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Television Media The Internet

Streaming Your Cable TV Over the Net? 61

Posted by Cliff from the taking-your-TV-shows-with-you dept.
johnrob asks: "I have a TV tuner card, and would like to run a daemon on my computer which will stream the tv signal (reduced resolution) over the network. The idea is to poke a hole in my home firewall, and be able to connect to my static IP from any wired place in the world and watch my cable/satellite tv. Here is my question: does anyone know of any software that will take a tv card as an input and serve streaming content to connected clients (i.e. real media, windows media, or some other client)? Or, perhaps there is a specific TV tuner card which comes with this software?"
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Streaming Your Cable TV Over the Net? More

Streaming Your Cable TV Over the Net?

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  • SnapStream (Score:5, Informative)

    by kalidasa ( 577403 ) * on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:37PM (#9500035) Journal
    I'm pretty sure this does it [snapstream.com], depending on what video card you have. Look for "Home Video Server".

    • Re:SnapStream (Score:4, Informative)

      by sycotic ( 26352 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:44PM (#9500118) Homepage

      Might do, lots look like they merely record for later viewing...

      http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Home+Video+Serve r%22 [google.com]

      The fifth [digital-lifestyles.info] and sixth [pcmag.com] results look like something you would want to investigate for sure!

      Most, however, appear to be geared towards serving a local network. This makes alot of sense considering the bandwidth problems over the public internet as opposed to a slick local connection ala 100Mbit switch.
      • Snapstream (now BeyondTV) has native support for webcasting of streams from the primary tuner. Unfortunately, it's restricted to webcasting via WMV.
    • "I'm pretty sure this does it, depending on what video card you have. Look for "Home Video Server"."

      I used Snapstream a couple of years ago. I was pretty darned happy with it. Assuming it's still fundamentally the same today, I think you'd like it.
      • I've used it recently. It does work, although I found it picky in regards to tuner cards, and as far as I could tell, it only streams in Windows Media format.

        If you have a Hauppage card and don't mind Windows Media, I think Snapstream will do exactly what you're looking for.
        • Coincidentally, I just set this (Beyond TV 3) up last night. I haven't opened the port to access it outside my home, but I can watch TV anywhere in the house on my laptop via the wireless LAN.

          The software is fairly user-friendly (as in "non-technical user"), but you have to dig around a lot to get to the technical settings (directories, ports, video and audio quality settings, etc.).

          It has decent PVR functions (which is actually why I bought it). It doesn't do TiVo like prediction, but you can easily se
    • Yes, SnapStream will do it. I downloaded ther 30-day trial and was able to watch the ACC tournament at work with it by streaming cable from my cable internet connection :). it's nto perfect though. Download the trial and see how it works for you.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:40PM (#9500072)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • You want VideoLan (Score:4, Informative)

    by samjam ( 256347 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:41PM (#9500085) Homepage Journal
    Freshmeat.net [freshmeat.net] is your friend.

    VideoLan [freshmeat.net]

    VLC (VideoLAN Client) is a multimedia player for Unix, Windows, MacOS X, BeOS, and QNX. It can play most audio and video formats (MPEG 1/2/4, DivX, WMV, DV, Ogg/Vorbis, AAC, etc.), has support for VCD and DVD (with menus), and can read streams from a network source (HTTP, UDP, DVB, etc.). It can also act as a server and send streams through the network, with optional support for transcoding.

    • Re:You want VideoLan (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Dicky ( 1327 )
      I second this - I use videolan, client-to-client, to send TV around my home network from a Linux PC to a Mac OS X Powerbook, over wired and wireless networks. I do it at high bitrate, high quality, but I'm sure it'd work fine at lower bitrate and lower quality.
    • I thought he was asking if it could directly take the signal from the TV card. I cannot find anything saying that videolan does this. Maybe I am confused.
      • VLC has options to open from a file, a disc, a network stream, or a capture device.

        I use this to stream from my fileserver currently, and just recently found a version compiled for tivo that lets you stream from the saved shows.

  • MythTV (Score:3, Informative)

    by Col. Klink (retired) ( 11632 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:43PM (#9500103)
    MythTV has a client/server architecture.

    I do essentially what you're asking, but inside my local net. One machine has a TV card and does all the recording. I also have a MythTV client on a laptop with a wireless card that can be used to watch anywhere (including "Live TV").

  • streaming media (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wcb4 ( 75520 )
    Windows Media Encoder also acts as a server. One version or another runs under just about all windows post 95. Its also free-as-in-beer and very easy to install and configure. Had it up and running in about 5 minutes.
    • WME is great for this, I stream DSS and watch it on a pocketPC across Verizon wireless while on trips. lock it into TechTV or Cartoon network and alls peechy.

      watch your outgoing bandwidth though... you can saturate it really quick with any streaming media.
    • Can it server out something standard?
      (eg MPEG2 over RTSP)
      Only only Windows Media (yuck).

