[ucsbdude]

Hi all.

I have always wanted to watch TV on my powerbook, but have not wanted to sit at my desk with an eyetv hooked up to it. I have wanted to be able to take the laptop with me all over the house but still watch TV. I got hooked to watching TV on my mac back when i had a performa 6400 with a tv tuner that worked flawlessly and even had a remote. This was from apple as a standard config!

Well I think I have found out a way to do it. I own a rev a 12 inch G4 powerbook and also have an old 400g3 Imac DV edition that I never use. I am thinking of buying an eyetv and plugging it into the imac running 10.2 and just leaving it in a room turned on all day with my firewire 80 gig drive. The imac is plugged into a hub that is pluged into a cable modem and airport 802.11b. This way i can watch tv on the imac, but now i have found a program that will stream wirelessly the current eyetv playing stream over the network and out the airport to my powerbook. This program lets you even change channels. Im wondering if any one uses a similar set up and has tried the cytv program that streams the feed? There website is at http://www.lucid-cake.net/cytv/index_en.html

Can I count on the g3 400 imac to play the eyetv streams ok and to be powerful enough to stream them out over the airport to my powerbook? Can i really expect to have full screen wireless tv on my powerbook anywhere in the house? I also want to record shows on the imac and then access them on the powerbook.

Does anyone see any problems with this? I dont really have the $200 for eyetv but this just sounds too cool!

I appreciate any feed back, Thanks
Chris

[nagromme]

Sounds interesting anyway. I've bookmarked it for a future day when EyeTV may come down in price.

I can believe that the hardware could handle it though, since we're not talking major high-definition video here. More like VideoCD.

It could be an alternative to the internal Cardbus TV tuner I want! But which no longer seems to exist...

[ucsbdude]

There was an internal card bus TV tuner?? that would be very cool! Does anyone have a link to such a thing?

[Drakino]

While not for watching live TV, another solution for some might be to get a Replay TV unit. There are free programs that allow any computer to watch any shows recorded on the Replay unit. It works with any 4500, 5000, or even the new 5500 ReplayTV units.

Check www.planetreplay.com for more info on DVArchive.

[ucsbdude]

From what I have heard hacking the replay unit to watch tv is almost more trouble than its worth. Is this still true? Or has the process gotten much easier?
Can you stream videos to your laptop or must you first download huge files and then start watching them? How long does it take to download a 30 minute show off of a replay tv unit onto your laptop over airport rev a.

Thanks, I find this all very intersting and a process that is much harder and more expensive to do on a mac than on a pc. It seems to be the only peice of the puzzle we are missing!

Chris

[Drakino]

There isn't any hacking necessary with the Replay 4500 units and above. You plug in the Replay to the network, run DVArchive, and have a media player capable of playing MPEG2 installed on your Mac. You can stream, or download the shows to your local computer. Another nice thing about DVArchive is that it acts like another Replay TV unit on the network, so you can archive shows on your computer, then stream them back to the Replay. Network speeds, it's about real time to download a show, due to DVArchive keeping the network speed down to avoid crashing the Replay unit.

[ucsbdude]

so has no one else tried the streaming with eyetv?

It seems like something that would be very usefull!

[neutrino23]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
There was an internal card bus TV tuner?? that would be very cool! Does anyone have a link to such a thing?

We had one too. It was about 10 or 11 years ago. It worked on our Performa. Can't recall the model number. 640? 630?

[MusicalTone]

There is nothingg on TV worth watching. I prefer the internet. Sorry.

[macndave]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
Hi all.

I have always wanted to watch TV on my powerbook, but have not wanted to sit at my desk with an eyetv hooked up to it...Well I think I have found out a way to do it. I own a rev a 12 inch G4 powerbook and also have an old 400g3 Imac DV edition that I never use. I am thinking of buying an eyetv and plugging it into the imac running 10.2 and just leaving it in a room turned on all day with my firewire 80 gig drive. The imac is plugged into a hub that is pluged into a cable modem and airport 802.11b. This way i can watch tv on the imac, but now i have found a program that will stream wirelessly the current eyetv playing stream over the network and out the airport to my powerbook. This program lets you even change channels. Im wondering if any one uses a similar set up and has tried the cytv program that streams the feed? There website is at http://www.lucid-cake.net/cytv/index_en.html ...Does anyone see any problems with this? I dont really have the $200 for eyetv but this just sounds too cool!

