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Get Your Broadcast TV Anywhere

circletimessquare writes "Ken Schaffer, who made his name inventing a wireless microphone and a satellite telephone service, has a new offering called TV2Me. It's basically MPEG-4, improved upon, that allows for what he calls 'best of class' streaming video over a normal broadband connection. Right now, his only clients are rich sports fanatics, but he eventually wants to make his technology as ubiquitous and as essential as TiVo is to some."

8 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Robert X Cringely... by Sirch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Our favorite geek writer covered this in a nice piece about a month ago.

  2. Robert Cringely Is a big fan of TV2Me by dancedance · · Score: 1, Informative

    Cringely had an article about this a few months back http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20041028. html/. He gives a good overview of the tech and why it is so cool.

  3. Re:It isn't a matter of getting TV.. by acvh · · Score: 2, Informative

    I want to watch TV (sports in particular) from other countries, but thanks to NTSC/PAL and a lack of willingness by fatcats at cable companies (who believe that's not what the public wants: Self full-filling prophecy) it's not on the menu or ever likely to be.

    Get a DISH. They're always trying to get me to pay $45 to watch cricket from New Delhi, or extreme barfighting, or some other abomination. The content is there, if you're willing to pay for it.

  4. Re:Stand by for lawsuits (or not) by Non-linear+Thinker · · Score: 3, Informative

    As to assigning an IP address to a DVR Box, Sony is promoting it's Location Free TV as being able to stream your TV shows to anyplace on the internet.
    http://www.sonystyle.ca/view/LocationFreeTVLanding /index.shtml?storeId=10001&langId=-1&catalogId=100 01&categoryId=47640
    Maybe because it's only being offered in Canada right now they're getting around the MPAA - but what is there to keep someone from setting this up in Canada and running it and accessing from a Wi-Fi hotspot in the Excited States?
    The system can be bought at Best Buy (www.bestbuy.ca) in Canada for about $1800 (Cdn) or from Sonystyle.ca directly. It's basically a Small TV set tablet with a 802.11 link to a base station that streams the video to the tablet and even lets you serf the net with a little browser.
    Sorry - don't know what operating system they're using - it looks like a custom UNIX setup.

  5. Re:Stand by for lawsuits by LWATCDR · · Score: 2, Informative

    I do not see why you could not do this with MythTV. You also do not have to have a static IP to do this. Dynamic DNS and port forwarding should handle it for you. Use VideoLan for the server and it shoudld be workable. Now getting it over you cell phone would be the next step. How long before we see more Television shows broadcasting on the Internet?

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  6. erm by circletimessquare · · Score: 2, Informative

    that link is in the story dude

    i should know, i'm the submitter

    but so should anyone else who took the 3 seconds it took to hoever over the links... less time than it took for you to write your post, that's for sure!

    lol ;-P

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  7. What it does by gordguide · · Score: 3, Informative

    Some of the posters seem to be confused as to what, exactly this does. Now, they all seem to get the TV over IP part. Fine.

    You buy the box for $6,500.00 and stick it in your house. Then you go off somewhere, let's say a hotel 3,000 miles away, and log in to your stream.

    You don't lug the box around. It stays at home.

    You don't "get" the Manchester United game or Moscow TV, unless you already could get them. Reread last sentence. Twice.

    If you want to stream ESPN, you must already subscribe to ESPN at home. Reread that sentence, if necessary.

    You can stream the local, over-the-air channels you might be missing in whatever God-forsaken hotel room you might find yourself in, for free if they are free at your house. At home.

    You can stream the cable, satellite, or whatever you pay for and get at home.

    What you don't get:
    Any channel you can't get at home, now.
    Channels you don't pay for now, if they require you to pay at home.
    No, you can't say goodbye to the cable company, tear down the dish, or steal the world's broadcast signals unless you already do steal them.

    If you need the local news when you're in Bali, it's a workable solution. If you want 2,000 channels you can't get at home while you're in Bali, you still can't get them.

  8. Re:Seems like a scam to me, or at least a ripoff. by kmo · · Score: 2, Informative
    The ONLY unique thing about this thing is the streaming of the remote control over the net.

    Actually, the unique thing is that it can supposedly stream TV quality images over a much lower bandwidth connection (384kbs) than other systems. It uses a custom card for this. See this Cringely article for another take on it.