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Closed Circuit Computer Television?

Posted by Cliff on from the interesting-methods-of-office-communication dept.

Modern Fix asks: "I work at a small business with about a dozen employee's slaving in half a dozen offices. We're all relativily computer and media savvy, but have all desired for one thing: a networked television channel we can all use for project work and multi video playback. Basically, we've got a television in each office, and an extra pentium 3 computer system. Is there a way (perferabbly wireless) to configure that computer to display media (divx, etc), general computer (powerpoint, etc) work and whatever we have as a source input onto all of our televisions?"

6 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. An idea by EdMack · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, I don't know about wireless, but for normal TV, get an AGP card with a TV out and put it in the pentium, and then run that to a tv amp (the same as what goes to your terrestial tv aeriel), and run the outputs from it to your Tvs. Then just run what you want on that system. If linux was on it then just use X to display whatever it is from your workstations (assuming you have the bandwidth)

    --
    puts ("Python r0cks\n");
  2. Multicast by b!arg · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have no real concrete advice for you, but it sounds like what you want to do is setup something of a multicast on your network. You'll need a content server to serve whatever content you are looking to multicast. In this way not everyone has to be in on the same "channel." You can have different multicasts going on at once depending on the multicast address. I'm talking more conceptual since I'm not particularly aware of what product might be able to manage this, but I would almost be sure that Cisco has something that could do this (although how expensive it probably is, I have no idea). I'll bet there are some *nix pieces of software that may be able to do this as well. And this being slashdot, I'm sure someone will suggest one. *grin*

    --

    Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
  3. Try X10 by AmbushBug · · Score: 2, Informative

    I believe X10 makes some cheap wireless video transmitter thingys that would probably work.

  4. Linksys by AllMightyPaul · · Score: 2, Informative

    Check out these two products:

    Wireless Presentation Gateway

    Wireless Presentation Player

  5. $79 by splattertrousers · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think your question boils down to: "I want to watch one video signal on multiple televisions", right? Get a video splitter/amplifier and a bunch of coax.

  6. An RF modulator by jhines · · Score: 2, Informative

    Your typical RF modulator will do the job, put up the video to an unused TV channel, and run that to the TVs.

    They come in 1 and 3 channel flavors, so you can monitor multiple things by flipping a channel.

    This assumes you have a raw video feed, either from a camera, or other device.