I appreciate any feed back, Thanks
Chris

I have a similar set up to what you describe: Airport (non-extreme), PowerBook, a 350mhz G4 Tower and EyeTv. Unfortunately, I am on travel and won't be home until later this afternoon/evening.

I've downloaded the files to my PowerBook and will install them when I get home, then let you know the results.

[nagromme]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
There was an internal card bus TV tuner?? that would be very cool! Does anyone have a link to such a thing?

Searching on Google reveals some small mention of it from a couple of years ago. So I assume it never took off and no longer esists. Too bad--I think it could be a nice product.

(Neutrino probably means NuBus, not CardBus. NuBus is Apple's old slots they used before PCI. CardBus is the side-slot in a laptop. Also called PC Card and PCMCIA.)

[gomariners]

Originally posted by Drakino:
There isn't any hacking necessary with the Replay 4500 units and above. You plug in the Replay to the network, run DVArchive, and have a media player capable of playing MPEG2 installed on your Mac. You can stream, or download the shows to your local computer. Another nice thing about DVArchive is that it acts like another Replay TV unit on the network, so you can archive shows on your computer, then stream them back to the Replay. Network speeds, it's about real time to download a show, due to DVArchive keeping the network speed down to avoid crashing the Replay unit.

I have the 5080 ReplayTV and DVarchive is so easy to use it may as well be a mac product. It's a little much on the memory usage, tends to slow the whole system, down, but hey I'm on a pismo 400, what do I expect? I don't think I would do this if all I wanted to do was stream TV just because the box is ~$300 and then $10/mo after that. I consider it money well spent, but using the TV with my computer is only one thing on the list for me.

[macndave]

Originally posted by macndave:
I have a similar set up to what you describe: Airport (non-extreme), PowerBook, a 350mhz G4 Tower and EyeTv. Unfortunately, I am on travel and won't be home until later this afternoon/evening.

I've downloaded the files to my PowerBook and will install them when I get home, then let you know the results.

First Impressions...If you need to watch TV on your PowerBook, the EyeTV works very well. If you wish to watch TV wireless, CyTv + VLC + EyeTV may work well, but if you have a fast, low traffic Airport network. I installed the various server and client software (simple drag and drop installation), connected the EyeTV USB unit to a 350mhz (Yikes) G4 Power Mac with 512megs of RAM as server. Iaunching the CyTV server software on the server also lanches EyeTV. I then lauched CyTV client software on my PowerBook 800mhz DVI, which also launches VLC ViedoLAN software.

CyTV client found my named server machine. I was able to see a very nice video image at about 240x480. The audio (through Soundsticks) was very clear. I doubled the size of the video window and the image became alittle softer, but that happens with EyeTV as little, but the colors were more saturated.

According the the README file, you should be able to change channels from the CyTV software, but I was unable to get it to work. This caused the software to seemingly return to a few moments earlier in the stream, then the stream would drop (and the video would freeze). I would have to quit CyTV client, then launch it again. Unfortunately, the stream would start at the beginning (so no live TV). It is probably reading what is still in the buffer on the CyTV server.

So, I wasn't very succesful in getting the CyTV + VLC + EyeTV to work, but in full disclosure, I've a first generation Airport (with most recent software) which is very busy acting as a internet server to 3 computers, a print server (though no prints were sent while testing), an iTunes music server and it has a VNC program installed so that I can control the server from different rooms using the PowerBook.

