Watching TV on your iPAQ!

Aquatic · 12-11-03, 02:46 PM

Very Cool.. I've set WM encoder up to do audio ( only due to the fact my wife's machine has the TV card) and that worked well. WME is easy to set up, and best of all.. FREE FREE FREE! I'll have to give video a shot !

Thanks Ted.. good brief "how to."

whitelyt · 12-11-03, 02:56 PM

Aquatic,

Let us know how it works for you.

Riko · 12-11-03, 06:27 PM

Okay... this is friggin COOL!

I am just getting WiFI setup at home, but I am going to be trying this very soon!

Cheryl · 12-11-03, 06:54 PM

That's cool! I never would've even thought it was possible

.

imported_bigds63 · 12-11-03, 07:52 PM

Yes its alot of fun. Ive been doing this for a while, matter of fact I have a guide that shows you step by step pictures on how this is done at my site BigDs Video Guides

Aquatic · 12-12-03, 09:30 AM

I downloaded the WME v9 encoder this AM, and managed to get it working in a VERY short amount of time thanks to Ted's how to... I did have some issues with the video though--I'm running an ATI All in Wonder Radeon, and the video going through the encoder was all "backwards" sort of...not the orientation, but it was almost like a color negative--lots of bluish/orange and kinda dark. I did test the TV viewer app outside of WME and it was okay, so... I ran out of "play time" before I had to come work, so.. more fiddling with it tonight.

Now, I DID fire up the encoder with the bad picture and punched in the URL into the PPC (4155) media player and Voila' instant hand held TV--in LANDSCAPE mode! Just need a good way to change channels now

Side note... I'm not sure why my IP address didn't work to connect to the server in WME ( I used: http://192.168.0.2:8080 ) but the alterate URL the encoder gives you sure worked fine.. in this case it was the computer name, so when I entered: http://sherilyn:8080 it connected and worked Fine!

My Encoder System: Win 2000 P4/1.6Gig, 512Meg Ram, ATI All in wonder Radeon, road Runner CATV coming into it via the connector on back. WME 9.0 ( freshly downloaded this am... go to the downloads area of MS, and search for "encoder." I think it was something like #92 in the list. It'll bring down the encoder and some utilities with it. install the SW as usual and fire it up! Then follow Ted's info and you should be a Pocket PC TV viewer in no time!

Once I figure out the video issue, I'll drop a note with the fix!

whitelyt · 12-12-03, 10:49 AM

Good deal. Glad it's working for you. I do not have any thoughts about your ATI video issue though.

Jordan Wigley · 12-12-03, 12:31 PM

Yeah, I had it set up on my old PC over the summer. There was a similar set of instructions on Aximsite months ago, so that's where I got the idea. It worked great for me. And I even managed to cut the quality/resolution back enough to get decent framerates over my cellphone (connected to PPC), using Verizon's Express Network. Not the best quality that way, but it killed time in the airports sometimes.

imported_Honda_Civic_Si · 12-12-03, 05:24 PM

I want to try this, do you know if it will work over Bluetooth?

I hope that we have plans to get WiFi as my dads laptop has it and my PDA can have it.

This is so nice! Talk about couch potato.

Thanks for the info Ted.

-Justin.

whitelyt · 12-12-03, 07:01 PM

Honda,

It should work over BT, but I imagine it would be slow. You could tweak bitrate variables to compensate for any BT speed issues.

Aquatic · 12-14-03, 04:58 PM

Finally got some time to play... and I got it nailed!

Turns out my wife had the MSIE "discussion" feature turned on for her webpage explorations and that would cause WIndowsupdate to freak out and pretty much not work. A few minutes of tracking that down brought her system up to par Windows 2000 wise--including directx9

Then a trip to ATI turned up the fact that the current drivers for her AIW RADEON card ( Like a 7500 AIW) were ancient...not even "Catalyst" version, so.... had a few difficulties with the install, but managed to manually install the updated Catalyst drivers, new WDM, and MMC drivers ( multi media) stuff too. About 1000 reboots later, I was ready to give it a shot.

Fired up WME 9, set up the inputs and voila' very good looking input and output, so then I fired up the 4155 and AAAAACCKKKK! first thing I saw was Saddam's scummy looking "before the Extreme Makeover" picture! Scary.. but it worked as advertised. I did have to pump up the brightness to max to make it easier to watch in my environment, but, I had it up and running....

the best part? My wife ( who is fairly techie geeklike in her own right) says: "Hey..that's cool, how'd you do that?"

I need spare batteries now.. AND a way to change channels.

