Movies through home network

[theCheetah]

I am resisting myself buying a DVD player at home. I am trying to find a way to stream movies from my PC over the TCP/IP home network to my TV. I am thinking of building a cheap network to RGB converter. Any suggestions/comments?

 

[Ronin]

Video Card with an S-Video out can do that as long as the TV has an S-Video connection, but that obviously would require either a very long cable or the relocation of your PC. Streaming video of that nature across a Cat-5 should prove interesting 🙂 Let me know if you determine a way to achieve this.

 

[acebathound]

There's also some products from X10.com (I don't even have to link that.. you'll probably get a pop-up window from them sometime later today🙂) that allow you to send video through wireless devices. It's called "DVDAnywhere" and is $70 (minus whatever coupons you can find). From what I've read about it, the video you get is decent -- not "DVD quality", but probably VHS quality or so. Using the microwave (popcorn, etc) tends to mess up the signal though =) I was really considering purchasing one of these..but then said the heck with it and purchased a few long a/v cords from radio shack for any mpgs, etc I want to play through the tv.

Movies can be streamed over cat5 as well, tho I forget the exact articles or searches I used to find info about that out. I think it was a bit more money than the wireless stuff though, but wouldn't degrade the quality as much.

In the end, with current prices of DVD players, I decided to buy a stand-alone Apex unit. I wasn't happy with output from my video card (ATI Radeon) -- there were some wierd lines on the tv (usually only noticeable on the black colors)... and black was always too bright. That and the black border around the tv screen (which could be fixed with a radeon hack, but then cut off part of the picture and wouldn't let me align it correctly). Needless to say, it's just not worth it to try to get your computer to be a DVD player -- if you already have the computer DVD player and the needed cables, go at it -- but if you have to buy $60 or $80 worth of stuff, you're better off buying a $100 or less DVD player (DO NOT buy the Oritron -- they're utter crap). If you can build something yourself for $10, then I suppose it's worth a try as well -- you won't know until you try it for yourself. Just fyi, I have an Apex 660 which has an upgradeable firmware. I have to play DVDs through a VCR on my TV upstairs b/c it doesn't have video inputs, and luckily I could change the firmware to disable macrovision b/c otherwise it wouldn't have been possible. Most video cards also have macrovision on in their hardware -- my laptop's ATI card has this -- pissed me off during the holidays when I visited my brother for Christmas and couldn't watch a DVD through their VCR b/c I had no way of turning macrovision off (and believe me, I looked for a long time for a hack that would remove it, but no such luck). If you aren't planning on going through your VCR at all, then macrovision on a video card won't be a problem, but it was for me.

In any case, that has been my experience anyway -- good luck 🙂

-Ace

 

[ndoss]

I wanted a way to use my home office computer from my bedroom or living room (as a computer, dvd player, etc). My video card (radeon all-in-wonder) has video out so what I'm planning to try is buying a wireless keyboard/mouse along with a this (LeapFrog Home Network System).

I'm not sure if this is very helpful since it's not quite what you're looking for and it's not exactly cheap (leapfrog ($130) + the price of cordless keyboard/mouse). Of course if you don't want to be able to control your computer remotely, you wouldn't have to buy a cordless mouse and there's a cheaper (~$80), wireless audio/video networking product from the same company that makes the leapfrog.