2006-08-02, 08:26 AM
Hello, there..
I should stress that I'm a complete newbie at this PVR lark, so be gentle :-)
I'm the computer technician for a large High School in Scotland. We have just installed a (fairly expensive) Freeview streaming system made by a company called Exterity (http://www.exterity.co.uk).. Basically, a small server with a couple of tuner cards allows any Freeview channel to be watched on any client PC by broadcasting each channel as a multicast stream (as in, each channel has its own unique multicast address)..
On the client PC, a small app listens for the SAP announcements and displays a list of channels available. That app then simply passes the channel parameters to VLC (or Media Player if preferred)... You can also right click and select Record, and it will record rather than view the broadcast channel.
What I was looking for is something to help my colleague out. He is responsible for recording certain (Educational, natch!) TV shows for certain departments. Up until now, he's been relying on a series of VHS recorders. I figure there should be some way to use this new multicast TV system where he can specify something along the lines of "between 8am and 9:30am every Monday, record channel x" - in other words, a PVR..
Now this is where I get confused... Each and every PVR software I've looked at implies (or seems to?) that the client PC has the tuner cards installed. Which is obviously not the case here. Does anyone know of ANY PVR application which supports listening for multicast broadcast details? As opposed to viewing via a card?
I know it's possible, as the company showed me a quick demo of their WIP not finished yet PVR, which they said was based on Showshifter(?)..
Sorry if this is all terribly vague - I hope you grasp what I'm getting at :-)
I should stress that I'm a complete newbie at this PVR lark, so be gentle :-)
I'm the computer technician for a large High School in Scotland. We have just installed a (fairly expensive) Freeview streaming system made by a company called Exterity (http://www.exterity.co.uk).. Basically, a small server with a couple of tuner cards allows any Freeview channel to be watched on any client PC by broadcasting each channel as a multicast stream (as in, each channel has its own unique multicast address)..
On the client PC, a small app listens for the SAP announcements and displays a list of channels available. That app then simply passes the channel parameters to VLC (or Media Player if preferred)... You can also right click and select Record, and it will record rather than view the broadcast channel.
What I was looking for is something to help my colleague out. He is responsible for recording certain (Educational, natch!) TV shows for certain departments. Up until now, he's been relying on a series of VHS recorders. I figure there should be some way to use this new multicast TV system where he can specify something along the lines of "between 8am and 9:30am every Monday, record channel x" - in other words, a PVR..
Now this is where I get confused... Each and every PVR software I've looked at implies (or seems to?) that the client PC has the tuner cards installed. Which is obviously not the case here. Does anyone know of ANY PVR application which supports listening for multicast broadcast details? As opposed to viewing via a card?
I know it's possible, as the company showed me a quick demo of their WIP not finished yet PVR, which they said was based on Showshifter(?)..
Sorry if this is all terribly vague - I hope you grasp what I'm getting at :-)
