[clug] wireless audio and video

[Francis Whittle]

I've found that UDP uni/multicast Audiovisual streams, at least in
high-quality high-bandwidth codecs (like MPEG2) tend to saturate 802.11g
networks for some reason (I don't know why; we're talking about 7-10Mbps
on theoretically 45-54Mbps links here), but at least on the Audio side
one option is to run pulseaudio servers on all machines, that way you
can send audio to a streaming UDP connect-to-server or specific client
(with lax permissions, it's like sending your sound output directly to
the soundcard on another computer).  I think it's even possible to
select a destination on a per-channel basis, but I'm not sure.  The best
thing is that it works with avahi, so you can just (un-)plug and play
without having to do much nitty-gritty (Check the box, virgil).

Can't say how well this would work over wireless either, though, having
not yet tried it.

Another idea is that you could run flumotion on a centralised server and
do everything with Ogg containters (Theora, Vorbis/FLAC), which would
lower the bandwidth requirements but increase the CPU intensiveness.
Also you don't get zeroconf....

On Wed, 2007-09-26 at 09:38 +1000, Robert Edwards wrote:
> There are a couple of solutions:
> 
> The non-digital, non-IT one is to set up one or more A/V "senders" at
> the source(s) and then use either standard TV/FM radios, or, if working
> in the 2.4GHz band, the appropriate receivers. Downside - all your
> neighbours get to watch/listen to your (copyright protected?) material.
> 
> I have a little 802.11b/g audio player (can't remember the brand, but
> cost about US$80 from Fry's about 2 years ago). There is a FOSS server
> called gmediaserver and a non-free (shareware?) server called twonky
> available to publishing your MP3 (not ogg) collection. Downside - can't
> have the same source playing "in-sync" in multiple locations.
> 
> Michael James has also demo'd a similar (but more expensive, and more
> network intensive) device and CLUG - can't remember the name, but there
> was also a talk about it at the Dunedin LCA in 2006.
> 
> I have played with MPlayer and VLC (video lan client etc. suite) to
> stream source material to multiple clients over wired home network, but
> not tried either over wireless. MythTV should also allow you to do this,
> but again, I have not tried that.
> 
> I hope some of this helps.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bob Edwards.
> 
> Kim Holburn wrote:
> > I have this dream of having some kind of wireless system that will let 
> > me put at least speakers in different rooms and maybe even screens as 
> > well and route audio from one or more sources to one or more sets of 
> > speakers and possibly the same with video.
> > 
> > I'd of course prefer all linux but it wold be essential to integrate at 
> > least one linux server and of course I really wouldn't want to have to 
> > run a windows server at all.
> > 
> > Does anyone have any ideas about such a thing?
> > 
> > -- 
> > Kim Holburn
> > IT Network & Security Consultant
> > Ph: +39 06 855 4294  M: +39 3494957443
> > mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
> > skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
> > 
> > Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny.
> >                           -- Lloyd Biggle, Jr. Analog, Apr 1961
> > 
> > 
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