Closed Circuit Computer Television?

Modern Fix asks: "I work at a small business with about a dozen employee's slaving in half a dozen offices. We're all relativily computer and media savvy, but have all desired for one thing: a networked television channel we can all use for project work and multi video playback. Basically, we've got a television in each office, and an extra pentium 3 computer system. Is there a way (perferabbly wireless) to configure that computer to display media (divx, etc), general computer (powerpoint, etc) work and whatever we have as a source input onto all of our televisions?"

An idea

[EdMack]

Well, I don't know about wireless, but for normal TV, get an AGP card with a TV out and put it in the pentium, and then run that to a tv amp (the same as what goes to your terrestial tv aeriel), and run the outputs from it to your Tvs. Then just run what you want on that system. If linux was on it then just use X to display whatever it is from your workstations (assuming you have the bandwidth)

Why not meet together?

[DetrimentalFiend]

I'm sure it's possible and an interesting question to ask...but why not meet together? Why all be in different rooms watching a power point presentation or whatever else is being shown? I don't really understand what you hope to gain by this.

Re:Why not meet together?

[JDWTopGuy]

Considering this is slashdot, this will probably get used for pr0n, and do you really want to watch pr0n in the same room with your cow-orkers?

Didn't think so.

After all, who encodes powerpoint presentations as divx?

Re:Why not meet together?

[extra88]

this will probably get used for pr0n, and do you really want to watch pr0n in the same room with your cow-orkers?

Why would I want to watch the same pr0n as them anyway? They can have all the little people and bungie cords they want, it's all lunchmeat, all the time for me ;-)

Dear Slashdot

[PD]

I have a computer and a monitor. Any ideas?

Multicast

[b!arg]

I have no real concrete advice for you, but it sounds like what you want to do is setup something of a multicast on your network. You'll need a content server to serve whatever content you are looking to multicast. In this way not everyone has to be in on the same "channel." You can have different multicasts going on at once depending on the multicast address. I'm talking more conceptual since I'm not particularly aware of what product might be able to manage this, but I would almost be sure that Cisco has something that could do this (although how expensive it probably is, I have no idea). I'll bet there are some *nix pieces of software that may be able to do this as well. And this being slashdot, I'm sure someone will suggest one. *grin*

Modern Fix, what are you asking for?

[cgenman]

Are you looking to network all of the televisions so that they all display the same signal, or are you looking to network them so that each television is displaying a specific stream from another user (chat-like)?

One word.

[GiMP]

VideoLan

Umh..

[Noodlenose]

Sorry Dude,

but if you would work for me, I'd be removing that TV from your office, as I'd prefer you toiling away than watching "Pretty in Pink".

Try X10

[AmbushBug]

I believe X10 [x10.com] makes some cheap wireless video transmitter thingys that would probably work.

Re:Try X10

[Loosewire]

Really - i had never heard of them before.
Do they advertise ?? ;-)

Re:Try X10

[Loosewire]

Sir for you to suggest i would have anything to do with D&D is insult enough.
I apologise about ruining the humour, i do run jokes through in my head many times to see which work better. Without the "do they advertise" bit it sounded slightly like i was being rude towards the parent post and i wasnt sure how to impress upon people that i was referring to their ammount of ads.
Thanks for that anyway - i love thinking about comic presentation.

Re:Try X10

[Snork Asaurus]

Well,that's the funniest thing I've read here all week.

Re:Try X10

[Suidae]

The transmitter and receiver part is actually pretty cool, the problem is the ultra-crappy video camera that comes hardwired to the transmitter. One of my 'someday' projects is to cut off the crappy camera and plug in a good one, then see how well it works.

If they put up advertisments with the murky, green hued video that actually comes out of those cameras, no one would buy them.

Linksys

[AllMightyPaul]

Check out these two products:

Wireless Presentation Gateway [linksys.com]

Wireless Presentation Player [linksys.com]

$79

[splattertrousers]

I think your question boils down to: "I want to watch one video signal on multiple televisions", right? Get a video splitter/amplifier [smarthome.com] and a bunch of coax.

CCITV for noncustodial parent?

[mbstone]

I would love to have a CCTV to visit with my kids. Where can I get a picturephone that connects to a cable or DSL modem and is simple enuf that the kids can operate it without any support on their end.

Re:CCITV for noncustodial parent?

[Blaine Hilton]

There was just an article on this very thing that I believe Linksys or D-Link is selling. Its a video camera that you connect to your TV and broadband modem/router.

An RF modulator

[jhines]

Your typical RF modulator will do the job, put up the video to an unused TV channel, and run that to the TVs.

They come in 1 and 3 channel flavors, so you can monitor multiple things by flipping a channel.

This assumes you have a raw video feed, either from a camera, or other device.

chanel modulator

[silux]

so long as the computer you have has tv-out (if it doesn't get a card that does) then just output the display to a channel modulator which you can get from various sources online www.smarthome.com included. You can also put sound over this as well... then you can pop this over a regular coax cable the added advantage is that you can set it up to go over with regular cable or local tv programming but on a seperate channel... usually you can configure the channel.

It's simple, but your question was vague.

[John Sokol]

There are many free packages that will allow you to capture video on one PC and broadcast (multicast) video across a LAN. Many can allow you to receive it using just a plain web browser. I had a product several years ago that allowed full screen, full motion video to be send globally with analog TV input and TV-out. www.livecamserver.com (no longer selling systems, but code is available)
Another company GlobalStreams had a product called OnQ that could also do that.
Both Logitech and Intel have USB web cam

don't split it... transmit it

[Jack Schitt]

I'd just look around on ebay for a lowpower tv transmitter. transmit on channel 3 or something and make sure all the tvs are tuned in to channel 3.

Cue the lawyers

[interociter]

Retransmitting a TV signal within your office so it can be viewed on multiple TVs and monitors? Between the TOS of your cable provider, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the DMCA, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Unless you want to get sued for a few billion dollars, I'd get with a lawyer first.