If you don't mind watching TV on your PowerBook while the EyeTV is connected directly, I would recommend the EyeTV. It works well enough, though I wish the picture were sharper. When at home, my PowerBook is connected to a 20" Cinema display. I will often put a TV window in the bottom right corner of the Cinema display, with the volume on mute. If some item onthe screen catches my attention, I will bring up the volume.


Here is a picture of my current set up

The EyeTV and all other USB devices are connected on 7 Port USB hub under the desk to minimize the clutter and to hide the cables. I've got to get one of those cable organizers one day.

[macndave]

According the the README file, you should be able to change channels from the CyTV software, but I was unable to get it to work. This caused the software to seemingly return to a few moments earlier in the stream, then the stream would drop (and the video would freeze). I would have to quit CyTV client, then launch it again. Unfortunately, the stream would start at the beginning (so no live TV). It is probably reading what is still in the buffer on the CyTV server.
[/B]

An Update: My G4 is in the basement level of my townhouse. I went to stop the CyTV Server and found that it had crashed and the system was frozen. I've decided to uninstall the CyTV because I don't need to watch TV wireless (and I don't need to watch that much TV).

So, your experiences may be better than mine.

[h00ligan]

you can alwso build yoruself a mythTV box!

[ucsbdude]

Macndave you are saying that if i plan on buying a eyetv for the sole use of watching full screen wireless TV on my laptop it is not gonna happen? I wanna be able to change channel and watch full screen but it sounds like you are not having luck doing it?

I dont want the eyetv if i am chained to my desk because i have a tv on my desk, I wanna use it so i can have tv in the other rooms of the house.

So what is Mythtv?

[macndave]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
[B]Macndave you are saying that if i plan on buying a eyetv for the sole use of watching full screen wireless TV on my laptop it is not gonna happen? I wanna be able to change channel and watch full screen but it sounds like you are not having luck doing it?

I dont want the eyetv if i am chained to my desk because i have a tv on my desk, I wanna use it so i can have tv in the other rooms of the house.
/B]

ucsbdude,
No, I am just saying that it didn't work to the extent that I had hoped for me. Your experiences may be much better. As I mentioned, I've a lot of traffic on my rev A Airport network and run software that may conflict with CyTV.

When the stream started it worked well. I only ran into problems when attempting to change channels. I wouldn't want to have to go to the basement to change channels. As I mentioned, I don't really have need for a wireless TV setup. I had the townhouse wired for cable tv (and ethernet, just in case). But only "really" watch TV in the den. EyeTV is a nice-to-have for my home office setup. So, I can catch the network news while working or web browsing.

[lucidcake]

Originally posted by macndave:
An Update: My G4 is in the basement level of my townhouse. I went to stop the CyTV Server and found that it had crashed and the system was frozen. I've decided to uninstall the CyTV because I don't need to watch TV wireless (and I don't need to watch that much TV).

So, your experiences my be better than mine.

macndave: I'm the developer of CyTV and I would be interested in a few more details. I'm afraid I cannot help diagnosing your frozen system (CyTV is a rather high level tool with no direct hardware access involved whatsoever).

However, I might be able to see where your channel change problems came from. Could you send me your ~/Library/EyeTV Archive/cytv.log (maybe in a different location if you changed the TV archive path in EyeTV)? Even if you're not interested in using CyTV, the log file can help me to squash a possible bug.

Apart from that, I'm currently working on version 0.3 with the ability to skip around in the TV buffer/recording on the client. I hope I can release it within the next two weeks.

[macndave]

Originally posted by lucidcake:
macndave: I'm the developer of CyTV and I would be interested in a few more details. I'm afraid I cannot help diagnosing your frozen system (CyTV is a rather high level tool with no direct hardware access involved whatsoever).

However, I might be able to see where your channel change problems came from. Could you send me your ~/Library/EyeTV Archive/cytv.log (maybe in a different location if you changed the TV archive path in EyeTV)? Even if you're not interested in using CyTV, the log file can help me to squash a possible bug.

Apart from that, I'm currently working on version 0.3 with the ability to skip around in the TV buffer/recording on the client. I hope I can release it within the next two weeks.

