoustically) noisy street for an example. But on top of this, we get what is known as "fading". Real environments, especially human-made, contains a lot of flat structures that reflect radio waves well. When you are listening to a transmitter you are actually listening to a sum of many reflected echos that are shifted in time and attenuated. This fading patter can occur as a function of position (the pattern changes if the distance to the reflectors changes) or time (if the reflectors themselves are moving). This pattern can look like:

Now, if the receiver by accident is in a deep "null", the SNR may be very low, even though the averaged SNR over time and position is good enough. Moving by a halv wavelength often is enough to get out of this null, and a wavelength at 2.4 GHz isnt much.

Now, I have understood it as MIMO technology sees several spatial "channels" and tries to optimize a budget where the total transmitted power is balanced against each other. The simplest modus would be simply selecting the antenna that has the best SNR at every instant. That is similar to classic antenna diversity. But if antenna #1 and antenna #2 have paths to receiver antenna #1 and #2 that are different, one may benefit from dividing power between those two, and then using error correction to remove interference.

regards
knut

 

[Buzzard]

absorbing that

I've heard of wifi routers that work better with radio obstacales that ussually would impede performance and create noise. Is that the MIMO tech your refering to?

I remember hearing something about massively increased range compared to g but, at 2.4 ghz even with this MIMO gear though can we expect a big performance boost. My home g network took a performance dive when a couple of neighbouring networks started up, changing channels didn't help much from what I can see. hopefully this will improve with the n standard.

what they planed with engine is cool though, converting down will be fine with me.

 

[ASiDiE]

I have been thinking about the TV Engine some more. I would just like to point out some cool features that I would also like to see.

* Ability to record in different formats (Divx, Xvid, WMV)
* If recording the straight Mpeg-2, have an easy way to convert to other formats. (like our compress feature but all built in with options)
* Because the TV engine is a service, the ability to set up schedules to perform stuff. Like compress videos after recording if idle for 5 min or run compression at night on selected videos.
* Maybe have an option to install just the service on PC's on the network. This way it could find a free service and take some of the load off of your main PC. You could be compressing as many files as you had services at the same time
* Compress settings for videos by size. I have a 2 hour movie, and I want the best quality for a 650mb CD or a 128MB SD card for my PDA.
* Support for Divx 6.1 (it's suppose to be a ton better)

I totally understand that this product is new and it's has a long way to go. I am simply expressing my thoughts.

Keep up the good work.

 

[infinite.loop]

* Ability to record in different formats (Divx, Xvid, WMV)

if you have ever tried to convert a movie into one of these formats you should know how slow that could be (or how fast the CPU has to be).
so recording in an other format than the stream is, may not be a good idea

*Maybe have an option to install just the service on PC's on the network.

erm... thats exactly the new client - server system

 

[bear]

ASiDiE wrote:

* Ability to record in different formats (Divx, Xvid, WMV)

Does anyone know of any directshow filters that can do these conversions? i.e. MPEG2->Divx, Xvid, WMV