I’ve been watching TV through the crappy MMPCTV100’s composite in, (a very old tv card) so I got myself a cheap Pinnacle PCTTV DVB PCI card for my pc. I’d heard a lot about Microsoft Windows Media Center’s network tv streaming capabilities, so when it came, I jammed it into my computer, booted it up, and popped open Windows Media Center. With the Windows drivers I was able to watch TV, but not use the remote. (Not a big loss.) I booted up our other vista PC, popped open Media Center, but nothing happened. I thought it could be a firewall issue, so I disabled both of the PC’s firewalls for a bit. Nothing.

At that time I began searching Google for people who were having the same issue, and then I found a page on a forum somewhere that said you cannot stream TV with Windows Media Center between two PC’s. For that, you need a “Media Extender”. Where is the fucking logic in that?

So, I began looking for third party alternatives. It took me an hour or two, but eventually I found a little piece of software written in Java that did just the job - JTVLAN.

This great piece of software uses the power of DVB Webscheduler to control the pci card, while it takes the video file that websceduler is writing to, and uses videolan to stream it over the network. The result is a client that is able to change channels on the server, and pop open a VLC window with the stream in. I’ve set it up, and it works perfectly, even over my 54mbit/s wireless connection.

There is no lag aslong as you have a good network connection, but there is a ten second delay between the TV that’s being broadcast and the TV that you’re seeing on the client, but that’s not too important. As JTVLAN uses webscheduler and Videolan, both the server and client are extremely lightweight, and you can use the PC that the server is running on normally.

All in all, JTVLAN is a great plugin for webscheduler, and is much better than Windows Media Center’s non-existent streaming option. And, the good news is, as long as the server is on a windows box, the client can run on Mac, Linux, and even other Windows boxes! Take that, Microsoft.

The mighty JTVLAN - http://www.jtvlan.org/