"IT may be too late to tell you this (because this thread is so old), but Fusion (www.dvico.com) makes the Fusion QAM III which decodes QAM-64 and QAM-256 including HDTV. It doesn't work in Media Center Edition yet, but it works in their own tuner/recorder app. I use it for OTA HD broadcasts and it works fine."
It's important to note that the fusion QAM III only does unencrypted QAM... if you cable company encrypts their HDTV content you're hosed (except for OTA, of course).
I concur that their *should* be a PCI card where you could insert your legitimate DirectTV access card thingie and legally decode your content to watch it on your PC... There should also be CableCard capable PCI cards to do the same for Digital Cable.
But one of the other posters nailed it on the head, re: the upstream content providers/relationships getting in the way.
You probably won't see DirectTV/Dish/CableCo's come out with it, but hopefully some 3rd party manufacturer can get the chocolate and peanut butter together to make a legitimate (accepts subscription/access cards) PCI sat/digital cable PCI cards.
(they do have this in Europe I believe with little skyview pcmia like daughter cards that attach to the satellite DVB cards to enable access/decoding)
What looks exciting about this particular PVR project (besides it's linux based) is the DVB support. I think that'll be a key draw for some people to try it.
Alot of windows options don't do DVB... Tvedia does, but I don't think it will do an analog tuner next to the DVB... and Meedio is supposed to be coming up with DVB card support for their MeedioTV product.
and then there was promptly a DDOS of bittorrent tracking sites... which meant I couldn't even reach TVTorrents to setup the "bittorrent + rss" setup via engadget's guide.
it's been taking longer and longer each month to get my google adsense checks in the mail.
They must be spending more and more postprocessing time verifying the legitimacy of clicks. You can sorta see how they do the processing in different chunks of "approval" if you watch the payment section of your adsense account.
One thing that can be frustrating to an adsense publisher is clickthroughs where a well meaning visitor/user of a site clicks on every ad as a gesture to support your site, but it's viewed as fraudulent activity and you lose your cut of the payout for those clickthroughs. (note I haven't seen that happen first hand, I'm just saying, it's a plausible problem of false positives on fraud patrol...)
"How, exactly, do they police this? How can they? Especially if your website is not on the same IP or possibly even domain as the cmoputer you use to surf the web."
It's google we are talking about, they probably created an alogrythm to identify likelyhood of a given clickthrough to be fraudulent.
That said, you can get a sense of what they are doing to "check" for fraud by seeing how the overseas manual click-farms do it.
things like length of time on the page before clicking on an ad, how long you stay at the ad destination (and visit subsequent pages at the destination), how many ads on a given page you click, clicking pattern on other google adsense sites. I'm sure if you check your google adsense account balance with teh same IP/other identifying features as the one you are using to click through your own ad, they'll catch on.
A buddy of mine actually got a nastygram from google like 6 months ago for clicking on his own ads and those clicks were deducted from his total.
*shrug* It's probably not easy to determine a good click from a bad one, but I'm sure they have some ways (like outlined above) of crunching the stats to find egregious offenders.
Although his system consists of both the encoding/netcasting/streaming and the client piece of it... the end benefit might not be that everyone zings their cable from home to their office PC (wait a minute, THAT would be pretty cool).
The technology/concept is the cool part regardless of price at this early proof of concept stage. A different implementation could be some sort of uber VOD (video on demand) system, like those old QWEST commercials.
You could get *every* channel (hypothetically), and kinda do for TV/Cable/satellite what VOIP does for long distance.
What's really the outstanding question for me is, how much upload bandwith do you need to send/server the video? Will "home" broadband connections capped at 128k up be able to do it, or is this SDSL territory?
I think you're relegated to using elgato's EyeTV and an external device like the plextor pvr convertX (wired news short review)
Although I wonder if freevo/mythtv/etc have an OSX port (or if someone would do one... I think the lack of tv tuners for the mac would be both a boon and a bane)
" I still think Beyond TV snapstream is the only logical option on windows XP due to price and the fact that it runs on virtually all cards. MythTV and other open source projects seem so raw still"
GBPVR is free as in beer and although an independent project hangs pretty well with the commercial apps in most respects, from what I understand.
Also commercial is Meedio HTPC which used to be myHTPC which has a beta PVR plugin that should be not beta pretty soon.
