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Add a TV Tuner To Your Xbox (In Europe)
jfruh (300774) writes "The Xbox one isn't just a game console: it's also a nifty media set-top box, and it interacts very well with your TV service — as long as you have cable. Cord-cutters will soon be able to attach their Xbox to an antenna — but only in Europe." The peripheral that Microsoft will soon release allows you to integrate over-the-air content into the Xbox One system. From the images Microsoft released it looks like the tuner is a small box with a port for an antenna cable on one end, and the USB cable on the other. Unfortunately for my readers in North America, as of now, the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner is only scheduled to release in Europe. Microsoft says it supports DVB-T, DVB-T2 and DVB-C television channels, which I hope means something to my European readers; Wikipedia tells me these are European over-the-air cable standards. The TV Tuner will be available in late October for 24.99 in the UK, and for €29.99 in France, Italy, Germany and Spain.
All three people who own Xbox consoles but don't have internet access or cable TV will surely jump at this marvel of technological engineering.
Only DVB-T and DVB-T2 are for over the air. DVB-C is for cable service. So Xbox One users in Europe are going to be able to use it with both over the air and cable service. In Europe using cable (DVB-C) is a common form of getting television and often it is part of the rent that people pay.
Don't know where you come from but in Australia (and presumably in the various European countries mentioned in the summary as well) there are free-to-air TV channels broadcasting in DVB-T standard that do not require any special cards.
USB DVB tuners have been around for a while now and are amazingly cheap. Like $9.99 cheap. Besides receiving compressed DVB signals, most of them also have a general-purpose tuner mode for broadcast, etc. reception, and they make dandy Software-Defined Radios (SDR) that can tune from 50-1000 MHz or more, and translate an entire 3 MHz segment of the RF spectrum for software decoding.
The cheapest ones are based on the RTL-2832U tuner chip. They are a cable-TV tuner IC coupled to a USB soundcard IC internally. Check out rtl-sdr.com for more info. The PC software to receive radio is free, mostly open source and quite sophisticated, rivaling several-thousand dollar conventional radio packages. Check out sdr-radio.com and sdrsharp.com for a couple of the many software packages out there. Cool stuff!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Microsoft says it supports DVB-T, DVB-T2 and DVB-C television channels, which I hope means something to my European readers; Wikipedia tells me these are European over-the-air cable standards.
...Christ...
the lack of casing and "xbox" referred to the first Xbox which left me scratching my head as this probably was already done.
SEGA Game Gear TV Tuner says hi too.
Presumably your XBox is already plugged into a TV, which already has an OTA tuner, and with an antenna you can already get OTA free TV
Or is it different in the EU ( /me now lives in the US, but formerly lived in NZ, don't know a thing about current european standards)
First of all, DVB-T is low quality (due to the low bandwidth) and DVB-C depends on the cable company (meaning it's unnecessarily expensive and choice is limited). DVB-S is where it's at. Most TV worth watching is free-to-air via satellite in major European markets. But that's still no reason to get a device specific tuner anymore, because there's now Sat>IP, a standard for moving the tuner into the network. You can get a ca. 140EUR box which contains four independent tuners and streams the data to Sat>IP or DLNA compatible devices.
Wireless is so cool. I was at a thrift shop recently and I found a wireless radio and it was only a few dollars. It says on the outside that it only has six transistors in it.
Decryption is standardized for all digital broadcast since forever, xbox needs a cam reader and the subscriber card, or a simple usb card reader. Most encryption is known now, you can replace the cam for conax with a sim card reader and do the decryption in sotfware. The settop boxes for dvb-t sold here in eastern eu does not even have a cam reader anymore.
DVB-T is OTA SD television content branded as "Freeview". You get over a 100 channels but, to be honest, only about 30 of them are any good. There are all the major stations (BBC 1 and 2, ITV, Channel 4 and 5), their additional channels (BBC 3, ITV 2 etc), some +1 hour channels and some Freeview only channels. Whilst these are all subscription free, there is a small amount of subscription content and it's not essential to subscribe to these. You don't get many of the Sky channels.
