Video Server

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

Cole Tuininga wrote:
> I'm looking to do just a portion of what MythTV does.  Namely, I have
> video that I'd like to push out to my TV (I don't necessarily need to
> record from cable).

I've been wondering about the necessity of a TV tuner. Although of 
questionable legality, there seems to be an increasing amount of digital 
TV content available on the net. And there are now specialized tools to 
help you find it, such as TVTAD (http://www.tvtad.net/), which acts as 
"glue" between RSS feeds and a BitTorrent client. It also has a built-in 
search engine specifically for finding TV content. (TVTAD is currently 
Windows-only, but they're starting on a Linux port.)

What's even more interesting is that the TV networks are starting to get 
into online distribution. Several of the new shows this season were 
distributed online (temporarily) as a promotional tool. Most people have 
probably heard of ABC distributing some of its shows through iTunes 
(though not for free). And NBC has announced that one of its 
lesser-known cable channels will be converting into an online operation.

Perhaps the TV industry has learned a lesson from watching what happened 
in the music industry, and will be a bit quicker to embrace the new 
distribution technology. Though if the complaints raised by ABC 
affiliates is any indication, I expect it'll be a slow transition.

Even with an abundant number of digital channels, cable (and satellite) 
companies are still very much the gatekeepers of what you get to see, 
and are a barrier for new channels. I suspect at some point we'll start 
to see new channels launched via the net - using either downloads or 
streaming - and then later picked up by the cable companies.

I wouldn't be surprised if 5 years from now we were obtaining the 
majority of our entertainment programming from the net, and if TiVo 
survives, it'll essentially turn into a UI-front-end for playing 
downloaded or streamed content.


> What do I need in order to accomplish this?

The December issue of Linux Journal had a decent overview of MythTV:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8562

Unfortunately you need to be a subscriber to see the full article.


> Any specific recommendations on make/model of hardware?  
> Also, once I have the hardware set up, how do I output to the TV?

The author of the above article recommended the Hauppauge MediaMVP[1], 
which is a set-top-box that connects to your TV and your LAN and 
provides a UI for accessing video and audio content stored on a server. 
This avoids the need to put a big noisy PC in your living room (or build 
an expensive, quiet PC).

Of course the MediaMVP runs Linux and has been hacked, and there is 
custom firmware[2] available that provides a front-end specifically for 
MythTV.

What's even better, is that the hacked version will also play back 
content served from an NFS or Samba file system, so if you have some 
video content already, there's no need to install MythTV just to gain 
the ability to playback video in your living room.

1. http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_mediamvp.html
2. http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main

Also, a collection of MediaMVP related links:
http://www.shspvr.com/smf/index.php?topic=5805.0

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/