GotTV (no link handy sorry) recently spun into something else, and is also windows and "free" (not sure if it's FOSS or not...)
Have you used mythTV lately? I'm not sure you are giving it a fair shake. I think the issue is more the complexity of the install/linux learning curve than usability/look and feel issues... (hopefuly efforts like knoppmyth mitigate that a little bit)
*shrug* that said, I do like the polish and all the features of BTV, but there's a lot of options out there, and i'm glad to see media portal's (and xmbc's) progressing nicely)
I believe they do support using ATI's All in Wonder from my previous scoping out of the project. But yeah your old hauppauge (wintv go?) card is more than long in the tooth and regardless of which pvr software you choose, I think you'd be better served by getting a hardware based encoding tuner card (pvr250 would be a good choice if you're linux bound - ivtv drivers and all)
That's not to say you can't use your existing tuner card, just that I think you'll have an easier time of it and better performance w/hardware encoding card. IMHO
there's a section dedicated to the mediamvp and mediamvp "hacking"/ flashware replacments....
there's been work on a mythtv client, beyondtv client, sagetv client, etc...
Although it's not as sexy as gbpvr, my understanding is the latest update for mediamvp default software *does* do DivX decoding (no idea on what version, to what extent, other limitations etc)
It doesn't solve ALL multimedia client problems... but it is a reasonably priced solutions that's pretty flexible, and quiet.
*Shrug* not sure why you are bolding proprietary streaming system... it's a reasonably "open" system from what I understand... ymmv
using a modded xbox as a very cool network client of a homebrew PVR/HTPC setup, now that's pretty cool, and somewhat economical... besides really, what would you do with 10 xboxes anyway? I forgot this is/. you can make a beowolf cluster =)
e.
not that I encourage defacement
on
SCO.com Defaced
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
but the subtle ones, that the people that see the site every day may glaze over and not notice are much more amusing than the "animated gif internet meme some cracking group ownz jo0uz" defacement.
you can use a TV out card with a Tv in your cabinet.
You'll probably want to go with svideo (as opposed to composite or coax *shudder*) connection to the TV.
If you want to use the original arcade monitor (which is similiar to a tunerless TV, with dangerous exposed innards --- except it uses RGB and sync connections) you can use an ArcadeVGA, an older card that'll clock down to 15khz and a VGA hack, or use ultimarcs J-pac jamma ready/capable encoder which slides into an arcade cabinets (well Jamma cabinets) jamma socket and again presuming a video card that'll clock down get you going with an existing cabinet/arcade monitor.
"Building" a Mame cabinet is no where as hard as it used to be because there's been great advancements in the mame cabinet building community, and a ton of support "niche" market providers to create products that make it really easy to convert an existing cabinet (or build your own)... hell there's even a book on the topic to step you throuh the process.
They use cheaper generic microswitches wich are clickier/louder and perhaps feel "different" in both their joysticks and buttons (as opposed to the cherry "nike" of microswitches).
The plastic on the buttons is thinner/cheaper.
They function the same, and are "arcade quality" but when I play something demanding like "track and field" on my cabinet, I kinda wish I upgraded to happs buttons. (or swap in some better microswitches)
Of course, for true nostalgic action (Dependingo n your age) you'll want only leaf switch joysticks/buttons that require periodic adjustment and contact cleaning =)
Slashdot Mirror
They missed the vector arcade version of Empire Strikes Back.
I hacked a starwars yoke to my [url=http://ubercade.randomdrivel.com]MAME arcade cabinet[/url] just to play the original vector starwars arcade game.
rampy
and think it said...
"Flesh is winding its way into a growing number of gadgets and devices..."
wha wha what?! now how did THAT get in there?
e.
"IT may be too late to tell you this (because this thread is so old), but Fusion (www.dvico.com) makes the Fusion QAM III which decodes QAM-64 and QAM-256 including HDTV. It doesn't work in Media Center Edition yet, but it works in their own tuner/recorder app. I use it for OTA HD broadcasts and it works fine."
It's important to note that the fusion QAM III only does unencrypted QAM... if you cable company encrypts their HDTV content you're hosed (except for OTA, of course).
e.
