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TV Brick - Open Source TV Streaming?
Anders Jacobsen writes "Nexedi has released the TV Brick - an open source-based box for TV capture and streaming over the Internet. Primarily targeted towards Japanese families living in France (seeing that popular Japanese channels like Yomiuri TV and NHK Sogo are unavailable outside Japan), the idea is that is you plug one of these boxes to a TV antenna and a broadband connection in Japan, and the other to a broadband plug and a TV in France; instant 'magic' happens and all the goodness of Japanese TV is in your living room." We also covered the OpenBrick project a few months back.
We get signal!!
Thats not a brick, its a tentacle!
Okay, now that is definitely what I call a niche market. Heck, why not go all-out and also market it towards Brazilian families living in Slovenia?
In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Also, what about bandwidth? Compression of a stream is considerably less than what is possible for a pre-existing file. If everyone starts doing this, soon all bandwidth will cease to exist. And for what? A cheap parlor trick.
But the worst problem of all is how to maintain community standards at a national level. Internet rebroadcasting from Japan to France is no big deal, since France is already very decadent and would probably even welcome some tentacle rape porn. But what if someone in either Japan or France tried to beam that kind of junk into the precious minds of the US's children?
What a concept.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
I hope that I don't open a VNC window with you around. You'll probally think that I opened a portal to the other computer.
Primarily targeted towards Japanese families living in France...
Is this really a significant market?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Heck, if that sentence fragment isn't enough to send everyone running out to buy a Brick I don't know what is.
Trolling is a art,
"Turn on the Fun!"
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
This is a great use for video capture.
Now people can view foreign programs, use their computer+tv at the same time, as well as a number of other things and the TV execs can't do much to morally sway users against it as it would have all the commercials intact.
The process is really easy. Get a TV tuner card that is supported under your favourite unix-like flavour, for instance a Hauppage BT 878. Open a remote X session and start the TV application. Voila. (maybe some reencoding should be done to get it all the way to france- 100 mbit works if you don't mind :)
In other news, I wonder what a beowulf cluster of these would take for bandwidth..
How long until they get sued by these guys:
VBrick Systems
Seems like it's essentially doing the same thing and, to me, the name seems awfully similar...
get nemulator
The alternative is to get friends to tape the shows and send them over/digitise them (an imposition on them) or waste hours of time trying to get net copies. And neither of those options are helpful if the show you like is esoteric.
I had thought about setting up a Tivo (esp. now that you can manage Tivo via the web) and pulling the data off it, but you need a big upstream link for that, plus a 'co-lo' in a friend's house. But at least it's not so much of an imposition.
It's not "pirating". People pay for getting the signal in Japan (actually, it's probably public television and they pay television taxes for it) and then they privately access it through a broadband connection.
I'm not entirely sure what that website sells but I know that I want to punch the crap out of it.
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck
I did some work on this device - although, admittedly, my involvement ended a few months ago. The article doesn't mention the biggest problem we had working on it - the lack of a real "tv standard" on the internet. Consider that the stream may have originated from either a PAL, NTSC, or even something else (though we concentrated on those two only) and on the fly conversion between those two to a PC codec of sorts is not something trivial. Basically frames need to be discarded dynmaically in order to sync with the given display unit. Unlike other conversion devices, we didn't have the luxury of selectively removing/doubling frames based on what looks the best, we had to do it on the fly with streaming data. Basically what we did was sacrifice a small amount of compression for the sake of image smoothness, allowing us the freedom to guess the appropriate frames to manipulate. I'd say I'm about 95% happy with the results, but if you know what to look for you can see the artifacts. But it is open source, so improvements will be implememnted over time.
Thanks,
Bruce
This page provides an overview of some typical Japanese TV shows:
* A game show in which a grandmother has to answer questions about pop culture in order to prevent her grandson from being catapulted into the air by a bungee machine.
* "Guess what's on your head!"- a game show in which contestants try to guess what type of insect or reptile is crawling around on the top of their heads.
* A show called Super Jockey in which people with products to promote (usually beautiful women) play a game where they have to change into a skimpy bikini before a curtain drops which will reveal them if they haven't finished changing, and then they have to sit in scalding hot water. For every second they manage to stay in the water, they are allowed to promote their product for one second
Yes, I wouldn't want to miss the latest in cruelty TV if I moved away...
;- )
Can you win this box in a contest?
You can't take the sky from me...
1. MPAA who?
2. A lot of cable modem users are getting bandwidth limits imposed on them. Some companies (like cox) are limiting home users to 3 GB per month down, 1 up... How many hours of this TV Brick thing would that be?
I had a sucky sig.
This is an application of open brick, a really cool Linux based appliance. I think that the tiny market (Japanese in France) is not such an issue - more that this has the potential of leading to the commoditification of Linux and open source - not on the desktop, but as cheap single use hardware apps.
...some court finds that this is a circumvention device on the broadcasting rights that are limited to Japan, and declares this illegal. Any slashlaywers care to comment? ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
When I think of "TV Brick" it's usually in a different context. (replace hammer with brick) Generally after watching yet another Laci Peterson segment on CNN.
sulli
RTFJ.
"Primarily targeted towards Japanese families living in France..."
Secondarily targeted towards slashdot readers with WAY too much time on their hands...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Primarily targeted towards Japanese families living in France
Yeah, reading and following the setup and assembly instructions is gonna be no problem.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I can't imagine that the quality of a TV signal across a DSL connection could obtain reasonable enough framerates for cross-country viewing. What about censorship legalities of people receiving signals that are not allowed in their country. Networks are gonna have a field day with this one.
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
Everyone is carpin that this targeted for a narrow market. It could have some very large scale appeal. Here's 3 I came up with:
1. Home video at Work - Watch Opera on your home cable at work.
2. Video Survaliance - Watch what your wife and pets are doing while your at work.
3. Pr0n/Underground Video - Watch what your wife and pets are doing while your at work.
Enjoy cheap digital TV from the comfort of your couch, not scrunched over your computer.
You could also setup a video broadcasting station for less $2000 and no experince.
Keep LDTV alive! - Low Def TV for the underground!
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Keep in mind that for a few years already Japan has straight-to-the-home 100MBit Optical Fiber Internet Access. And it's cheap. The initial installation fee is about $300. After that, it only costs 60$ per month.
And you thought DSL and cable modems were fast.
Wow, America is still so far behind. They've only just started trials for fiber-to-the-home(FTTH) in Silicon Valley recently. $2400 install fee + 75$ month I think.
How long do you think it will be before the Cable Companies convince the govt to make this illegal??
Think about it. If you could set this up on one system, and have hundreds of people access it (which if it's not possible now, it soon will be) then why pay for cable?? Find a server somewhere that plays some shows that you like, and watch them from there.
I'd be willing to bet that within 6 months of the first one being sold in the US the Nexedi will be in court.
It's a shame though, I could have some fun with this!!
Does it drop frames and skew time or could i expect to get all the siezures that the anime creators intended?
From the FAQ:
Oh yeah, this is a real viable alternative.(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
COOL! I was going to do the same. Now, I can just use it and debug it (if necessary). As an immigrant in the US, where it is impossible to get any decent foreign TV, and the quality of the news sucks (especially when it comes to heavy biasing , to promoting whatever government agenda and to the total lack of independence), it am very glad that I can access different programs. Not that the programs of my coutry be that incredibly better, but they are of reasonable quality and allow me to be part of my original culture. One of the worst things that happen to somebody who lives abroad is going back and not understanding what people are talking/laughing about. Really makes you feel bad. So, I AM ALL FOR IT. Just find a better name..