dicey1 Posted April 29, 2007 Posted April 29, 2007 Hi all, i have been looking into buying a HDD recorder thing and i was wondering if it is possible to get one i can stream Xvid & DivX movies onto from my pc? i was looking at harevy norman today and i didnt see one, though they had a samsung that looked promesing for $400. any help would be greatly appreciated.
techo Posted April 29, 2007 Posted April 29, 2007 Probably the most practical and cheapest way is to capture the stream from your PC via composite or svideo, depending on your HW.
dicey1 Posted April 29, 2007 Author Posted April 29, 2007 ha techo, thanks for the reply. see my problem is that my pc is so far from my tv and dvd set up. way to far to run a svideo or composite cable. but not 2 far for a cat 5 cable. if they where closer i could just run one strait into the tv. one quick question. how much better is a svideo to a standard single plug video cable? are they different cables or just different plugs?
techo Posted April 29, 2007 Posted April 29, 2007 ha techo, thanks for the reply.see my problem is that my pc is so far from my tv and dvd set up. way to far to run a svideo or composite cable. but not 2 far for a cat 5 cable. if they where closer i could just run one strait into the tv. one quick question. how much better is a svideo to a standard single plug video cable? are they different cables or just different plugs? Basically composite video is a combined analog signal you could sort of analogize it to serial in PC land. Svideo splits an analog video signal into chrominance and luminescence and carries them on separate wires, usually giving the coding/decoding HW a better chance of getting it right. I'm not sure why you need a DVD recorder. However to stream a video file across your cat5 network to a TV or DVD recorder you could use a relatively expensive commercial media player, not all work like that though. An xbox 360 and playstaion3 have this type of functionality too although you need to be aware some media will be locked out due to copyright. If you are happy with a composite interface at the TV/DVD recorder end, a better and much cheaper solution is a hacked original form xbox running xbox media center software. That way you can stream practically any media format file directly out of your PC through the xbox to you TV / DVD recorder. Also you could put a wireless bridge in the xbox RJ45 port and a wireless access point in your network (802.11) eliminating long runs of cat5 utp.
pgdownload Posted April 29, 2007 Posted April 29, 2007 how much better is a svideo to a standard single plug video cable?are they different cables or just different plugs? I use the following general cable PQ comparison: If HDMI is 100% then component RGB is 95%, SVideo 85% and composite70% - just a rough indication though (Difference between SVideo and Composite is generally pretty noticable qualitatively).Pleanty of boxes that let you stream from a PC to a TC in another room. Most recent example is AppleTV. Not sure how it does divx etc. though. Regards Peter Gillespie PS If your looking into PVRs have a read of the PVR FAQ
dicey1 Posted April 30, 2007 Author Posted April 30, 2007 thanks for the reply guys, you have been very helpful. i miss my old modded xbox, wish i had never sold it. it looks like i am just going to need to put my pc closer to the tv to watch movies off it. which is a pity because my room setup at present is so perfect. and hopefully technology will catch up soon.
Dave® Posted April 30, 2007 Posted April 30, 2007 i have been looking into buying a HDD recorder thing and i was wondering if it is possible to get one i can stream Xvid & DivX movies onto from my pc? Either the Beyonwiz DP-S1 or DP-P1 will be able to do what you want (when they're released... soon).
scottv Posted May 1, 2007 Posted May 1, 2007 Try an AV sender to send the video signal from the computer to the TV in another room. May be limited to composite although there are some with S-video connections. Reception may be less than perfect though. I have an MTV TS-2080 DVD recorder that has USB input that plays divx files straight from the memory stick. Takes about 30 seconds to download the divx file onto the memory stick. However, the USB stick play functions are limited to play and pause and the file sometimes freezes and loses audio/video sync. I now almost always burn files to DVD and play the disc. Doesn't take long, and you don't need to finalise the disk so you can add files later, saving 50cents on the purchase of a new disc. Cheers Scott
rugbyrene Posted May 1, 2007 Posted May 1, 2007 thanks for the reply guys, you have been very helpful.i miss my old modded xbox, wish i had never sold it. it looks like i am just going to need to put my pc closer to the tv to watch movies off it. which is a pity because my room setup at present is so perfect. and hopefully technology will catch up soon. Just get yourself an XBox 360, load up TVersity (free program) on your PC and hey presto you can stream any file from you PC to your TV via the Xbox over a wired or wireless network.
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