Since it appears MLB in its infinite wisdom is only going to allow Direct Tv users access to the Extra Innings package, I will need another way to watch the Mets this year. I want to know if it is possible to direct streaming video from mlbtv.com to my television. If so, what do I need and what will the picture quality be like. Thanks.
And &*^%$% Bud Selig!
Your video card will have to have a TV-Out jack to accomplish this. Not all cards do. Check the back of your computer; most video cards seem to use S-Video connectors, but I have seen some with regular RCA. If your card has S-Video, but you only have RCA inputs on your TV, you can buy a cheap adapter.
For the sound, you’ll need a mini-headphone to RCA adapter to plug into the Line-Out jack of your sound card.
As for quality, I’ve never watched a video on mlbtv.com, but if it’s like 99% of the streaming video online, your picture is going to leave a lot to be desired. The larger your TV, the more glaring those defects will be.
Does it look great on your computer monitor? I would guess the image will be only a bit better than regular television recieved on the very edge of the broadcast range, with ghosts and sound cut outs. It will likely be blocky blurry objects, without the ghosts. You have the problem with streaming video where the pictures and sounds go out of sync also.
(Someone is going to come in here and reminisce about how back in the old days, using a TV was the only way to go.)
I agree that this probably won’t have the results you want. In fact, if you can’t get your hands on a feed orders of magnitude better than any streaming video I’ve ever seen it’s going to be a blocky, muddy, unwatchable mess when blown up to fill a good-sized TV screen and the audio is going to slip out of sync.
Out of curiosity, what’s the minimum bitrate needed to duplicate an NTSC video signal?
You need a video card with s-video or rca out. ATI makes the most prevalent ones AFAIK but there are certainly others. The quality depends on the site really.
Depends on the source material, compression algorithm, compression level and some other things. It varies quite a bit. Talking heads can get by with a very low rate. Sports tend to need a higher rate.
Video cards with S-video are way cheap now… search froogle, I bet you can get one delivered for less than $25.
edit: that’s assuming your TV has an S-video input… You can get one with an RCA output for prolly $15, delivered.
According to the Shannon–Hartley theorem, C = B * log[sub]2[/sub](1 + S/N), where C is in bits/second.
An uncompressed television channel gets 6 MHz of bandwidth, B. I don’t know what a typical signal to noise ratio would be, so I’ll use 15, giving C = 24 million bits / second. That’s an ideal bit rate for transmitting information, but that’s at least a ballpark.
Uncompressed production quality SD digital video (SMPTE 259M) runs at 270 Mb/s. For HD (SMPTE 292M), 1485 Mb/s.