Please help me in accomplishing this project

[ALUOp]

Hi,

Recently, I have been thinking about this project and wonder if it is practicable. I hope you guys can give me a hand here.

Currently I live in the US and would like to watch TV from Hong Kong, so I am thinking if I can put a PC at my home in HK and have it record TV shows and transfer it back to the US.

Assuming that transmission capacity is not a problem, the only thing I need to solve is to build a machine that can record TV in a format with reasonably file size. I think I need a TV/Capture card or video converison device, right? Which do you guys recommend? What is the best way to automate the capturing and transferring process of the video? Is there anything software that can stream video on broadband?

TIA.

[redwudz]

It probably could be done, but it would take a whole lot faster internet hookup than broadband to get a TV quality signal. I'll let someone else do the math. Even if you could get the hookup it also would be a whole lot cheaper to hire someone to record the TV signals and overnight air freight them to you.

EDIT: On a practical side, if you did'nt mind quite a reduction in quality, there may be some ways to do it. Say you capture video in DIVX or WMV format. Use MS XP and the remote control feature to operate your HK pc over the internet. Send the file over to your stateside computer and watch it as time shifted. It also might be possible in realtime with the right setup, pretty complicated, though. Figure on a 1.5MBS broadband connection on both ends. Most broadband should be able to handle that. Anyone want to speculate on the possibilities?

[JamesB69]

Ive also contemplated this before...

I tinkered with Windows Media Encoder or something like that from Microsoft, but just sending a signal across the room resulted in a 1 minute delay and it wasnt anywhere near 30fps. Mind you this was not coming from a capture card, I was just broadcasing video of my desktop...

Hopefully somebody with a brighter mind can shed some light..

BTW i have a 1.2Mbps connection here..

[ALUOp]

It probably could be done, but it would take a whole lot faster internet hookup than broadband to get a TV quality signal. I'll let someone else do the math. Even if you could get the hookup it also would be a whole lot cheaper to hire someone to record the TV signals and overnight air freight them to you.

EDIT: On a practical side, if you did'nt mind quite a reduction in quality, there may be some ways to do it. Say you capture video in DIVX or WMV format. Use MS XP and the remote control feature to operate your HK pc over the internet. Send the file over to your stateside computer and watch it as time shifted. It also might be possible in realtime with the right setup, pretty complicated, though. Figure on a 1.5MBS broadband connection on both ends. Most broadband should be able to handle that. Anyone want to speculate on the possibilities?

Hm... I don't really need high quality.
I think VCD is enough for me unless there are good MPEG-4 hardware encoder.
Actually I am thinking of the exact same thing: remotely controlling the machine and using ftp to transfer the files.
I am wondering if I can stream a MPEG-1 or MPEG-4 over a 6Mb/s broadband. VCD is about 1.5Mb/s if I remember correctly.

[xcool]

Get a T1 line!!!

[ALUOp]

Get a T1 line!!!

Here in the States I can get 6Mb/s downstream.
In Hong Kong, I can get 10Mb/s up and down easily.
So, transmission capacity doesn't seem like an issue, right?