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Thread: bandwidth needed for a TV stream?

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    bandwidth needed for a TV stream?

    I can't use my TV card at the moment because there's no reception where my main rig is. I've just had the thought of moving the card to an old computer, plug it into the roof aerial cable in a separate room, and put in a wireless network card so I can watch TV from this computer with some remote admin software or something (incidentally, any recommendations for the software?)

    The main thing is that I have no idea how much bandwidth a TV stream uses. Is 11 Mbps going to be enough? (I have an existing 802.11b network, and running wire round the house isn't practical). I assume it'll depend on the size/quality of the picture; is it going to be watchable?

    Any/all thoughts welcome... thanks in advance!

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    HEXUS webmaster Steve's Avatar
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    11Mbps is ample - even full screen should be pretty good - if the capture card is good also.

    You'll probably need some sort of video streaming server on the capture PC, rather than remote admin - as I doubt remote admin software will show DDraw Overlays.
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    Windows media encoder is probably the easiest option, and cheap (free!). However, CPU overhead is a fair bit. You'll have to have a play.

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    Erm, haven't ATI just released this in their latest MMC?
    I think you have to have a decent server, and both PC's need to be running Radeon based gfx cards - and of course an ATI based tv card.

    The only problem I can see with a wireless network is packet loss and bandwidth could hamper your efforts...
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    Eek, I'd hoped it wouldn't be complicated...

    Well, I experimented with it this morning (although I had to use a different PC to receive it). The picture quality is ok, but the remote admin software only gives me about 5 updates/second (if I close the TV window, I get about 30) - will this be improved if I use Windows Media Encoder instead? I'll have another play with it this afternoon. I'm not too hopeful though - all of the hardware is pretty old. (There's no sound either, but I assume that's because I haven't put a souncard in the server yet - I didn't think I'd need one if I was doing everything remotely, but I've got one kicking around here somewhere).

    Cheers for the replies, much appreciated

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    Remote Admin was never designed for transmitting video info over the network. At best, you'll get a few fps out of it, like you noticed. If you connect directly to the Windows Media stream you'll get FAR better results. As long as the PC can encode quickly enough (if you're having trouble, get the v7 encoder, it's a little easier on the CPU), and the network isn't saturated, you should get really good results.

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