Cablevision's new 'PC to TV Media Relay' slings PC media to your cable box, fuzzy on the details
By Paul Miller 
posted February 24th 2010 4:17PM
posted February 24th 2010 4:17PM
It's been done before, and in many ways, but Cablevision's new plan for slinging what's on your PC to your TV might be one of the most interesting tries yet. Dubbed "PC to TV Media Relay," the new service will let subscribers that get their broadband internet and cable TV from Cablevision load up a bit of software on their Windows PC (a Mac version is forthcoming) that pushes whatever is on the computer through to a dedicated channel on the cable box. The real win here is the absolute lack of new hardware that's required (as far as we can tell), though we're guessing Cablevision is doing something fancy on the back end to route the video locally instead of streaming it over the entire internet. The service will start trials in June, and is a pretty overt move to keep users from dropping their cable TV service altogether as internet video continues to gain steam and Intel Wireless Display makes something like this into default functionality. In all, it's hard not to see this as just a stopgap, but it's certainly an intriguing one.
Finally!!!
How long has it taken cable companies to figure this out?!?!?!
@mr703 Seriously, I may be dumb...but I don't get it.
How is this better than simply hooking up your TV as a secondary monitor for the computer?
As far as I can tell, you're still pushing buttons on the keyboard to select what you want to see, etc...so the computer needs to be nearby.
What's the benefit? How is loading up extra software and running through the cable box simpler than just running some video/audio cables from your computer directly to the TV? I watch Hulu on my old old TV all the time...
This is pretty cool, i think. Good for low intensity (web browsing, spreadsheets, etc) stuff would be my bet. Removes the hassle of having to find an HDMI cable, get the TV and laptop to handshake, etc.
@Dave Maybe, problem is I don't care about that. You still have to use your PC to control things, and since you've got that right in front of you why would you look at the TV if you're browsing the web or whatever. I assume the point of this is to either play back music over your stereo, browse web photos on the TV as a group, watch internet video, or maybe play some simple Flash games. The latter might be problematic if there's any lag at all. I'd say the big draw here is internet video. If it can't do that, I'm not sure it'll be worth much.
Seriously cable TV companies, read the writing on the wall!! Prioritize HiSpeed Internet and sell it even cheaper. Start telling the studios, to instead produce content for the web and then distribute it via cable companies like they do for PPV(except dont obviously gouge the customers on this). This is how we will get our content once the kids and folks who started with Hulu/YouTube get to the stage where they can afford their own entertainment.
Every cable company is almost universally hated because in almost all markets they have zero competition which in turn has led to stagnant levels of quality and service.
Improve the product rather than dressing crap up with a bowtie.
Ugh, ok cablevision. I hope they are planning on doing this with a new cable box. The majority of their users have a SA 4200 or 8300, which are hardly capable of just hanging channels. It takes 30 seconds to load the frekin channel guide.
@yankees368
OH GOD, THE HD BOXES ARE SO PAINFULLY SLOW!!!!!!!!
@Gas
If you have the 4200HD, I highly recommend swapping out for a 4250HD.
ok?? its nice and all but if its going to the cable boxes that means it is intercepting their servers. In wich that means it's giving them a peak of what's inside our pcs right?? hmm nice but if i wanna browse the web using my tv ill stick to my ps3.
@jondastunna84 Agreed. Course you'd know when you were about to broadcast your viewing habits to Cablevision, and could prepare yourself, but I'd rather stick to something that stays inside my house...
Why can't the Cable Modem retransmit the data over a private channel that is only broadcast inside my house?
Stop worrying about this crap and get the HDTV listings up for tonight before 5:00pm.
Must get something similar for video on U-Verse!
@foxh8er2 There is sorta, we haven't figured it all out, it sees the home server but won't stream
@z0phi3l That's not really the same thing. Lets you play video you've already got on your desktop PC. This lets you display whatever your laptop is looking at, in particular something like Hulu, that the Uverse thing can't do anything with.
Sounds like FiOS media manager
HAHA Cablevision cableboxes (SA 8300HD) are complete crap and cant even change channels without lag. Not to mention the 1995 UI :ugh:
how bout making it go the other way? letting me get access to my DVR from a networked PC?
pshh...that will never happen...
@Smkmn13
Ever heard of Sling?
Honestly, I like Cablevision, they are one of the few companies with some dignity. A little pricey but the service is pretty darned good in comparison to other providers: ex Comcast (i have read the horror stories). Fast internet, good channels for basic, good phone service, no contract. Not a bad deal. And my internet speed is usually 11mb down and 2.3 upload for the basic. P.s I live in an outer borough of nyc.
@Mike Vick We consider that borderline, might want to keep an eye on that and if it hits 10 or less consistently call TSG
This is really dumb. We've been doing that for years with HTPCs or dedicated media streamers. An attempt to combine components isn't going to work, as the thing is probably not going to work very well.
What companies should be looking to do is improve the DVR experience with fast, powerful, 1TB+ SlingLoaded DVRs that have whole-house networking, cable companies could network through MoCA, and have zero configuration, and it would all be done through the cable splitter in the house, and configured through the remote provisioning process.
@(Unverified) I'm skeptical it will work well, but I don't think you understand what this is. You can watch Hulu on your TV with this, with no additional configuration and no additional hardware. Sure you can do the same thing with an in-home network and a desktop computer hooked up to your TV running Windows Media Center or whatever, but most people aren't going to do that.
@Fanfoot I do understand what it does. But like I said in my original post, its probably not going to be good enough and have enough format support to make it worth it just to consolidate a box. May as well just use HTPC for that.
@Fanfoot I must be missing something.
With this configuration, I hook my computer to the cable box, tune to a certain channel, and control the computer to determine what shows up on the TV.
Even with an old CRT TV, I can cut out the middle man -- use the TV-out port that most computers and laptops have, and run an RCA cable directly to the TV. Use a headphone-RCA Y-cable to get sound to the TV. Done. It's even easier on a new TV with a VGA or DVI port.
I seriously don't get how this cablevision thing makes anything simpler. The only "simplification" is that people who still don't understand RCA cables (???) can now have a big company advertise to them and tell them exactly how to do it using *their* proprietary equipment.
@EQC Hahaha yeah. You're cables are a little dated there, but same idea with laptop VGA or HDMI. Most TVs have VGA ports nowadays, and they support 1080p off of a laptop. That, or a dedicated HTPC could be used.
Any clue what they do under the hood? I expect something like this:
On the PC runs an MPEG4 encoder + DLNA media server that encodes the TV screen into a streaming mpeg4 video. The cable box runs DLNA client to receive and playback the incoming MPEG4 stream.
Also, does anyone know how responsive will the PC be when it is busy relaying the media?
@endgadget
Why it has to be MPEG4? why not mpeg2?
Why it has to be DLNA? it may be proprietary
Anyway, we will see when it comes out in June.
I'm confused. Is this streaming media like the PS3/360/Media Center or does it directly capture video of my desktop and throw it onto a channel?
I just thought of something. I know this is a long, roundabout way, but...
If my computer is connected to my TV through this thing and I have a Slingbox, that means that anything that I can view on my computer I can now view on my BlackBerry. So Hulu, ESPN360, streamed live videos, etc.
...right?