  • power (Score:2, Informative)

    by lambent ( 234167 )

    This sort of thing requires a lot of juice ... decoding the TV signal, reencoding it, then serving gobs of data out the network port. And of course it all scales with resolution, frame-rate, bit-rate, and number of viewers on the remote end.

    However, there are things that mitigate that ... hardware decoding/encoding, multicast, and having a big-honking-fast processor helps ...

    I would like to see this done well ... i for one would use it, too.

  • Is it Legal? (Score:3, Informative)

    by afriguru ( 784434 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @05:56PM (#9500238) Homepage
    Have you considered the legality of what you want to do here, since by default such a stream will be visible by anyone, not just you? this story [tvweek.com] mentions some of the pertinent issues. Though you are allowed to record a copy for personal use, doesn't real-time streaming count as re-broadcasting?

    • Re:Is it Legal? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tom7 ( 102298 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @06:00PM (#9500272) Homepage Journal
      Incidental copies made in transit are not covered by copyright law. If his stream is private, I don't see why there would be any issue. (And I definitely think he'd want to make it private, since it would otherwise pull some serious bandwidth!)
      • "Incidental copies made in transit are not covered by copyright law. If his stream is private, I don't see why there would be any issue."

        There is an issue, the license provided by broadcasting service to you.

        Fundamentally, any copy of the work is an infringement: but upon paying for the satellite service, you agree to terms & conditions that include a limited license, which (you need to check) probably only allows you to view on one or multiple TV sets within your own premises: any reproduction of the
        • But the courts have protected "time shifting" and similar activities, even though these don't appear in the license. So it doesn't necessarily have to be in your license.
          • Somewhat true, for example in the UK ``time shifting`` is actually codified in statutory law, but interestingly, the ``time shifting`` allowance is only applicable when done in domestic premises: therefore, at least in the UK, broadcasting out of your home network across the internet would not fall within this allowance.

            I'm not sure about the US position, but I doubt that this 'technicality' would be a good one to rely on.
    • doesn't real-time streaming count as re-broadcasting? Nope. Broadcasting by defintion means making the content available to many people if they wish to pull it in. A one-person's-eyes-only stream would not count. Re-transmission might fit, but re-broadcasting certainly doesn't.
    • doesn't real-time streaming count as re-broadcasting?

      I would reason that the term broadcasting refers to a one-to-many situation. This is just a forwarding issue. If the poster ensures that only he can access the stream, then *I* don't see any issues here.

      Too bad it's probably illegal somehow, though.

    • At least with SnapStream, the webpage to get to the boradcast is password-protected. As the admin, you can setup users in the webpage GUI. So, the stream isn't available to the world by default.

  • Icecast (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jebediah21 ( 145272 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @06:05PM (#9500330) Homepage Journal
    I think my old roommate did this with Icecast. From his comp in CA to me in MN at the time (I was using DSL) it wasn't bad but the audio lagged a bit.

  • Is it legal? (Score:3, Informative)

    by taylortbb ( 759869 ) <taylor DOT byrnes AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @06:06PM (#9500333) Homepage
    I would watch what you do, people who have done this before have been charged/sued. www.icravetv.com has been shut down, the used to pick signals from the airwaves and broadcast it on the internet for free, they lost the lawsuit. If you're going to do this I reccomend being very careful and making sure its just for you (i.e. password protect it).
    • I am going to be open minded and ask - even more importantly than 'is it legal' : is it even a good idea? Television is generally available anywhere anybody that would have enough bandwidth to watch your rebroadcast would want to live. I can think of a zillion better uses for my ISP's bandwidth (upstream and downstream) than to have someone rebroadcasting a television show.

      Before I lapse into a profanity laced flame/troll post, johnrob, share with us your motivations and justifications behind doing such
      • If I had to guess, then it would probably be that there are networks available on his home cable system that aren't available at his destination. Or to be able to watch tv at work.
  • I have done this before, with great results. I used windows server 2003, with the media server. I then used my tv card, and windows used that info to "stream" live from the tv tuner card. This would work very well inside a network, and also works very well outside (ports open on firewall of course) and you can watch tv at work! I did find a way to change the channel, but I dont remember how i did it. I might have built a custom asp script for changing the chan. I dont remember. But this worked very well for
  • I watched some S/VCD mpegs via ssh tunnel using AAlib [sourceforge.net], more of a gimmick, but neat. I do have problems with sound, and havn't found a perfect solution. Piping sound doesnt always works. But I suspect a mp3 server would fix the problem.

