Take your TV with you - everywhere
Arrangement TV on your PC: PC TV To Go (bottom right) harnesses the Internet to
wirelessly
transfer one's home television and video content to any PC anywhere.
Bangalore: A product from an American digital media player that has just been
launched in the Indian market may change the way we watch television and other
video-based content, in a fundamental and exciting way.
In technical language, it subjects the multiple cable or satellite channels
coming to our TV sets, as well as the movies we may play on our video players,
to 'place and time shifting.' Simply put, it means we can see all this content
anywhere, any time - and not just on the TVs in one room in our house.
Digital film editing
The Pinnacle "PC TV To Go" - offered by the same company that also supplies
digital film editing machines to the professional market under the brand name
Avid - comes in a small box similar in appearance to a Cable TV or dish TV set
top box.... except that it sprouts a couple of small antennas, making it
a Wireless Internet device. Once connected to the TV's input cable or the feed
from a DVD or video CD player, the Pinnacle device converts this into a
signal that rides on the Internet. That means, the TV or DVD signal can now be
viewed anywhere in the world - as long as one uses a password to latch on
to the system at home.
The possibilities are truly astonishing. You could be in a hotel room in Tokyo
or London - and if the local TV content there bores you, you can quickly
access on the Net the channels that are playing on your television back home -
Doordarshan or Sun TV or Aaj Tak or whatever. You can also ask some one
to put a Hindi or Tamil movie on your home DVD player and view it on your
laptop PC, on another continent.
There is an earthier and for Indians, a more useful feature: A fairly modest
home wireless network or even a wired ethernet, will allow you to send your
cable TV feed or the output from a DVD player in your drawing room, to up to
five other PCs or TVs elsewhere in the house.
The Hindu first revealed exactly six months ago that the underlying technology
behind 'PC TV To Go' was in fact the product of Indian ingenuity - having
been developed by engineers in the Delhi-based RD centre of Monsoon Multimedia
and offered under the trade name "Hava" ("Wireless way to take your TV
with you," this page, December 31, 2006). Now Pinnacle which licences Hava
technology, has enabled The Hindu to carry ou t a detailed evaluation of one
of the first pieces of 'PC TV To Go' to reach this country.
Installation of the Pinnacle unit is fairly straight forward and intuitive -
though the detailed manual is supplied only in software form on the installation
CD.
The software recognises TV and DVD player models and creates a "virtual remote"
that one can use on the PC or laptop to 'control' these devices from afar.
It also allows you to record and store shows on the hard disk, for future,
offline viewing - that is, the 'time shifting' part.
As good as original
When this correspondent tried to look at TV content on a PC in another room of
the same house, through a wireless network, the picture and sound was as
good as the original. But when one tries to access the same content in a
situation mimicking an Internet link, the quality depends very much on the speed
of the broadband... though steady picture is obtained at any thing faster than
512 kbps.
'PC TV To Go' is currently offered in India by its distributors, Delhi-based
Aditya Infotech, at Rs.15,000, which is Rs.4,000 below the published MRP and
is roughly equal to the international dollar price. For those who can afford
it, it will seem well worth the asking price for unshackling you from your
static TV or DVD - and letting you take it with you, anywhere, anytime.
http://www.thehindu.com/2007/07/01/stories/2007070150661100.htm
Vikas Kapoor,
MSN+Yahoo+Skype ID: dl_vikas,
Mobile: (+91) 9891098137.
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