Internet TV

[jorm]

So I have been reading some articles about microsofts push for IPTV. It sounds kind of neat. Basically you can use your high speed internet connection to stream tv content to your tv. Most people have DSL or Cable.

I was wondering if bandwidth was fast enough to do that today.

I see two possibilities
1) Imagine something like shoutcast that people with tuner cards would connect to. It would determine when a tuner was idle and allow someone to stream your channel to their pvr over the internet. ( Is streamming illegal)
The problem with that is if you wanted to record something it might bump the user.

2) The other possibility is a central server with a list of all recorded shows and who has them. You can stream shows from different users machines.

I figure most people record at 3500 kilobits per second.

Which is about 460KB per second. Odds are the bandwidth is not there unless some fancy transcoding is done.


The idea is interesting. Obviously at the same time as the media is suing all of the peer to peer systems they are learning that they need some kind of system to distribute their content cheaply.


Eventually when the C# framework supports the IPTV protocols we can implement a plugin to use our current setups to view the content.

[A_Brass]

I was wondering if bandwidth was fast enough to do that today.

I figure most people record at 3500 kilobits per second.

Which is about 460KB per second. Odds are the bandwidth is not there unless some fancy transcoding is done.

I think if some sort of compression/transcoding technology was involved. The current limits of DSL top out, for most carriers, at 3mb/s cable has a higher theoretical max but not too much implementation. New FiOS (fiber to the home) technologies will change all that. Verzion and other carriers will soon have 30mb speeds available. The part I can’t figure out is how the phone company can claim 3mb, when most D-slams, at least for smaller phone companies are feed by 1.5mb T1’s. Bigger phone companies have DS3’s (45mb ckt) feeding the D-slam, but still. I know it works but the math doesn’t work for me. I’m told it’s due to the packet based network.

I see two possibilities
1) Imagine something like shoutcast that people with tuner cards would connect to. It would determine when a tuner was idle and allow someone to stream your channel to their pvr over the internet. ( Is streamming illegal)
The problem with that is if you wanted to record something it might bump the user.

2) The other possibility is a central server with a list of all recorded shows and who has them. You can stream shows from different users machines.

The idea is interesting. Obviously at the same time as the media is suing all of the peer to peer systems they are learning that they need some kind of system to distribute their content cheaply.

There was a post on the ORB forum about this subject. I have been using ORB for a week and it seems to work very well for this type of application. The problem is bandwidth. Orb scales the video down to a format that’s streamable to whatever device your using, but depends on the connection speed. I could share all my recorded programs with a user list that could include all everyone at GBPVR forum, but my PC and only transcode one stream at a time. I would think this would always be a limit unless the bandwidth increases. The bigger question is how legal is it? Not very is my guess. Unless all my TV shows had names like "Home video 23".

I just wish there was a way to tie ORB into my GBPVR database.

[jorm]

actually orb is encrypted so they dont know (still probably illegal but harder to detect).

When you receive the scalled down image is it still a mpeg?

When you say you wish you can tie orb into your gbpvr database you mean the shows information (title, subtitle, description etc..)

[sivilya]

1) Imagine something like shoutcast that people with tuner cards would connect to. It would determine when a tuner was idle and allow someone to stream your channel to their pvr over the internet. ( Is streamming illegal)

In the past (around year 2000) there was this site called "I crave TV" (http://www.icravetv.com/ - don't bother to look for it...) they did just what you described... basically you could watch all US channels over the Internet (it was not that high quality as today but at that time - that was something!)

They were, obviously, shut down - as this was illigeal - the content of the channels are propriety of the studios (Paramount, Warner Bros and so on...) they earn money off of the commercials - I'm not saying that's not a great idea... but I think the world (or productions studios are still not there... instead of trying to figure out how to make money from streaming content they prefer fighting piracy)

[jorm]

I understand. however SBC is heavly investing billions to make IPTV a reality. Existing telecoms are losing business to VOIP so they are trying to figure out how to enter new markets, fighting cable is one of them. They dont want to spend billions more running cable lines to every home. So logically your internet connection is a good bet.

IPTV will probably manifest itself. The other option is to figure out the protocol they use so one day gbpvr will support iptv.

[erik]

If we where to speak chinese or korean we would be using pplive
google for pplive, there seems to be a english page, download and run.
The quality is worse then your old VHS but who cares, free chinese films

[A_Brass]

actually orb is encrypted so they dont know (still probably illegal but harder to detect)...)

Cool

When you receive the scalled down image is it still a mpeg?

I dont think so. I assume when you say "image" you mean video stream. Three options are avilable, real media, widows media, and something called 3GP Media.

When you say you wish you can tie orb into your gbpvr database you mean the shows information (title, subtitle, description etc..)

Yeah, I wish orb could read the xrecord export files or read the show info from the database so you could get title, description. They have a plugin API available but I'm no programer.

[stefan]

My DSL provider has some sort of tv over DSL. 30+ channels. I think they are using some variant of DVB transmissions, not sure though. They claim it uses 5 Mbit/s. Not a problem for most people, as they only have one type of connection (or at least if you order now, we who are "old" customers can still have less) and that is 24Mbit/s.

[jorm]

I think you are going to start seeing more of that. I was looking for a C# framework for reading IPTV streams. No luck yet.

The idea is you would not need a capture card. Can just stream the signal to your pc and write the mpeg.

[A_Brass]

I think you are going to start seeing more of that. I was looking for a C# framework for reading IPTV streams. No luck yet.

The idea is you would not need a capture card. Can just stream the signal to your pc and write the mpeg.

I agree, if you read any of the trade publications (stateside) its going to be the next big thing for the Telecom industry. Although you might not see deployment until some regulatory issues are worked out. The Telco's are still fearfull of building large scale broadband networks only to have to lease them out to competitors for discount prices. And the cable/satilite industries dont want Telecom to offer IPTV, cause its a threat. But, its ok for cable to offer VoIP. Go figure. Beat up on the Telco just cause they can.