Homebrew PVR

[NoddY]

I want to stream (multicast as a preference) from a TV-card to various units around the house. Now, a few months ago, someone here mentioned they'd done something similar, perhaps with functionality limited to a PVR.

The units/clients i'd like to be as thin as possible:

The 'units' I'm considering are
1. Xbox (original) running XBMC http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_project.htm or
2. DLink DSM-520 or
3. small form factor PC

The server will have a TV Card x 2 (for 2 channels - record one watch the other) + access to filesystem containing DivX movies, recorded TV in MPEG-2. I prefer the server to be FreeBSD (possibly Linux or Windows Media Center (sic)).

All linked together with 802.11g wireless (or wait for 802.11n wireless?).

The trick is to get the multicast TV working. Any suggestions on the feasibility and software/hardware that works?

[Joe Black]

Can't you just do this by setting up the server with the 'windows media server' option installed and using win media encoder (or something similar) to feed live streams on different channels?

Did this recently, no experience except Google, and was able to set up streamed video over the network in less than the time it'd take MS to earn a few mil.

[NoddY]

Well after some investigation it seems VLC is the way to go with regard to the multicast TV streaming.

I'm limited to DirectShow in Windows OR Video For Linux for capture:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html (Inputs table > MPEG encoding card)

But most OS's stream UDP multicast: http://www.videolan.org/streaming/features.html (Output > UDP Unicast / Multicast)

With the common OS being Windows or Linux.

The clients are the easy bit I think, I just give whatever player they use to point to the multicast address for the TV. The next thing is to get two cards to work in the server machine and to change channels via the (W)LAN!