Just in case you don't recieve my email, here are the cytv.log contents:

CyTV Server started at 2003-10-04 17:27:50
==========================================

Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
getChannelList
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
getChannelList
/
Start point found (latestSize: 14683032; currentOffset: 13637232
setChannel&39
setChannel&38
setChannel&39
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
Trying to recover from EyeTV quitting
setChannel&9
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
getChannelList
/
Start point found (latestSize: 39217500; currentOffset: 38171700
setChannel&39
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
Trying to recover from EyeTV quitting
getChannelList
/
Start point found (latestSize: 39217500; currentOffset: 38171700
setChannel&68
setChannel&81
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
Trying to recover from EyeTV quitting
getChannelList
/
Start point found (latestSize: 39217500; currentOffset: 38171700

[lucidcake]

Originally posted by macndave:
Just in case you don't recieve my email, here are the cytv.log contents:

CyTV Server started at 2003-10-04 17:27:50
==========================================

Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
getChannelList
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
getChannelList
/
Start point found (latestSize: 14683032; currentOffset: 13637232
setChannel&39
setChannel&38
setChannel&39
recover&%2fUsers%2fdwilson%2fLibrary%2fEyeTV%20Arc hive
cmd_recover
Trying to recover from EyeTV quitting
[snip]

Thanks for the log. Seems you have been bitten by a bug where CyTV mistakenly thinks that EyeTV has been quit (or crashed). This is a relatively rare problem and should be fixed in version 0.3. If you (or anybody else reading this) are interested, I can also send you a current development version containing the fix.

[ucsbdude]

so lucidcake,

Can I expect to watch full screen wireless tv on my rev a 12 inch powerbook? Using a 400 g3 imac dv?

Or will I only be able to stream a small windows worth of tv?

I was at the apple store with eyetv in hand but just could not pull the trigger yet. I am not sure if i want to spend 200$ if the wireless streaming is not going to work perfect.

I dont really want to even use it on the imac to view anything just to stream wirelessly and to archive programs that i can transfer via firewire later to my laptops to view on the road.

Thanks
Chris

[lucidcake]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
so lucidcake,

Can I expect to watch full screen wireless tv on my rev a 12 inch powerbook? Using a 400 g3 imac dv?

The 12" powerbook is certainly strong enough on the client side for full screen viewing. 400 Mhz G3 on the server side _should_ be enough, but I cannot test it myself. The load placed on the server by CyTV is very low, so it mostly depends on whether your G3 can handle EyeTV itself. There's nothing about the required CPU power in elgato's FAQs, but you can mail them at [email protected] and ask - they're very helpful.

You should also consider that the quality of the wireless stream depends on your network speed. If you have 802.11b (Airport), you can only stream using EyeTV's standard quality setting (650 MB/hour, 1.15 MBit/sec for the video stream). Anything faster (802.11g aka Airport Extreme or wired ethernet) will allow you to use the high quality setting (1.2 GB/hour, 2.30 MBit/sec for the video stream).

Both standard and high quality settings have a resolution of 352x240. Scaling this to full screen is the job of the client machine (your powerbook should be more than capable). Whether quality at full screen playback is good enough for you depends on your expectations (just try it at a store - the full screen streaming quality is the same as local full screen playback in EyeTV). IMHO you already get a decent picture with the std quality setting, and high quality looks pretty good. But as I said, this is subjective - just try it yourself.

[ucsbdude]

I wish i could just try out the eyetv at a store but every where I go no one has it set up. I live in santa barbara and there is only one mac only store and a compusa. Compusa does not even carry the eyetv. I was in la at an apple store and they only had one eyetv in a box and i asked about a demo and they said they could not help me. I am wondering if I should expect the same quality I used to get on my performa 6500 with a built in tv tuner. It was flawless, took up no cpu power and had a remote all built into the apple!.

Why cant apple come out with their own dvr solution? I love apple but the media center pc is very cool and something that I think apple is missing the boat on.

