Closed Circuit Computer Television?

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?"

Comments

An idea

[EdMack]

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)

Why not meet together?

[DetrimentalFiend]

I'm sure it's possible and an interesting question to ask...but why not meet together? Why all be in different rooms watching a power point presentation or whatever else is being shown? I don't really understand what you hope to gain by this.

Re:Why not meet together?

[JDWTopGuy]

Considering this is slashdot, this will probably get used for pr0n, and do you really want to watch pr0n in the same room with your cow-orkers?

Didn't think so.

After all, who encodes powerpoint presentations as divx?

Re:Why not meet together?

[extra88]

this will probably get used for pr0n, and do you really want to watch pr0n in the same room with your cow-orkers?

Why would I want to watch the same pr0n as them anyway? They can have all the little people and bungie cords they want, it's all lunchmeat, all the time for me ;-)

Dear Slashdot

[PD]

I have a computer and a monitor. Any ideas?

Re:Dear Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone seriously needs to mod this up.

Re:Dear Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Shove them up your ass and see how much you bleed. Bonus points if you pass out and/or die.

Multicast

[b!arg]

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*

Modern Fix, what are you asking for?

[cgenman]

Are you looking to network all of the televisions so that they all display the same signal, or are you looking to network them so that each television is displaying a specific stream from another user (chat-like)?

One word.

[GiMP]

VideoLan

Umh..

[Noodlenose]

Sorry Dude,

but if you would work for me, I'd be removing that TV from your office, as I'd prefer you toiling away than watching "Pretty in Pink".

Try X10

[AmbushBug]

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

Re:Try X10

[Loosewire]

Really - i had never heard of them before.
Do they advertise ?? ;-)

Re:Try X10

[Anonymous Coward]

Your reponse could have been "funny", rather than "lame" if you had cut out the "do they advertise" comment. And don't get me started on your need for a smiley to make sure that we all got that it was a "joke".

What could have been a nice bit of dry humor instead turned into the banal and obvious.

Please go back to your D&D club.

Re:Try X10

[Loosewire]

Sir for you to suggest i would have anything to do with D&D is insult enough.
I apologise about ruining the humour, i do run jokes through in my head many times to see which work better. Without the "do they advertise" bit it sounded slightly like i was being rude towards the parent post and i wasnt sure how to impress upon people that i was referring to their ammount of ads.
Thanks for that anyway - i love thinking about comic presentation.

Re:Try X10

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the latter line. Without it, the reader would have been ignorant as to whether or not it was a joke, and it would not have been as funny.

Re:Try X10

[Suidae]

The transmitter and receiver part is actually pretty cool, the problem is the ultra-crappy video camera that comes hardwired to the transmitter. One of my 'someday' projects is to cut off the crappy camera and plug in a good one, then see how well it works.

If they put up advertisments with the murky, green hued video that actually comes out of those cameras, no one would buy them.

Re:Try X10

[Snork Asaurus]

Well,that's the funniest thing I've read here all week.

Linksys

[AllMightyPaul]

Check out these two products:

Wireless Presentation Gateway

Wireless Presentation Player

$79

[splattertrousers]

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.

CCITV for noncustodial parent?

[mbstone]

I would love to have a CCTV to visit with my kids. Where can I get a picturephone that connects to a cable or DSL modem and is simple enuf that the kids can operate it without any support on their end.

Re:CCITV for noncustodial parent?

[Blaine Hilton]

There was just an article on this very thing that I believe Linksys or D-Link is selling. Its a video camera that you connect to your TV and broadband modem/router.

An RF modulator

[jhines]

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.

chanel modulator

[silux]

so long as the computer you have has tv-out (if it doesn't get a card that does) then just output the display to a channel modulator which you can get from various sources online www.smarthome.com included. You can also put sound over this as well... then you can pop this over a regular coax cable the added advantage is that you can set it up to go over with regular cable or local tv programming but on a seperate channel... usually you can configure the channel.

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Re:*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

haha I just replaced all my FreeBSD boxes with Debian. Don't have the time to mess with such an obscure system anymore.

It's simple, but your question was vague.

[John Sokol]

There are many free packages that will allow you to capture video on one PC and broadcast (multicast) video across a LAN. Many can allow you to receive it using just a plain web browser. I had a product several years ago that allowed full screen, full motion video to be send globally with analog TV input and TV-out. www.livecamserver.com (no longer selling systems, but code is available)
Another company GlobalStreams had a product called OnQ that could also do that.
Both Logitech and Intel have USB web cams that can take composite video input and come with Internet streaming software.

A TV-out video card can allow for an NTSC composite video output and some even have S-Video out. This allows your regular computer display to be available as composite video which can then be connected to the TV or some other analog broadcast solution.

If needed Radio Shack sells an RF modulator to convert composite video and audio (Phono Plugs) to RF channel 3 and 4.

If you just want to send analog video across an office wirelessly there are several companies that sell 2.4 Gigahertz Wireless video transmitters and receivers. Radio Shack, X10. http://www.rf-video.com/ etc. sells these, a quick search on google for
"2.4 GHz video transmitter" will give a long list of companies selling these.
Most of these, I have found to be compatible with each other and support up to 4 channels.
Most come in 2 flavors, the ones with build in cameras and the ones with video inputs.. You don't want the camera transmitter unless your willing to cut off the camera and attach your own video input connector. Using the $79 solution from X10 with the camera removed works great if you willing to tinker.
The other directly accepts composite video and audio, this is easily connected to a VCR, DVD player, TV-Out video card or a camcorder.

Both can use the same receivers on the TV side and have outputs composite video as well as RF channel 3 and 4.

I hope this helps.

don't split it... transmit it

[Jack Schitt]

I'd just look around on ebay for a lowpower tv transmitter. transmit on channel 3 or something and make sure all the tvs are tuned in to channel 3.

Cue the lawyers

[interociter]

Retransmitting a TV signal within your office so it can be viewed on multiple TVs and monitors? Between the TOS of your cable provider, the MPAA, the RIAA, and the DMCA, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Unless you want to get sued for a few billion dollars, I'd get with a lawyer first.