Streaming TV to laptop via wi-fi

Conor108

I have a TV card installed in my desktop and I want to stream it to my laptop. Can I do this with VLC player? The desktop runs XP SP2 and the lappy is running Vista Business. There both networked via wi-fi.

Is that possible and how would I do it?

jhegarty

Yep , VLC is the way to go.... I do it myself with a dreambox,so not sure what software you need....

trellheim

if it was audio stream I'd use streamripper and a rebroadcast... perhaps there's something like it for TV.

Ghost Train

simplest thing to do is if you record with the tv card to a shared folder, you can then open the video files with vlc on the laptop while they're recording.

SouperComputer

it really depends on what software is doing the recording. If you are using windows media center, then you can forget the above suggestion unless you like driving your self demented.

Also, remember that the bitrate of the recorded stream is typically WAY more than the effective throughput of WiFi, unless you are using on the fly transcoding.

Theres a few options, so ill pick two. You could use mediaportal on the PC thats recording as your media interface and install the tv engine plugin. Altough, again bitrates are going to be an issue on WiFi.

Another way to go is to download the free software called webguide. It was written for use with MCE, but can can specify your videos directory and use it anyway. Its all aceessable through an rather dandy web interface and it provides on the fly encoding for all kinds of bitrates, including ones that are low enough for web viewing.