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HDTV via GNU Radio
NortonDC writes "High Definition TV has been successfully captured in its native data stream from an over the air broadcast by a software defined radio that is Free and open source from the GNU Software Defined Radio project."
Sounds too useful to exist.
It will taste the blade of DMCA before the end of the month.
GNU TV, where the scripts are open-sourced before the show airs and you know all the jokes before the intro starts rolling.
How is different from network tv, where the scripts are rehashes of something from 10 or 20 years ago and you know the entire plot (painful jokes included) in the first two minutes.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
So, can I go out and buy off the shelf suitable hardware to use with GNU Radio? Assuming I have a box with a reasonably fast CPU and a spare PCI slot. The web site seems strangely coy about covering this, unlike most driver sites where they say 'we successfully got working the card XXX from manufacturer YYY, available for $44.50 from ZZZ'.
;-)
Do I need an A/D converter, or what? Knowing nothing about electronics, where do I get such a thing? I just threw away my BBC Micro with its built-in 12-bit A/D... was that a mistake?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
All of the above represent part of the reason that I have completely stopped watching television. Did I mention that I don't purchase software that has any sort of copy protection? That's true as well.
The best way to fight DRM, copy protection, and all this trash legislation is to speak with your money: Don't buy products containing this crap. You could go further and do what I do: I buy the competition's product and then send a letter (not an email but a letter on real paper in a real envelope with a postage stamp and my real address on it) telling the company WHY I have just purchased their competitor's product as opposed to theirs. Nanny nanny boo boo.
The goal is to have minimal hardware requirements. Right now, it's not like that. So either help em out, or quit complaining.
Nuff' said.
By taking this defeatist attitude, you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The card is $1,300. The reason is economics: people do not buy them in mass quantities, therefore they are rare and expensive. These cards are typically used in fringe high-tech situations, and honestly $1,300 is an awfully good deal considering what the same capabilities would have cost five or ten years ago.
If the card is already down to $1,300, instead of $13,000 or $130,000, the price can be reduced to $130. Once software radio becomes a demanded product, the push to increase production will make the cards more available.
Again, if you want to play around with cutting-edge tech, the card is pretty inexpensive. I've been dealing with high-speed video vendors who want $60,000 for essentially an overclocked VCR. And that's half of what they cost ten years ago.
These guys have done something few are able to do: take an idea and actually follow it to completion. The first personal computers weren't cheap enough to give away in cereal boxes either, so give this some time and encouragement.
...
HAHAHA BitTorrent is such a load of crap. What your saying is i should download another p2p app but this time i have no control over my own upload bandwidth. Your saying i should freely give away my measly ADSL connection to companies who are too greedy to buy their own bandwidth? What a load of crap. If you want warez there is a million better ways to do it. Why are you posting a warezing tutorial to slashdot? Why are you pimping out BitTorrent which is clearly an inferior way of warezing? If you really look into BitTorrent you will realize it is some shady scheme thats probably really just some trojan out to make a few people money off greedy warez kids.
What ever happened to IRC? Dont you know you can all the TV shows you want in plani divx format off USENET? Who wants to download files in a special format that need to be converted to a format that feels less like DRM already. Just download K++2.0.3 or a gntuella client and you can get all the TV shows you want.
I eralize i might be flammed and modded for going against BitTorrent. At first when i heard about it i waw exited as it seemed like a good idea. Using the power of p2p bandwidth to solve the internet's bandwidth needs seemed fine. As i looked into this more i got sceptical. At first it seemed like any other cool project that i would support. I later found lots of patenting and secretism over this program and "HiveCache", a failed project by the same programmer and a similar idea. I am fearful that BitTorrent will be helpful at first but once it has a solid base will sell out and take advantage of what was once a good service.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Secondly, 1/40th real time? My first reaction is ouch. My second is 'Well...so?' I have two Tivo's and I can tell you from experience that we do not recieve a worthwhile signal 1/40th of the time. I should say worthwhile in content quality -- signal quality is fine but most content is crap.
Still this is unoptimized performance. I wonder to what extent distributed processing, ala reusing a Cinerella render farm, might help. With the input being primarly a chronological stream, I don't see much issue. Just break up the signal with a little bit of overlap...
All my previous sigs now look like this one, I wish they were permanetly recorded when used.
let me see if i understand this correctly...
they can intercept HDTV signals without the expensive set-top box...but what is stopping them from recording it? its copywritten material, but is it being released into public domain?
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
I'm gay. I think his sig is hilarious. I've always thought it was hilarious. I'm a big time Liberal. I think the problem with a dimension of modern liberalism is that people have lost their senses of humor and respond poorly to things that are legitimately funny.