    Strange how streaming, capturing, or even using Video over a network is overlooked on retail software. I'd love a retail version of xbox media player that can capture (timeshift)video.
  • I took an ATI All-In-Wonder Pro 8MB AGP, running on a Windows 98 machine. Setup Netmeeting with a channel I wanted to watch while somewhere else. Then dialed my netmeeting which auto accepted calls. Had good audio and ok video though not perfect, and it worked through many firewalls.
    I think I even use to connect to my desktop with terminal services as I moved on in life and OSes and used video editing software to tune the station and watch the video and listen.
    Silly things we come up with, no?!?
  • for the Mac...

    http://www.macworld.com/2004/06/secrets/junegeek fa ctor/

  • What if a program posted TV straight to Usenet? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @06:55PM (#9500830)
    I always had this fantasy that one could encode 1-min chunks of encoded video from TV and auto-post it to a newsgroup as soon as the encode of the minute is done. This would be especially great if there was a plugin for a video player that could download binary attachments from a newsgroup as they come in, so you can start watching before the last minutes are uploaded, and the player itself would fetch them. That would allow near-simultaneous world-wide access to important TV programs.

    This would be especially great for sports, like various national soccer league games. Real soccer junkies want to watch, for example, Dutch league games, but they don't tend to be broadcast outside of the Netherlands. (Of course, I'm thinking about this because I'm trapped in the USA without pay-per-view during Euro 2004, and I'd love some prompt online posting.)



  • Geez, why can't these lazy buggers do a google for themselves (hell, he has a GMail account after all), took me all of 2 minutes effort to find this out for myself when I wanted the same thing for my home network... It was quicker than filling out an Ask Slashdot and waiting for it to be accepted:-) And why do these lame-o's NEVER say what OS and or hardware they have??? Or if they want free stuff vs being willing to pay???

    Anyway, to answer the question, if you have Linux, try MythTV with all it's nice

  • Clarifying my intentions (Score:3, Informative)

    by johnrob ( 790519 ) on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @07:09PM (#9500982)
    The motivation behind this question is that I would like to watch my tv when I am not at home. I don't intend for anyone beside myself to use my feed, thus I have ~ 128K of dsl upstream bandwidth to work with. Why is this a good use of my ISP's bandwidth? The most important reason is that I am paying for it. Beyond that, I want to watch my channels, my local news, my Oakland A's games when on the road - there may be tv where I'm going, but not necessarily the content I want to watch.
    • Window Media Encoder is my proggie of choice.

      I've done exactly what your doing to a pocketPC (audiovox thera) and an IPAQ with card for verizon wireless 1X network. I had to keep the bandwidth below 100 k for reliable data, but wm9 codec was able to handle it.

      I was able to watch ed, edd, and eddy, while going over a remote mountian pass. made the trip bearable.

      good luck and if you need pointers on wme let me know.

  • Windows Media Encoder (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <ryan+slashdot@[ ]ko.com ['won' in gap]> on Tuesday June 22, 2004 @08:27PM (#9501657) Homepage
    Microsoft's very own freely-downloadable Windows Media Encoder [microsoft.com] will do this, and it'll take about five minutes to get set up and working. Of course, something tells me you're running Linux.
  • There is always Darwin Streaming Server http://developer.apple.com/darwin/projects/streami ng/

  • NSV streaming (Score:2, Informative)

    by ezelkow1 ( 693205 )
    This is a sorta new thing introduced with winamp5. Streaming video with audio. I use it to run a dj tv station were we do live dj broadcasts a couple times a week, http://sastv.cubeness.com . Its fairly simple, just setup a shoutcast server, download the streaming tools and just select your tv tuner as input and stream, you can make the stream private and not broadcast the address. The only problem with this is that you will not be able to change stations so you better know what channel you wanna watch a
  • They come packaged together and can stream live video over the net quite easily.

  • Off topic a bit.. but (Score:3, Informative)

    by ChiefArcher ( 1753 ) on Wednesday June 23, 2004 @03:06AM (#9504122) Homepage Journal
    To get US TV in Kuwait, I hooked my tivo to my linux box in the US. Use RealServer to encode the stream. And run Tivowebserver on the tivo. I can change the channel and watch TV in Kuwait from the states.. :)
    Using a BTTV card in the linux box to do it.
    works well

    ChiefArcher

  • One of the programs in ffmpeg package is dedicated to streaming video over the net. And the sources can be static files or different video sources, such as tuner cards.
  • Put up a VideoLAN Server (VLS) and stream away. I have a box set up here at home to stream a mulicast feed so that I can watch TV in every room (with a computer). Works like a charm.

    See http://www.videolan.org/streaming/ [videolan.org] for more info.
  • Disclaimer: Windows only.

    Check out SageTV [www.sage.tv]. It's pretty much a Tivo wanna-be, but it has both a client and server. I have the server running with two Hauppage WinTV 250s and clients running on various computers at home. I'm able to watch both any channel/program either on live TV or recorded. Connecting to the server from outside isn't a problem. When I'm bored at work I'll set up recording schedules or check on what shows have been recorded for the day.

    The hard part is going to be bandwidth. At "

  • I had one, but never used the streaming part, and I found bad reviews about the card, although I never had a problem with it. Check it here [msicomputer.com]

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