streaming live from oversea

[jock_usa]

Is it possible to use BTV to stream live tv from another country to the USA? I am interested in soccer games, and the US lacks on this subject.

[jock_usa]

legally, I can't see the difference between streaming live over the intert, in or out the country.

[Terminal]

Also, although streaming sounds like a good idea. I really think it's still a pipe dream at this point. You have to stream at such a low rate it really isn't worth it. I would think that would be especially true of a sports show. You can download and watch later, now that would work ok, but still high quality mpeg could take several hours to download, even with a good high speed internet connection.

[Cayars]

Well it would have to be in WMV format to stream it so it wouldn't be as bad as an MPG file.

I however would prefer to get the file zipped and then downloaded.

Carlo

[Terminal]

I realize it would have to be in WMV to stream, but the best I can stream on my cable connection is ISDN quality. That would not be very good quality for sports. I would think for sports you would want high quality, and I guess a Near DVD quality on WMV would be ok. Even that would take a while to download. If you want the best quality, then downloading the MPEG is the way to go. The program GetRight works with BTV and will allow you to restart a download where you left off. Getting cut off usually is not a problem with internet connections today, but with the amount of time it takes you may want to stop it for awhile to do something else.

[fair_use]

I live in Australia and have a PC setup in America with Beyond TV installed on it. It's connected to the Internet via a residential Cable connection that has a max upload speed of about 350K. I record then download the sports programs I like to see in MWV format encoded at about 600K. It takes twice as long to download as it does to watch. I use the download manager 'FreshDownload'to schedule and resume broken downloads.

If I want to watch something live, I just dial down the MVW quality to about 270K at 15 frames per second. It's not great, but it's better than not getting to see my home team play!

I've also installed WinAmp and ShoutCast and integrated it with the FM Radio feature of my capture card so I can listen to any 'local' radio station via the Net when I'm not recording video - great for listening to local sports talk back.

[jock_usa]

That's what I am talking about!!! I will pay the price of lower quality to watch my home soccer team play.
I want to watch it on my TV via s-video. I can't wait for the day when we'll all have abundant bandwidth.

[tryingtogetby]

Guys,

I recently setup a BTV box and went on a trip to Asia. I was able to watch a basketball game without much problem. Granted, I had to dial it down to 'Cable/DSL - Low'. In addition, there is some buffering that occurs when the rate is too high. As long as you can get around 188kbs consistently, you can stream live 320x280 nicely. It is not the best, however, it is better than not getting to watch my team.

I have a question though. Is streaming live and playback a function of upload speeds from my BTV box in the states or downloads overseas? What if I upgraded to a higher upload bandwidth from my provider? Would I be able to stream a better quality live TV?

Thanks for the input.

ttgb

[bryan_chow]

I have almost exactly the same setup and config as fair_use. I have a server in the US, with 368kbps upstream. I record at around 600kbps, and every hour my local PC checks what new shows have been recorded and automatically download them for viewing remotely.

In the rare occasions where I want to watch live, I have another quality setting called "Streaming" which is about 180kbps (half my peak throughput to avoid hiccups).

Works great! The best part is that to record a show, I just need to go to Snapstream.net, click it, and about 10-15 minutes later it is added to my recordings.

[wayner]

You guys rock! This is a great use of the computer/BTV technology that gets around draconian broadcast regulations where government tries to control what you can watch. Well done

I bet you could get enough people around the world to "chip in" to support several channels being streamed at 1Mbps 24/7. Set up a BTV server farm with all of these channels and stream away.

This probably wouldn't even be illegal if you put up a DirecTV dish outside of US territory and streamed from there (let's say in international waters).

In Canada DirecTV couldn't legally be sold so it had no value and you can't steal something that has no value. So lots of people got DirecTV systems with hacked cards. But then the Canadian govt. made it illegal to buy or import US dishes and receivers.

Somone here in Canada tried streaming TV over the net (ICraveTV) but was sued and shut down.

[fair_use]

I had thought about putting my Beyond TV 'server' at a collocation specialist to get higher bandwidth. I figured if the collocation site had a 16-100Mb link to the Internet I could stream live TV at 350k - much like MLB.TV does. With WMV V9 captured at 640x480 that is pretty close to broadcast quality - if your hardware can keep up without dropping frames. It was just to expensive to justify the cost of the colo and I was worried about how I would get TV 'in' to my server in the rack.

It would be great if you could setup some type of 'co-op' of people to share the cost of a server rack and organise the rental of hardware/firewall. I'm sure you'd get a ton of Expats abroad interested. However, I'm sure you would get sued immediately the legal issues would drag on and on and on.

Still - it was nice to be able to watch the NCAA Hoops Final LIVE - even if it was only streaming at 180k!

[aurigus0]

Interesting... I work at a web hosting company, and i tried to set up "mirroring" for my BTV signal because like you all, I'm tied to a Cable connection that has it's upload capped. However, I didn't have any luck with it.

Anyone know of software that will run on Linux (or windows I suppose) that will receive a wmv stream and then rebroadcast it?

I'm not interested in widespread broadcasting, just for me and a few friends of mine.

[wayner]

Originally posted by aurigus0
Interesting... I work at a web hosting company, and i tried to set up "mirroring" for my BTV signal because like you all, I'm tied to a Cable connection that has it's upload capped. However, I didn't have any luck with it.

Anyone know of software that will run on Linux (or windows I suppose) that will receive a wmv stream and then rebroadcast it?

I'm not interested in widespread broadcasting, just for me and a few friends of mine.

You might want to try VideoLan - especially for Linux and for Windows Windows Media Encoder (a free download from MS) might be able to do this as well.

[aurigus0]

VideoLan is exactly what I used. I tried their Linux version; it seemed to be exactly what I need. But, the linux version seemed to be a bit buggy. Maybe I will try it again with the Windows version and see how it goes.

[wayner]

Originally posted by aurigus0
VideoLan is exactly what I used. I tried their Linux version; it seemed to be exactly what I need. But, the linux version seemed to be a bit buggy. Maybe I will try it again with the Windows version and see how it goes.

I think the Windows version has much less functionality than the Linux version so I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you.