Corporate Environment

[five]

Currently I have two dishes and two set top boxes that are serving up two separate cafeteria TVs. It is not an ideal situation. In order to program the weekly viewing (mostly stays on CNN, but we do watch sports programming on it), I must go in person and download the new channel lineup and select every show that I want to auto-tune. Or someone has to go in there manually and do it when something comes on. Like I said, it is not an ideal situation at all.

I currently have a 6CC at home that works fairly well with windows media center and a xbox 360 acting as an extender. I have not delved into the project connect / dlna project yet. I have fiddled with getting channels to work in xbmc, but haven't had much luck. With my mac, I have a terminal / vlc setup that isn't user friendly, but I just copy and paste it - and it works on the rare occasion that I need to watch on a mac. I also have InstaTV installed on Ipad and Iphone - it just works and it works well. I see the upside to converting over to cable tv at work, but I question whether it is ready for prime time yet.

I know they have the TECH version, but I am not sure I have any IPTV players and I'm not sure what will work. And maybe the path forward would be the DLNA players instead. We will be adding two more locations, for a total of 4 TVs. If it's broadcast over the net and it's easy to use, I could see times where we'd want to broadcast it in other locations as well. The good news is that every location will be broadcasting the same thing. Which makes me think TECH/multicast is indeed best. Does anyone have any experience with using a TECH or prime in a corporate environment with different network subnets / vlans? For an environment that is on 24/7/365? The easier it is to auto-tune the channels, the better. And if it's simple to change the channel via an iphone or a web gui, would make it even better. What are the current options? (Both at server (if needed) and client (TV) side?)

It looks like I would need the TECH for this type of environment and possibly one of these set top boxes connected to the TVs? Is that correct?

[Mediaman]

Currently I have two dishes and two set top boxes that are serving up two separate cafeteria TVs. It is not an ideal situation. In order to program the weekly viewing (mostly stays on CNN, but we do watch sports programming on it), I must go in person and download the new channel lineup and select every show that I want to auto-tune. Or someone has to go in there manually and do it when something comes on. Like I said, it is not an ideal situation at all.

I currently have a 6CC at home that works fairly well with windows media center and a xbox 360 acting as an extender. I have not delved into the project connect / dlna project yet. I have fiddled with getting channels to work in xbmc, but haven't had much luck. With my mac, I have a terminal / vlc setup that isn't user friendly, but I just copy and paste it - and it works on the rare occasion that I need to watch on a mac. I also have InstaTV installed on Ipad and Iphone - it just works and it works well. I see the upside to converting over to cable tv at work, but I question whether it is ready for prime time yet.

DLNA may not exactly be ready right now but it is getting closer very fast. More on that later.

Netant today announced an android version of InstaTV [see development section of forum] to be available soon but the HomerunTV app for android does work well also and can do HD but none of this is dlna. The inherent problem is that these are wireless solutions that are not that reliable for streaming HDTV. Do not know what your buildings situation is like for network or coax and what the building is used for? I once had to put filters on the coax lines between buildings at a prison to keep inmates from sending videos to other buildings. So giving a recommendation is difficult but this is the stuff I live for!

You obviously know how the extender thing works with the prime [or dual]. That if your accessing a single channel with two extenders your only using one tuner on the prime. I recently did a conversion of an HP business laptop to be set up as a extender server and it works well with low power use of about 25 watts with it playing on a TV and being extended. But if the server is not on all the time you would need to start it up an hour before needed if not opened twice a week [guide updates]. Also do not know what your TV's can handle in terms of inputs. If your running W7 then you can get the echo for slightly less than an xbox. But the prime and dual can only be on one subnet at a time! I would hope dlna would get around this but not sure.

Three devices have shown to be decoders for dlna and play copyonce content; PS3, Samsung HT-6600, Sony ? [I forget it is a blu-ray disc player]. All cost more than a basic xbox. If a DTCP-IP software solution [$40-50] comes forward then maybe a rasberry pi or the g-box midnight can be a tuner solution for $100 to $150 with the software. The G-box should be usable right now with HomerunTV as it is android based. It does come with xbmc preloaded but it is an outdated version and you need to update it [I do intend to get one of these just need to sell two compuers first]. The new xbmc beta [frodo] has an epg, it is a bit crude but coming along. Still it can not do copyonce. Thing is both of these are hardwired network capable devices and should work one way or another for less money. Also Ceton has an app for WMC that allows you to control any computer with a phone or tablet on wi-fi.

