Slashdot Mirror
DVD Player as 802.11b Peripheral
sysadmn writes "Instead of building a PVR from a computer, why not let your DVD player access the computer you already have? That's the thinking behind Sonicblue's new Go-Video D2730. The just-announced DVD player will use an 802.11b (Wi-Fi) wireless network connection to access content on PCs, such as photos, music and videos. The player is aggressively priced at about $250 US and is due out in first quarter 2003. Full details are on CNET."
But how does this relate to PVR? Allowing my DVD player to access PC content doesn't allow me to PVR, as far as I can tell. The article mentioned plans to network to Replay TV, but that's not what you're saying here.
Did I miss something?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
The posting is misleading. The item comes with an ethernet port, but support for 802.11b will require an additional piece of hardware. I'm not clear from the information available if it will just use a PCMCIA slot or something else.
802.11b is plenty fast to stream DivX. Now as some point you could have too many players (and other 802.11b devices) in a home (possibly a bigger problem in apartment buildings?) trying to share the same bandwidth.
Home Automation & Linux -- now I know I'm a geek
A DVD quality SVCD runs at arounf 3000 kbps (around 3 Mbps), and a simmilar quality DivX around 1500 kbps (1.5 Mbps). So I don't know what you are doing at your place, but a 11 Mbps conneciton should handle them just fine. In face, my 10 Mbps nic can play a SVCD over the LAN perfectly.
Sonicblue's DVD player will be able to connect to networks via an Ethernet connection. Consumers will be able to purchase 802.11b PC cards to connect the player to a PC using wireless networking
11Mbps is the through the air "wire" speed that is the maximum speed that all data is being sent. The amount of usefull data on even the best .11b equipment is about 6.3Mbps or ~700KB/s which should be more then enough for DivX and even most MPEG2 streams but some could theoretically be 9.8Mbps but average 4.7 Mbps typical rate for movie on single layer with 3 multichannel audio tracks.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
11Mbps is a "marketing number". The protocol has a lot of overhead- data that is transmitted for servicing the connection. When it comes to speed 802.11B is moving your data (payload), it is about 3-4 MBps, shared between two directions.
Not illegal, more against the liscense from the DVD Forum that companies have to sign to get a valid CSS decryption key. There are technologies that the DVD Forum does not think can be properly secured so they do not want content going across them. Besides this is for reading data off a pc through the DVD player to the TV, not for transfering the DVD data to the PC. This thing is basically a DVD player with a network jack that allows the same kind of multimedia features as some of the current players that can play SVCD's, mp3 cd's and have CF and MMC readers so they can display jpegs from your digital camera. Basically an all in one media center that uses the tv for a display. Since my pc is already in the living room and hooked up to the S-Video port on the tv this does nothing for me personally but some people don't have the pc in the living room and want to keep it that way so this would allow them to access all that stuff off the pc upstairs (with a 802.11b wireless bridge attached to the network port I would assume).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.