DVB-T2 is the same as T but with the inclusion of 10 or so (I can't remember the exact number) HD channels. It's branded "Freeview HD". Again, subscription free for the majority of the channels. It's nice to watch Top Gear in HD.
DVB-S is the same as T2 but, I think, has a few more HD channels. It's branded "Freesat" and requires the installation of a satellite dish on the side of the house - which often fails the WAF test. It arrived before Freeview HD and so was the first way to get HD channels, although I'm not sure whether that really is the case any more.
For those that are wondering, "YouView" is actually a STB with a DVB-T2 tuner and a range of additional catch-up and VOD services bolted on.
The majority of people will probably get DVB-T2.
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List of things I am worried about:
1. Xbox One outputting 60Hz instead of 50Hz. OTA content tends to be 50Hz interlaced in Europe. There was, or is, an issue on playing 50Hz Bluray encoded movies on an Xbox One. The result was extra judder, and many people complained.
2. Xbox One doing a poor job at deinterlacing and upscaling, at least worse than what typical TVs do. Most content is either 576i or 1080i. There is a channel in Spain that broadcast 720p, but that is not the norm. Xbox One will probably always output at 1080p in order to raster the on screen menus.
3. Xbox One taking hundreds of Watts while it is on. Reports I have read state Xbox One takes around 75W while idling and 15W while in standby (Kinect related). Dedicated setup boxes probably take a lot less power, e.g. Popcorn Hour A100 takes 15W while playing from internal harddisk.
4. EPG being as inaccurate as the ones you get on a flat screen TV one.
So, can somebody remind me what are the reasons I should use a console instead of a set up box or Smart Tv?
Except that's only true for you, in the uk Rupert Murdoch killed the only real attempt at card DRM'd OTA DVB, OnDigital - these days the only people running card slots are people ripping off foreign sports sat chans or Sky UK TV rippers.
In the UK, you'll need a TV license (£145 per year) if you don't already have one - completely dwarfing the tuner purchase cost.
Sony have already done this. Until I moved to the US this year, I was happily using the PlayTV accessory for my Playstation 3 to do basically exactly the same thing in Australia. It should be noted that the main benefit here isn't access to TV channels. It's the DVR functionality that comes along with it. Pausing and rewinding live TV, scheduling recordings, and live TV Guides.
OTA is not encrypted.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
If you need an xbox to watch TV, you're doing it wrong.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The Netherlands usually the 3 public and one regional that are free and I'd be surprised if it weren't similar in most countries.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
DVB supports encryption for all it's varieties, including OTA (DVB-T). Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Netherlands all have a mix of unencrypted channels and encrypted premium channels. It's run like a cable company really.
Same in Belgium for at least the 3 public ones and a regional ones. Besides, depending where you are, you can also get the French (free) ones (or maybe the ones from the Netherlands in other places ?)
Pay for your TV Licence in a way that suits you
You can emulate any USB device with something like Facedancer
http://goodfet.sourceforge.net...
USB DVB tuners just output MPEG2 transport stream when they are properly tuned to mux frequency.
You can use OpenCaster
http://www.avalpa.com/the-key-...
to build your own stream.
This means if will be relatively easy to build small usb dongle device capable of injecting h.264 video into Xbox 180.
Of course I have no clue about xbone 180, maybe* its already capable of playing h.264 natively, and there is no need for hacks if you want to use one as a media center.
* just checked, yep, xbone can stream h.264 natively
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Much of America is like where I live, where only a handful of TV channels can be gotten via antenna. So even if I had an X Box and a tuner that supported American TV standards it would be of little value.
Except in Belgium (unless you have TV Vlaanderen), cause they use custom setup boxes !
(Unless something changed there, would love to hear about it.)
yeah http://fifa14coingen.com/
Elgato makes a wireless TV tuner for iOS devices, it is European only though. Just thought I would mention it.