[Ewingr]

I'm daydreaming about being able to have HDTV in multiple rooms, or at least more than 1, where I can do Ultimate TV type (or Tivo) functionality, w/o having to purchase a unit for each room etc.


As a perspective, here's what I'm had been doing with SD (not including what I"m doing now with HD and a HTPC).

• Ultimate TV by Microsoft with DirecTV subscription
• Allows recording of two stations simultaneously, WHILE also watching something else already recorded
• Simple Radio Shack broadcast device hooked to the Ultimate TV that broadcasts to TV in other room
• Remote Extender

The above has allowed me to at least watch recorded shows from either room, albeit both rooms have to watch the same thing if watching the UTV.


I've read about upcoming network based units that would allow serving multiple sets. I presume this would mean having a HTPC for each room from which to draw the content.


This year I've set up a HTPC, with a MyHD card, and am watching in my main area HD TV (don't even have a HD set yet for other room), and love it. But I"m only getting OTA stuff, and not all local channels.


I'm real tempted bye a HD Tivo. I hear good things about them. But I wont be able to get the benefit of that in the other room, that I know of.


The only place I've seen that is working on the network thing is for sometime next year from Voom. Lots of controversy about them, and if they'll even be around.


Plus putting a PC in every room, can get expensive, and it is not quite as WAF as I'd like.


The Microsoft MCE 2005 sounds great, with the extender!. But, alas, it only support SD.


I suppose I should give up and get the HD Tivo and enjoy that. I could be waiting quite a while before what I want is available.


Just thinking out loud.

 

[preiter]

Even if you had a PC in every room, I don't think your network will be fast enough to stream HD video from one PC to another.

 

[Ewingr]

Actually, people are doing it fine. Not on wireless, but on 100MB wired.

 

[Dave Brown]

Network won't be a problem. HD uses less than 20 Mbps, so even a (good) Fast Ethernet switch should do the job.


Furthermore, people are already streaming HD across a network, but with an HD decoder in each PC.


I think what is being requested here is a lightweight device that doesn't have a tuner or hard disk, but decodes HD MPEG-2 that is streamed to it from a central DVR and outputs to an HD set. Numerous companies are building this with SD (e.g., see Motorola's Home Media Architecture (HMA)). But there would be a tiny market for this for HD. Few homes currently have any HD, and a tiny percentage of these would have two HD-capable sets.

 

[stanger89]

A Roku HD1000 can playback HDTV files over the network. All you'd need is something like an AccessDTV and a couple of Rokus and you'd be good to go. Of course you'd be limited to OTA HD and one recording at a time (but how often are there two things worth recording on at the same time on OTA?)

 

[Dan Bither]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dave Brown Network won't be a problem. HD uses less than 20 Mbps, so even a (good) Fast Ethernet switch should do the job. Furthermore, people are already streaming HD across a network, but with an HD decoder in each PC. I think what is being requested here is a lightweight device that doesn't have a tuner or hard disk, but decodes HD MPEG-2 that is streamed to it from a central DVR and outputs to an HD set. Numerous companies are building this with SD (e.g., see Motorola's Home Media Architecture (HMA)). But there would be a tiny market for this for HD. Few homes currently have any HD, and a tiny percentage of these would have two HD-capable sets.

The Roku can do this. To be honest, I haven't used this feature yet since it's from a third party application and I haven't had time to play around with it yet. Since the Roku costs the same as a MyHD card, if someone has an extra computer to put it in, I'd recommend that first.

 

[Ewingr]

Quote:

but how often are there two things worth recording on at the same time on OTA?

Actually, that is happening occasionally. This fall lineup has some fairly decent stuff. More HD than last year for sure.


Of course, I my daydreaming really includes pulling in Sat HD for more variety.

 

[Briands]

Within a few years, I'd expect that the satelite guys would have something like the Moxi server/ client. This server has multiple tuners and can support one client. I do not know if this is actually shipping anywhere.


Wouldn't it be a real coup for Zoom to team up with a hardware provider that could pull this off.... Get Mark Cuban involved and this could be a real winner.

 

[Gary McCoy]

The usual problem with both satellite HD and cable HD is that only the decoded analog video signal is available outside the box, not the MPEG-encoded transport stream. Gigabit Ethernet and the latest PCs are not fast enough to transfer the already decompressed/decoded signal. (Not to mention that HD capture cards cost thousands of dollars.) The few DBS receivers or cable boxes with DVI or Firewire outputs do not solve the issue, the necessary handshake for digital interfaces complicates connections.


With OTA ATSC transport streams this can probably be done with existing equipment. Either the thin client PC with powerfull CPUs and software decoding or a box that accepts one of the fullsize Janus-based hardware decoder boards would work.


ASUS DiGiMatrix is an intriging thin client that can support a 2.6Ghz CPU and software ATSC decoding, and has onboard 1000BaseT in a really small case.


Gary