Hmm.. I see an X10 interface and IR blaster of some sort in my future....

If you have an AIW, I heartily suggest upgrading to: DirectX9b, the Latest Catalyst drivers and MMC 8.7. That should do the trick for you!

Good Luck!

whitelyt · 12-14-03, 07:17 PM

Aquatic,

Congrats on getting it to work and good info on how you did it. You are one of the lucky ones that have a fairly tech-savy wife.

In regard to changing programs, the only thing I could suggest at the moment is Pocket VNC. You can take remote control of your broadcasting PC to change channels. So far, I am only able to change channels by doing the following in WM9 Encoder:

Open the profile, click on Properties button. Goto the Sources Tab and click on the Video Configure button. There you should be able to change the channel of the TV Tuner. Save it and click the "Start Encoding" button. Unfortunately this is the only way I found to change the channels and it is cumbersome if you want to channel surf.

I like the idea of X10 cameras. Very nice for video surveillance.

imported_rilpop · 12-14-03, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by whitelyt
I have been reviewing articles over the past month on how to stream live TV to a PPC. I haven't had much success with it until yesterday. I finally get live TV streams to work over WiFi.

I thought I would share my experience and what I have done to get it working.

To get this working, you must have:
1) A fairly fast desktop.
2) A TV tuner card in your desktop
3) A WiFi network
4) Windows Media Encoder

This is the hardware that I am using:
Hauppauge WinTV PCI Card (Comcast Cable connected)
HP Pavilion 1.3GHz Desktop

This is the software that I used:
Windows Media Encoder 9

This is the steps that I took:
Open Windows Media Encoder, a wizard box will pop up.
Select "Broadcast & Live Event". Click Next.
For Device Options, select "default video device" for the Video box. Select "default audio device". Click Configure for the Video Selection.
A TV Tuner properties box appears. Select Video Tuner for input. Select the channel you want and click Next.
For the Broadcast Method, select "Pull from the Encoder". Click Next.
For Broadcast Connect, use the default. This is HTTP Port 8080. You can use a different port if you wish. You must remember this as you will need it when you begin to use Windows Media Player on your PPC. Click Next.
For Encoding Options, I use 282Kbs at 29.95fps. Seems to work good for me. Click Next.
For Archive File, don't select anything. This will create a file while encoding which will fill up your disk. Click Next.
For Include Video Files, select NO and click next.
On the Display Information page, fill out using your discretion and click Next.
Click Finish.

The Windows Media Encoder is now ready to broadcast live TV over your WiFi network. Click Start Encoder to begin the broadcast.

To view it on your PPC, do the following:
Connect your PPC to your WiFi network.
Open Windows Media Player on your PPC.
Goto Tools -> Settings -> Audio & Video
Under Video, select Shrink to fit in window (my preference)
Goto Tools -> Open URL
Type http://<ip address of your desktop>:8080. An example of this would be http://10.0.0.8:8080. If you used a different port when configuring Windows Media Encoder, change 8080 to whatever port you specified.
View the stream on your PPC.

Viewing TV on my 2215 was really . I watched ESPN and the picture quality was excellent. The audio was good and crisp. I only wish I was able to change channels on my 2215!

My next step, configure my firewall to allow broadcasting over the internet and give things a try. If all works well, I could be watching my favorite TV station right at my desk at work.

While this is cool without question, what really is the value of going through all of this to watch a tv show on a 4 inch screen on a home network. I'm sure it would be more enjoyable on a 19+ inch set. While I, like most of you, would be spurred on by "making it work", it doesn't have any real meaningful practical application. If I really want to use my iPAQ to watch TV I should use my Nevo set-up to operate my 52 inch big screen!

whitelyt · 12-14-03, 09:26 PM

rilpop,

Certainly this is not something to replace watching TV on a regular receiver. The cool thing about this is that for one you can't do this on a Palm. Two, it opens a world of possibilities in streaming audio or video from your home to wherever you might be. Imagine taking a coffee break in a Starbucks location that's a hotspot. You want to know whats going on on ESPN but there are no TVs there. Guess what, you can still stream it from your home. I watched a TV program from my desk at work to pass time as I don't have a TV on my desk. Or imagine being at a airport with internet access and your plane is delayed! Nevo doen't work very good if you don't have a device to control. And besides, outside of games, reading email, listening to MP3's, reading Ebooks, working on documents (the list can go on and on) this is something else to add to the list.

imported_Honda_Civic_Si · 12-14-03, 09:34 PM

This is what Pocket PC Thoughts call it... Its a W?BIC!

(Why? Because I Can!)

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