Computer help--broadcasting TV tuner output over internet

[Bill V]

I was wondering if any of you techies could help me out with the following. If there's a solution to be found, it needs to be quickly available, and free.



I have a TV tuner card in my PC--it's a few years old, but it gets the job done. I also have a USB web camera, and Yahoo Messenger, neither of which have been used in a couple years. I remember that the last time I used either one regularly, if I was broadcasting my camera image over Messenger and accidentally changed the video source on Messenger, people watching my camera would instead see and hear the broadcast on my TV tuner card.



I now want to do this, intentionally. But when I attempted it, first I needed to update my Yahoo Messenger (I was working with a very out-of-date version), and then I got error messages saying that only one software could use the tuner feed at a time, and because the tuner software was running, Messenger can't. But when I close the tuner software, the tuner seems to be shut down, and all Messenger gets is a blank screen.



Is there a way for me to do this? I know there is Slingbox out there, but I'm looking for a way to just send the video feed out to someone remotely over the internet, without them needing to have control over the tuner card like Slingbox enables. And, as I said, I need to do it for free.



My parents live in central Wisconsin. No cable providers there carry NFL Network, and because they're not in the immediate Green Bay/Milwaukee areas, no broadcast stations will be showing the Packers/Vikings game tomorrow, so they're out in the cold. Because I'm in the Twin Cities, a local broadcast station will be showing the game, and I'd like to relay it to them using my tuner card and the internet, if possible.



Thanks for any help or suggestions!



--Bill

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Seriously, your best bet is the Slingbox. Baring that you need some seriously hefty PC hardware if you want to capture, encode, and stream in real-time. Your capture/tuner card probably came with DVR type software that allows you to record. If you are okay with that, you could record the program (manually) in segments, then make the segments available from a web server or FTP server. That would be really slow and kludgy, but low cost.



Other than that, you need beefy hardware and typically a server OS like Windows 2000 or 2003, then an open-source streaming server like Apple's Darwin:

 

[Bill V]

Wow--I had no idea it would be so involved. I would have thought that if I can broadcast my web camera's feed so easily, I could capture the tuner card's feed and route it over the same connection somehow, just as easily. Apparently not.



Like I said, I know it happened before, accidentally. Any idea how/why it worked then?

 

[Bill V]

What about this? I haven't tried it yet, but does it sound like it would accomplish what I want?

 

[Dreman]

I'm sure that Yahoo and Microsoft have both "updated" their software to prevent such things from happening!

 

[Thomas Rogers]

BillV, MyOrb looks good...might work for you, but I have never tried it. Let me know if it does work and you like it.

 

[Bill V]

I gave the MyOrb a try last night. I think it might have worked, but I had two problems--my tuner card is too old and is not supported, and my processor was too slow to handle the software properly. Oh well--I'm needing to do a computer upgrade in the not-too-distant future anyway. This can be considered extra incentive...

 

[Thomas Rogers]

Yeah, like I said Bill V, real time encoding and streaming takes some serious computing power...probably at least a P4 running close to 3Ghz, and toss at least a GB of memory at it...even better a Duo core.

 

[Nelson Atwell]

I'm getting the Slingbox this week. I tried Orb, but it would only broadcast to the desktop I had the TV capture card on, and with no sound. I have a Duo Core processor, so maybe I'm just not compter savvy enough to figure it out. I gave up on it finally.



The Slingbox will allow me to watch American cable TV in Poland or anywhere else in the World.

 

[Richard L]

Yes,

I agree that the Slingbox is the only device that I know of that allows you to watch broadcast or cable TV over the Internet. You can watch your local channels anywhere in the world where you can get Intenet access, however, you may find yourself watching you favorite TV show at 3:00 AM...



:blink:



...Rich

 

[Nelson Atwell]

My Slingbox is up and running. It took about 20 minutes from start to finish. The picture is very clear, but I am within the same house. I'll have to see how it performs overseas next week. I'm looking forward to Super Bowl Monday (I'll be 6 hours ahead of EST).