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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."
I notice on home home 802.11b network that the 11mbps connection between my den PC and upstairs office PC is nowhere near fast enough to stream high quality compressed digital video (e.g. DivX). How is this player going to be able to pull it off?
m@
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.
Instead, why not just spend $50 bucks and do this on your Playstation 2?
Q Cast Player
This thing rocks, by the way.
All you have to do is make a Pringles-can antenna and drive around for a while...
This is wonderful. Now, in addition to DDOS attacks and hacking by the RIAA, we can have wardriving by the MPAA!
...
I could have sworn it was illegal (or at least against some shrinkwrap EULA mumbo-jumbo) to play a DVD over any sort of wireless link. It came up during Microsoft's massively ill-conceived tablet PC thing, I believe.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
But honey, I swear that the DVD player just started pumping out pron on its own!
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
SONICblue reserves the right to automatically add, modify, or disable any features in the operating software when your ReplayTV 5000 connects to our server.
Translated:
We will sell you this box with a list of features you want but once the *AA gets congress to pass favorable laws, wins a court battle, or becomes a major shareholder in our business we will promptly castrate your box without sending you one penny in refund.
I agree, I bought a cd player with 30 seconds of memory. So now when I hit a bump I hear the skip 30 seconds later.
I've found that trying to stream anything worthwild over a .11b link is just too iffy. I often stream video files from my server to whereever I am sitting with the laptop. With the netgear card reporting a full speed connect at ~60% signal strength and 100% quality it is kind-of jerky at times. I know I'm pushing the limits of what that little wireless connect can do.
Now I can deal with it for now because I'm not expecting it to perform perfectly. However, what is going to happen when Joe Consumer picks one of these up, hooks in the wireless part and tries to stream his DVD rip collection and it gets .3FPS?
Answer: You get one very unhappy Joe Consumer.
I believe that people will expect this thing to do more then it can, and I doubt that sonic will be up front and tell people about this limitation.
Makes me think of a car dealer trying to sell a car for use on interstate highways but the car can only go 45MPH. Sure it works, but it isn't quite what you expected now is it?
Sonicblue has a history of trying to add cool features to unrefined products. The title is misleading since 802.11b requires an additional purchase. Last month I decided to get a PVR. Sonicblue's replay tv 5000 had some real cool features, but the interface sucked. Interface is extremly important in consumer applications such as a cell phone or PVR. I ended up getting a tivo after i learned that you can use usb ethernet adaptors with the series 2. Anyway, my point is sonicblue has a history of sticking some cool features in a completely unrefined product.
So all I need is a laptop with an 802.11b card and a couple of people in my neigborhood with HBO and an penchant for "The Sopranos"!!!!
From tests I've done in the past with DVD quality streaming, wireless networks such as 802.11b can not support the throughput required. I've had DVD's max out at 13 MB/s. 802.11b can only send 11 Mb/s not including overhead which is greater than 802.3 in the first place...
Well firstly your solution presumes that one's time is free: If you put a value on the hours you spend putting the system together, configuring all of the software, etc, suddenly it isn't economical. Rather than seeing it as a hobbyist, think "If I were to go into business making these for other people, what would I charge?". I suspect that you'd be surprized. Of course on top of all of that is the expense and availability issues in finding a "stereo component" sized computer case that integrates into an AV system (no dropping a giant beige case sputtering away with a dozen fans isn't viable).
Secondarily, it's highly likely that they're using one of the new Sigma Designs chipsets, the new one which includes some Divx support. Indeed if I were to build a PC based playback device (the only thing holding me back is the case, as previously mentioned. For fans I'd reduce that by using a Via C3 with passive cooling), I'd base it around a Sigma Designs XCard.
I love my ReplayTV. There are two priority levels: Non-guaranteed and Guaranteed. If you guarantee a recording, it will reserve hard drive space for the show and it will record it. It won't let you set two guaranteed shows for the same timeslot. The only time you run into problems is when the network shifts the schedule slightly so that two shows overlap when they normally wouldn't.
As to finding new shows, you can do a search fairly easily, and you can browse the guide. It's trivial to tell it to record something, and also trivial to change the settings on something already scheduled.
What Replay lacks is a to-do list. So if you have a bunch of non-guaranteed things (like my wife's "Shakespeare" theme or my "Stargate" theme), it will pick the one to record using a fairly cryptic algorithm (which one starts first; which one is on a lower channel; which theme was create first).
Actually every "media" device in your house should have this capability. There should be such a thing as "storage" (i.e. hard drive) and everything from your video game console to your stereo to your video playback device and your computer should access it.
;)
Put the "consoles" in their proper perspective; computers will be great for surfing the net and ordering content. Your video playback console is great for playing back your videos, and your stereo console is great for playing back music.
The point I'm making here is everything should be contected together, but accessed in with the console that makes sense. IMO, playing tunes and watching downloaded videos on a computer stinks. Playing video games on the TV rocks, but video game consoles with their own storage devices sucks.
If 802.11b wireless is the link that ties all these together, great, but it should be seamless and painless to the user to set it up.
Oh yeah, it needs to be secure too.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
I don't believe this constitutes broadcast since it's "pull" technology. i.e. the DVD player pulls the files over the WLAN. Broadcast is sending out the signal so that anyone with appropriate hardware can intercept it.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
However, I stream video from my desktop (with TV tuner card) to a laptop (with TV-out) under the TV over 802.11b. I do this by mounting an NFS volume over a VPN I establish from the laptop to the desktop. My datarate is set so 1 hr of video will just fit on a 700 MB CD (in case I see a show I want to keep). I'm also running an ad-hoc (rather than access point) network, if that makes any difference. The laptop and desktop are fairly close together, but there are a few walls.
Under these conditions, I can just eek out enough bandwidth. There's more room for error if I stream over HTTP, but then I can't seek within the stream, so I stick with NFS.
Very occasionally for no apparent reason I'm unable to use the player - interference from something, I assume.