I concur that their *should* be a PCI card where you could insert your legitimate DirectTV access card thingie and legally decode your content to watch it on your PC... There should also be CableCard capable PCI cards to do the same for Digital Cable.
But one of the other posters nailed it on the head, re: the upstream content providers/relationships getting in the way.
You probably won't see DirectTV/Dish/CableCo's come out with it, but hopefully some 3rd party manufacturer can get the chocolate and peanut butter together to make a legitimate (accepts subscription/access cards) PCI sat/digital cable PCI cards.
(they do have this in Europe I believe with little skyview pcmia like daughter cards that attach to the satellite DVB cards to enable access/decoding)
*shrug*
e.
you could watch FTA Satellite DVB in the US. mmmmm hidef PBS =)
e.
What looks exciting about this particular PVR project (besides it's linux based) is the DVB support. I think that'll be a key draw for some people to try it.
Alot of windows options don't do DVB... Tvedia does, but I don't think it will do an analog tuner next to the DVB... and Meedio is supposed to be coming up with DVB card support for their MeedioTV product.
e.
and then there was promptly a DDOS of bittorrent tracking sites... which meant I couldn't even reach TVTorrents to setup the "bittorrent + rss" setup via engadget's guide.
(it's finally up now *knock on wood*)
e.
it's been taking longer and longer each month to get my google adsense checks in the mail.
They must be spending more and more postprocessing time verifying the legitimacy of clicks. You can sorta see how they do the processing in different chunks of "approval" if you watch the payment section of your adsense account.
One thing that can be frustrating to an adsense publisher is clickthroughs where a well meaning visitor/user of a site clicks on every ad as a gesture to support your site, but it's viewed as fraudulent activity and you lose your cut of the payout for those clickthroughs. (note I haven't seen that happen first hand, I'm just saying, it's a plausible problem of false positives on fraud patrol...)
e.
"How, exactly, do they police this? How can they? Especially if your website is not on the same IP or possibly even domain as the cmoputer you use to surf the web."
It's google we are talking about, they probably created an alogrythm to identify likelyhood of a given clickthrough to be fraudulent.
That said, you can get a sense of what they are doing to "check" for fraud by seeing how the overseas manual click-farms do it.
things like length of time on the page before clicking on an ad, how long you stay at the ad destination (and visit subsequent pages at the destination), how many ads on a given page you click, clicking pattern on other google adsense sites. I'm sure if you check your google adsense account balance with teh same IP/other identifying features as the one you are using to click through your own ad, they'll catch on.
A buddy of mine actually got a nastygram from google like 6 months ago for clicking on his own ads and those clicks were deducted from his total.
*shrug* It's probably not easy to determine a good click from a bad one, but I'm sure they have some ways (like outlined above) of crunching the stats to find egregious offenders.
e.
3 tuners DVRs to compensate!
Although his system consists of both the encoding/netcasting/streaming and the client piece of it... the end benefit might not be that everyone zings their cable from home to their office PC (wait a minute, THAT would be pretty cool).
The technology/concept is the cool part regardless of price at this early proof of concept stage. A different implementation could be some sort of uber VOD (video on demand) system, like those old QWEST commercials.
You could get *every* channel (hypothetically), and kinda do for TV/Cable/satellite what VOIP does for long distance.
What's really the outstanding question for me is, how much upload bandwith do you need to send/server the video? Will "home" broadband connections capped at 128k up be able to do it, or is this SDSL territory?
e.
I'd hate to see the carnage if someone else was on the same frequency crystal or if the neighbor's kid get's an RC car/plane.
e.
I suggest trying both and seeing which one "feels" better to you =) Snapstream does indeed have a free trial.
e.
I think you're relegated to using elgato's EyeTV and an external device like the plextor pvr convertX (wired news short review)
Although I wonder if freevo/mythtv/etc have an OSX port (or if someone would do one... I think the lack of tv tuners for the mac would be both a boon and a bane)
*Shrug*
e.
" I still think Beyond TV snapstream is the only logical option on windows XP due to price and the fact that it runs on virtually all cards. MythTV and other open source projects seem so raw still"
plug I just posted a review of BeyondTV 3.5 on my site. There's also SageTV on windoze that's good. (sage tv review)
GBPVR is free as in beer and although an independent project hangs pretty well with the commercial apps in most respects, from what I understand.
