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Echostar DishPVR 721 GPL Software Released
Faw writes "It was mentioned before that Echostar was releasing a Linux based PVR. It has been out for a month now, and the modifications to the kernel and other software are here. The cool thing is the site is running on the same receiver. Someone is already hacking it. Wonder how long until the receiver get slashdotted."
Notably missing from the posted code is anything capable of recording. It may be that the recorder is a key element missing.
You may be able to compile it, but you won't end up with a PVR.
It looks to me, superficially, as if they are doing *exactly* what is required and nothing more. You can't fault them for that, their value add is the recording facility. If they give that away, there is little for them to build a business model on other than a Tivo'esque subscription.
Of course, as these make it into geek hands, and they are opened up and inspected, we will get a better idea as to whether they are being as compliant as they appear.
This problem is very real - if you got 2 satellite dishes and 10 television sets, you need 20 satellite receivers and potentially more than 1 kilometer antenna cable to make it all work. Most people I know that have satellite dishes, are not able to watch satellite TV on all their television sets, simply because that would require too much cabling.
If you instead put up 2 ethernet devices at the satellite dish and 1 ethernet video receiver at each television, you have reduced the number of devices by almost 50%, and instead of doing expensive and complicated antenna cabling with 3dB loss for each split, you just use your existing ethernet cables. So you have reduced the problem from something that involves a specialist to something everybody can set up themselves.
If a TV transmission takes 2Mbps, and you have 100Mbps, there is plenty of bandwidth. If you compress it less to save hardware costs, there is still lots of bandwidth, especially if you don't use all your TV sets at the same time.
The only problem is that this technology makes it possible to transmit pay-per-view transmissions via 802.11 wireless to your neighbors - and that's not legal.
I see no reason to have satellite receivers, decoders, PVRs etc. at the television. To me, it's much more logical to put those into the cellar and then only have ethernet in the TV or in a single set-top box. Why not be able to view your recorded TV shows anywhere in your house instead of connecting the PVR to a single TV set?
Since Echostar is a DVB-compliant satellite network the different channels are encoded as MPEG2 a/v streams are put in number of multiplexes of about 30 Mbps (this gives 5-10 services per multiplex depending on quality).
Using error-reducing codes, each multiplex is coded onto an analog transponder which is about 33Mhz wide. Remember that one transponder can carry one analog tv service.
Thus, the set-top box would (in the worst case) require one tuner per endpoint in your ethernet network.
There is a host of other problems I dont want to mention here including the scrambling systems, smart cards and digital rights management.