I bought one of those and set it to the UK region so that I could watch BBC documentaries before they were released with US coding if they ever were. (Or were available on YouTube or torrent.) Don’t tell Auntie Beeb.
1 Like
Gahhhh! My wife was ready to cancel Netflix immediately when BSG was taken off Netflix, we need a support group.
TV is radio. (To avoid misunderstandings, everything sent over this part of electromagnetic spectrum counts as radio. We’ll refer to “acoustic radio” as AM or FM here.) The baseband chip is sampling the data coming in from the tuner (much like a soundcard samples analog audio inputs). It is then decoding the video and sending the decoded MPEG stream via USB. That’s the primary function. But it can be switched off - then the baseband chip sends raw data from the input, and acts as just a cheap fast 8bit ADC.
TV is only a small part of the accessible frequencies. FM radio is also accessible, as well as aircraft transponders, cellphones, and all sorts of other communications. The baseband chip cannot decode anything but TV (and sometimes FM). The GNU Radio software can handle pretty much anything you throw at it - and if not, you’re free to write your own decoder plugin.
So, while most people buy TV dongles to watch TV, there is a significant number who buy RTL-SDR compatible TV dongles to receive anything but TV.
3 Likes
My understanding is that the receiving ability is given by the frequencies available to the tuner, and the SDR ability by the Realtek baseband chip. So if the tuner covers the frequencies and the baseband chip is of the proper type, both the TV and the SDR should work. But I am not 100% certain after what you said and a Net lookup will have to be done.
I bought an internal Blu-Ray drive for $50 when my old DVD drive started failing, only to be quite dismayed by the discovery that at this time, there is no free software capable of playing discs with menu support. You can still blindly navigate your way through the disc chapters and watch the video content, but no menus (at least, not yet).
[quote=“jhutch2000, post:2, topic:42258”]
External DVD players are definitely not anything new.
[/quote]I’m pretty impressed by the $13 price point, myself. I would have never thought they had become so cheap. (Kind of makes me wonder if it will start failing in two weeks, or something.)
3 Likes
Perhaps you are right. It is, however, my understanding that ATSC is far enough from DVB-T to make this not the case. Every cheap SDR dongle that I have looked at is sold as a DVB-T TV tuner. I have not seen an ATSC tuner that can do this. Maybe the limitation is not technical, but just that documentation is readily available for DVB-T tuners.
At least he didn’t say Mac in all-caps (MAC). That always annoys me, and the only other brand I’ve seen people do that with is LEICA (grumble).
So, what’s the point? I’ve had an external DVD-rom drive for ages. They are cheap, and generally necessary for PCs without an internal one… Mine was for my HTPC, and my ladyfriends netbook. I ripped a couple movies with it, until I realized that DVDs are easier to store, and ripping them is just annoying. News at 11.
1 Like
We’re thinking of canceling Netflix streaming, and moving back to disks… Netflix’ and Amazon Prime’s streaming selection sucks. After 3 years I think we’ve exhausted the real movies, and now everything is pretty much direct-to-video low budget crap… A vast sea of it. I would be willing to give them more money, if they just ponied up more to studios for newer, or more interesting content… Like more bad 80’s horror and action movies.
1 Like
So there is a protocol incompatibility. ARRRRGH. So the baseband chip has to be different. (Another gotcha… Like there weren’t enough already.) OTOH, there is some noise on the Net about the GNU Radio being able to decode the ATSC protocol in software. Not sure how mature the code is, though, but the noise was from 2012, before the world ended.
I would love for netflix to have the extras and commentary tracks, that would be so awesome!
2 Likes
Beautiful live action punctuated by slightly blurry special effects scenes.
There’s a mac bluray player?
OTOH, my mac is quite old. GOG helps me believe that I can game on it.
@shaddack So it does have a coaxial input? Does that mean I could plug in a NES or other game console that has that type of connection?
Some do. Some don’t. I use an EyeTV one which supports ATSC only. No NTSC, not even digital cable. Though it may be gimped in software-- I haven’t checked.
lag is very often an issue with these sorts of things
The only reason that CDs don’t have all that DRM crap is that they were invented long before computers were capable of holding that much data, so the authors of the spec didn’t have an inkling that it would be “smart” to add those features.
1 Like
Does it work with Mac’s?
I don’t see how anyone could prefer streaming a video over a disc. I understand the annoyances of DVDs, but the inconsistent quality, having to wait for a rebuffer just to rewind 5 seconds, lack of subtitle options (though this could just be my blu-ray player’s interface), and lousy and ever-changing selection of the major streaming services means I vastly prefer playing actual discs.
@jerwin: I didn’t realize that Apple wasn’t shipping blu-ray! Thanks for making me look that up!
@nixiebunny: Don’t be so sure. Royal Philips NV is not your typical shortsighted zaibatsu. They have acted decisively to put a stop to DRM on CDs several times.
1 Like
Have connected an old laptop to an LG TV that wouldn’t let me play video files on its USB port.
No screen, no usable battery, nicely hidden behind the TV set.
Wireless keyboard and mouse for navigating through windows XP (OMG)
And there you have it. A dedicated media player with usb ports, SD card slot and wifi internet if needed.
4 Likes
Rooting the LG TV (how??? I have one and want to control it via SSH) would be a notch more elegant but this counts as a good, easy(ish), universal solution. (These days, Raspberry Pi based alternatives are pretty popular, too.)
