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 If you are TV fan and you have wireless network and notebook, than you probably at some point thought how it would be nice to take your notebook and simply move to other room, go on balcony or backyard and with no interruptions from other householders watch your favorite show or some sport event. Still, TV tuner demands antenna and cable and that’s when you realize that even though your notebook is portable, after all, you won’t watch TV as you would like to.
Video and Audio Streaming
When we talk about streaming of video or audio files, people very often want to know what’s the purpose of streaming if file can be opened through network and watched on distant computer. Answer to this question is very simple. Streaming enables a lot of users to watch exact same file at same time, without impact on network bandwidth, or content from web camera, TV tuner or some other audio/video device.
Prerequisites
Creating of your own personal “streaming” server doesn’t involve any big investments and probably all that you need, you already have. Prerequisite for this little project is existence of internal or external TV tuner. You will also need TV antenna but we recommend you to use cable TV because it offers better signal quality. Network with at least two computers is quite necessary or, instead of it, you’ll need one computer connected on internet in case you want to broadcast signal on internet. The main precondition is correctly set network that enables internet and file sharing. TV tuner must be correctly installed on one desktop computer with all drivers and software. You will also need to have basic knowledge about adjusting firewall and installing and setting up software.
We have tested this project with network consisted for two desktop computers and one notebook with wireless connection. We have been used, at this moment, obsolete analog TV tuner card “KWorld V - Stream Xpert”. For this project you can choose any operating system but we decided to install Windows XP on all computers.
Software
For software part of streaming we chose “Video LAN Media Player” or better known as VLC. This is the top player capable for playing large number of audio/video format without installation of external codec. VLC has one more advantage - VLC cross-platform software, which means that versions for Windows, Macintosh and large amount of Linux distributions also exist. VLC is open source software and it is distributed under GNU license. What is less known is that VLC is powerful “streaming” server that supports impressive number of streaming protocols. It is equipped with several protocols for controlling distant computers. You can download it at www.videolan.org .
Server
For installing TV tuner, minimum hardware that you’ll need is determined by manufacturer of tuner card. So you should consult documentation and manual that goes along with your TV card. We chose Pentium 4 at 1.4GHz with 1.5GB RAM which is more than enough for starting several server applications in network consisted of few computers. First we installed drivers and then software that we got with TV card. With this software we set channels of cable TV. When we were convinced that TV tuner is properly set i.e. we got the picture and sound, we downloaded newest Windows version of VLC and started with setup. For parameters during installation we chose default settings. After starting up VLC player we opened “menu” “File->Open Capture Device”. This option enables picture grabbing from devices like: TV tuners, audio cards, web cameras and other similar devices that have DirectShow drivers. For starters we selected RefreshList so that list of video device would be filled with installed devices. You need to choose TV tuner card; and this won’t be easy, especially if you have several video devices installed. In our case “Kworld” TV tuner card is shown under name of chipset card “Conexant Capture”. We repeated this also for audio device; we chose “SB Audigy Audio [D400]”. Than we clicked on button “Advanced options” and selected options “Device properties” and “Tuner properties” that should provide us settings of most important parameters (type of video signal, TV channel etc.) through dialogs built in drivers.
For checking VLC compatibility with our equipment, we should first confirm settings by clicking on “OK” button and we should also do that in open dialog. Than we can choose in drivers’ dialogs as video standard “PAL_B”, Frame Rate from 25 pictures in second, and for “Color Space” we entered “i420” and for output resolution “352 x 258”. Through dialogs for TV tuner we selected wanted channel, in our case “63” and appropriate country “code” (you need to know what code is for your country). Type of input signal was set at “Cable” and for tuning mode we chose “TV”. We must mention that all these dialogs can differ from card to card, but the principle is the same. We set “AudioInputMixer” on “AnalogMix (Line)” because our audio output on TV tuner was connected with audio cable on line-in on sound card. “Crossbar” dialog demands to choose for input “Video Tuner In” and “Video Decoder Out”. If all settings are done properly than you should get the picture and sound of wanted channel, otherwise you will need to find adequate values for your device.
When the picture and sound were set, we opened again “Open Capture Device” and “Advanced Options” to adjust rest of options based on experience that we have by experimenting with drivers’ options. This time we turned off “Device” and “Tuner properties” and in field “Video Input Chroma Format” we signed value “i420” and for frame rate “25.0”. For TV channel we chose again “63” and appropriate country code and selected Tuner input type “cable”. In our case video input pin was on value “1” which corresponds to TV tuner input. All the rest values we left at “-1” i.e. default and then again we checked if the picture and sound are correct.
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