I have successfully accessed my prime with a sony phone via dlna using Skifta or Bubbleupnp as a dlna server and Wondershare as a transcoder to h.264, the HDHomerunTV app works a little better [uses Vplayer as a transcoder]. The new series 4 tuners should improve the user experience and also be available to a wider array of devices with the built in transcoder. This should make direct HDTV from the prime available to apple's tablets and phones as I do not believe anyone has written a transcoder program for apple devices [netant probably knows] which is what is keeping them from working with the prime possibly [seen report of someone using skifta to see the prime but the stream will not open]. Overall tuner speed may increase as well and should make it easier for TV's with dlna to run without pixing hopefully. So if your TV's are dlna capable they could tune directly but you would want to assign each TV to a tuner. I know, we have progressed so far we can now actually use the TV's tuner again! Just not in a way anyone planned on. No DVR features but I do not think your looking for that. So dlna could offer a cheaper solution if simple streaming is all you want. By price comparison you might be money ahead by using a new trans-prime and have one for each subnet with the few TV's that you use. The only real security you could add to this would be a timer on the power to the prime. I do not think the TV's parental controls would have any affect unless you can restrict access to apps or dlna server program.

I know they have the TECH version, but I am not sure I have any IPTV players and I'm not sure what will work. And maybe the path forward would be the DLNA players instead. We will be adding two more locations, for a total of 4 TVs. If it's broadcast over the net and it's easy to use, I could see times where we'd want to broadcast it in other locations as well. The good news is that every location will be broadcasting the same thing. Which makes me think TECH/multicast is indeed best. Does anyone have any experience with using a TECH or prime in a corporate environment with different network subnets / vlans? For an environment that is on 24/7/365? The easier it is to auto-tune the channels, the better. And if it's simple to change the channel via an iphone or a web gui, would make it even better. What are the current options? (Both at server (if needed) and client (TV) side?)

I will let SD give you the info on Tech series. They do plan a Tech CC version to be released after the release of the new dual and prime tuners with transcoding built in, the new prime version will have 4 tuners. Would tend to think that if you would be looking to do mass distribution of a channel the tech series may be the ticket as you suspect. Some of this will depend on who your service provider would be and what level of service you want access too.

It looks like I would need the TECH for this type of environment and possibly one of these set top boxes connected to the TVs? Is that correct?

I keep re-reading this and keep adding more but need to move on; hopefully others can add other ideas.

[five]

Do not know what your buildings situation is like for network or coax and what the building is used for? I once had to put filters on the coax lines between buildings at a prison to keep inmates from sending videos to other buildings.

At work it is a manufacturing location. Right now the only "tv coax" is run from each individual dish to the set-top box in the cafeteria that it is feeding. If we were to switch to a cable provider, I would probably have the prime in a building that has network access that is near the road, instead of having to run a bunch of coax into the building. The network is fiber coming into a cisco router (2900 series) and 20 or so switches (3500 series). Thus far it has been plenty capable of everything we are throwing at it.

Also do not know what your TV's can handle in terms of inputs. If your running W7 then you can get the echo for slightly less than an xbox. But the prime and dual can only be on one subnet at a time! I would hope dlna would get around this but not sure.

I haven't really been paying attention to new developments, so this is the first I've heard into the Ceton Echo. Will have to do more research into it.

Three devices have shown to be decoders for dlna and play copyonce content;

The good news is that if it is anything like what I have at home (will be charter/same provider), everything will be copy freely. There will be nothing like hbo/cinemax/showtime or anything like that. It will be local channels/CNN/the weather channel/sports channels (espn, espn2, espnU, fox sports).

So if your TV's are dlna capable they could tune directly but you would want to assign each TV to a tuner.

The TV's are cheap series 5 Samsungs. They do not have the smart tv hub, so I don't think they are dlna capable.

By price comparison you might be money ahead by using a new trans-prime and have one for each subnet with the few TV's that you use. The only real security you could add to this would be a timer on the power to the prime.

I am thinking if the new models are going to be released soon, I'd be well-served to wait it out. August / Sept is when college football season starts up. I'd like to have the new system in-place to do any testing and work out the kinks in the July time frame. For security I was thinking that it could be administered via VLAN. Only certain IP's would be able to interact with the Prime's. And then as far as the GUI/EPG for choosing what is playing, I figure it could be password protected.

I keep re-reading this and keep adding more but need to move on; hopefully others can add other ideas.

Thanks for responding. Appreciate all the input. Looks like things are definitely heating up. I think that this is all very exciting and bodes well for the cable industry. For awhile it looked like satellite was going to take over. For distributed media and relatively cheap... the limits seem endless. I think I will need to revisit some things at home as well.