[lucidcake]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
I wish i could just try out the eyetv at a store but every where I go no one has it set up.

I've uploaded 2 20-second sample mpegs to my website: http://www.lucid-cake.net/temp/std.mpg and http://www.lucid-cake.net/temp/high.mpg (don't count on them being available for a long time). I have no idea what it is I've recorded (just pressed "record").

To see what you would get from EyeTV (both locally or remote), download VLC (http://www.videolan.org) and open the samples in it. Command-F switches to full screen mode. Please note that my analog cable signal isn't that great - partly because I'm using a cheap splitter - which accounts for the noise in the picture (though it's not really that bad IMO).

The most noticable difference between the recordings is that the std quality version has noticable compression artifacts around the station's logo. These are hardly visible in the HQ recording.

Hope this helps.

[ucsbdude]

Thanks!

That was so cool of you this is exactly what I have wanted to see and I have not been able to find anywhere.

Unfortunatly I am at work right now on a dell laptop So I will not be able to check this for another 2 hours so please leave the site up till then!

Thank you again!

[Mithras]

Originally posted by lucidcake:
I've uploaded 2 20-second sample mpegs to my website: http://www.lucid-cake.net/temp/std.mpg and http://www.lucid-cake.net/temp/high.mpg (don't count on them being available for a long time).

That was cool, lucidcake, but somehow the audio changed to German! Something must be messed up in the audio stream code!

[ucsbdude]

lucidcake,

So i installed vlc on the dell at work its very old. And these streams look great! I am very impressed with the quality, and it will meet my needs just fine. Is this the same exact quality that I can expect to have streamed to my laptop using your CyTV program?

I also have another question that I have come up with sitting at my computer here at work . Is there away to open up any ports or whatnot on my airport firewall and watch the stream from outside my lan. i.e. any computer connected to the internet? I would love to open up a tv stream on my computer here at work!

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

And once again thank you for all your information!

PS if you use aim my screenname is ucsbdude, maybe I could talk to you via chat .

[lucidcake]

Originally posted by ucsbdude:
lucidcake,

So i installed vlc on the dell at work its very old. And these streams look great! I am very impressed with the quality, and it will meet my needs just fine. Is this the same exact quality that I can expect to have streamed to my laptop using your CyTV program?

I also have another question that I have come up with sitting at my computer here at work . Is there away to open up any ports or whatnot on my airport firewall and watch the stream from outside my lan. i.e. any computer connected to the internet? I would love to open up a tv stream on my computer here at work!

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

And once again thank you for all your information!

PS if you use aim my screenname is ucsbdude, maybe I could talk to you via chat .

Yes, this is exactly the quality you get when streaming (although you need Airport Extreme for the high quality version). Please note that these are PAL streams - I don't know if NTSC will look that good (I've heard that PAL looks generally better than NTSC, but I don't have access to any NTSC signal, so I can't compare it).

Streaming over the internet is a fascinating idea. I've thought about it myself, and I already got an inquiry from another CyTV user. However, it doesn't seem practical - you need an upstream bandwidth of at least 1.5 MBit/sec, and most people outside a corporate environment don't have that (myself included). I could try to downscale the stream on the fly, but at 128 or even 256 MBit/sec it wouldn't look pretty ... It might also be possible to re-encode it as MPEG-4, but that would probably produce a lot of artifacts.

My aim name is "bammus", but iChat doesn't work at work, so you only have a chance to catch me between about 18:00 and 23:00 GMT.

[slffl]

Would anyone know if there is a program like this, but vice versa? I have a PC desktop with TV tuner card and a mac powerbook.

Is there a program out there to use a PC as a server and mac os as a client?

Thanks.

[JasonBourne]

Works well for me since I'm using DP 1.25 powermac as my CyTV server and PB 12. On the 2nd flr.I lost my connection once in a while since I'm not using the extreme basestation. If I use it on th first floor my connection is very good and I dont lost my connection. The reception is almost comparable to the connected mac. Thanks for letting me know about this software.