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DVB-T STB/MPEG2 Player That Can Access SMB Shares
feanor writes "Siemens is realeasing beginning of November the Gigaset M740 AV (German text). This is a DVB-T set-top-box that can access SMB shares either via ethernet or WLAN and store its MPEG2 compliant streams. Alternatively it can be used as an MPEG2 streaming client. Other cool features include the ability to hook-up standard USB hard-drives as storage, a dual tuner architecture and a very cool design."
English translation
About 250,- EUR street price. Its actually quite cheap if you compare it to 140,- EUR disk-only PVRs on ebay (without disks).
I recently bought the D-Link DSM-320, which isn't a tuner, but allows you to play movies and music as well as view images from your computer, onto your TV via ethernet or 802.11b/g.
It doesn't use SMB shares, however. You run a server app on your Windows machine and tell it the directories you want to share.
I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with it so far. The biggest problem is that using the wireless, a lot of movies don't have sound. From what I have read, this is a bandwidth issue and should go away if I go with wired ethernet, but I haven't tried that yet.
It also has a number of small usability issues. It doesn't respond to the remote control very well and you need pretty direct aim and also need to sometimes press a button multiple times. It sometimes hangs and responds late to button presses, so you end up hitting a button over and over again thinking it's not getting it, only to get all the button hits several seconds later.
On the other hand, the system allows for automatic firmware upgrades (which it did the first time I connected) and it appears to have improved significantly from earlier versions, so I'm hoping it will continue to improve. I considered taking it back, but I'm going to hold onto it and just hope that the firmware upgrades will eventually remedy most of these problems.
It's nice to see more of these types of devices coming out. My real goal is to build a MythTV box because I think that's going to be more of what I'm looking for. I have a DirectTV receiver with TiVo and the TiVo is great with the exception that I can't store the movies offline and I can't access my substantial collection of TV shows from my computer with it. So I think at this point MythTV is the only way to go.
It's really not a question of ATSC in this case. Since the GigaSet is a IP based set top box, it would only be useful for TVoIP applications such as those offered by broadband providers such as the Telco's. Alternately, it could be connected to a cable modem.
If this becomes popular, somebody will build an ATSC receiver that has and IP output. The issue of course is the CCI (copy protection flag). A decoder would pass this flag to the set top box, but the box would be required by US law to respect the flag and prevent it from offering clear digital signal at it's outputs.
Since it is DVB, I assume that it supports SimulCrypt, so operating it in a telco environment should be no problem.
Here's a simple summary. DVB is the digital broadcasting standard used in Europe (and some other places, like Australia). DVB-T is the variant used for "T"errestrial broadcasts; DVB is also used for digital satellite (DVB-S) and cable (DVB-C). Many European countries have started doing DVB-T broadcasts, with the intention of eventually eliminating analogue transmission. There are many DVB-T set-top boxes on the market, as well as televisions with built-in DVB-T tuners. DVB-T PVRs have also started to appear. This box is sort of half-of-a-PVR. Instead of using its own internal storage, it uses an SMB share or a USB hard drive. Clever - this should reduce the price. The point of using MPEG-2 is that this is DVB's native video format. This box is not doing any encoding whatever; it's just saving a copy of the stream as it comes in from the aerial. The box only needs to be able to decode - this, too, should keep the price down.
DVB = Digital Video Broadcast
ATSC = Advanced Television Systems Committee
MPEG2 is the format that DVB uses for transmitting its videos. I don't see the relevance of DivX here; this device is obviously intended for use as a digital video recorder and MPEG2 is the obvious format for it to use for this.
It's worth noting that DVB-T, T for Terrestrial, is the standard for over the air digital broadcasts everywhere in the world except the US, and possibly South Korea.
DVB-C, the standard for digital cable, and DVB-S is the standard for Satellite TV.
The US claims that DVB-T doesn't work well in more rural areas, which maybe true.
http://www.hawknest.com/
If Australian DVB-T boxes support MPEG-2 audio as well as AC-3 audio, then they'll work unchanged in Europe; European boxes require simpler video streams than Australia offers, but if they have an AC-3 decoder, they'll handle the audio out there.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.