Also commercial is Meedio HTPC which used to be myHTPC which has a beta PVR plugin that should be not beta pretty soon.
GotTV (no link handy sorry) recently spun into something else, and is also windows and "free" (not sure if it's FOSS or not...)
Have you used mythTV lately? I'm not sure you are giving it a fair shake. I think the issue is more the complexity of the install/linux learning curve than usability/look and feel issues... (hopefuly efforts like knoppmyth mitigate that a little bit)
*shrug* that said, I do like the polish and all the features of BTV, but there's a lot of options out there, and i'm glad to see media portal's (and xmbc's) progressing nicely)
e.
I believe they do support using ATI's All in Wonder from my previous scoping out of the project. But yeah your old hauppauge (wintv go?) card is more than long in the tooth and regardless of which pvr software you choose, I think you'd be better served by getting a hardware based encoding tuner card (pvr250 would be a good choice if you're linux bound - ivtv drivers and all)
That's not to say you can't use your existing tuner card, just that I think you'll have an easier time of it and better performance w/hardware encoding card. IMHO
" Yeah, like the internet killed TV and terrestrial radio."
Well, not all change is instantaneous =) besides it's the FCC that'll kill TV and terrestial radio...
e.
... afterall I read it on slasdot =)
e.
visit the forums section of SHS PVR
there's a section dedicated to the mediamvp and mediamvp "hacking"/ flashware replacments....
there's been work on a mythtv client, beyondtv client, sagetv client, etc...
Although it's not as sexy as gbpvr, my understanding is the latest update for mediamvp default software *does* do DivX decoding (no idea on what version, to what extent, other limitations etc)
It doesn't solve ALL multimedia client problems... but it is a reasonably priced solutions that's pretty flexible, and quiet.
*Shrug* not sure why you are bolding proprietary streaming system... it's a reasonably "open" system from what I understand... ymmv
e.
well if you go with a wired network, a hauppauge mediamvp makes for a neat network based media "client"
people have bridged mediamvp's over a wifi networks, fwiw.
GBPVR integrates nicely with mediamvp and its own backend PVR/scheduling/htpc-esque functions and is free as in beer.
ymmv,
e.
... for about 2 minutes, before I wanted to also upgrade to the smokeless media center =(
e.
but you'll have nary a tv encoder/tuner =)
/. you can make a beowolf cluster =)
using a modded xbox as a very cool network client of a homebrew PVR/HTPC setup, now that's pretty cool, and somewhat economical... besides really, what would you do with 10 xboxes anyway? I forgot this is
e.
but the subtle ones, that the people that see the site every day may glaze over and not notice are much more amusing than the "animated gif internet meme some cracking group ownz jo0uz" defacement.
e.
you can use a TV out card with a Tv in your cabinet.
You'll probably want to go with svideo (as opposed to composite or coax *shudder*) connection to the TV.
If you want to use the original arcade monitor (which is similiar to a tunerless TV, with dangerous exposed innards --- except it uses RGB and sync connections) you can use an ArcadeVGA, an older card that'll clock down to 15khz and a VGA hack, or use ultimarcs J-pac jamma ready/capable encoder which slides into an arcade cabinets (well Jamma cabinets) jamma socket and again presuming a video card that'll clock down get you going with an existing cabinet/arcade monitor.
"Building" a Mame cabinet is no where as hard as it used to be because there's been great advancements in the mame cabinet building community, and a ton of support "niche" market providers to create products that make it really easy to convert an existing cabinet (or build your own)... hell there's even a book on the topic to step you throuh the process.
Project Arcade Amazon link with author's referral id
what was the question again? =)
e.
the quality isn't quite as good as happs stuff.
They use cheaper generic microswitches wich are clickier/louder and perhaps feel "different" in both their joysticks and buttons (as opposed to the cherry "nike" of microswitches).
The plastic on the buttons is thinner/cheaper.
They function the same, and are "arcade quality" but when I play something demanding like "track and field" on my cabinet, I kinda wish I upgraded to happs buttons. (or swap in some better microswitches)
Of course, for true nostalgic action (Dependingo n your age) you'll want only leaf switch joysticks/buttons that require periodic adjustment and contact cleaning =)
*Shrug* ymmv
rampy