Wireless TV and other Node services

I've been thinking about the services that I want to offer on my node.

Back in the U.K. I offered Internet access, which is of course the "killer ap" for public wireless nodes. Given the current high-cost/low-bandwidth situation in NZ, Internet access is not really do-able, so I have been thinking up other ways of offering a valuable service that people might like to use that I might like to provide.

I don't play a lot of games and don't do P2P, so was thinking to mirror software (Linux ISO's Gnome & KDE builds, OpenOffice etc.) and maybe provide limted-net access Unix shell accounts, both of which are rather boring.

Then I thought of this; http://www.videolan.org/

VideoLAN is a multicast video-streaming solution. It has clients that run on the majority of operating systems and according to this bit; http://www.videolan.org/streaming/ 6-9 Mbits is ample bandwidth, which should mean that transmission over 802.11b is quite doable and I think it might be fun.

The fact that VideoLAN supports MULTICAST means that saturated 802.11b link really becomes a broadcasting solution, as any number of clients should be able to view the incoming audio/video stream but the node itself will have little bandwidth to do anything else with. Obviously the feed would only be good for directly connected wireless clients. Other node operators will de-link me pretty quickly If I'm using all of their bandwidth to transmit across them to clients connected to their nodes.

Then I started thinking about content. Having the architecture in place is not very useful if you don't have something that people want to watch. DVD's and other copyrighted media are a no-no, so what should I provide?

The answer I think is here;

http://www.lyngsat.com/asia.shtml

Many of the satellites listed here are transmitting free, unencrypted, digital content that is accessible in New Zealand via a DVB card and satellite dish, which means that anyone with the kit can pick it up and (I assume) re-transmit it.

Most of the content is stuff like "BBC World Service" and "Northern Territory Public Access" and the like (i.e. not "Sky Movies" and "Amsterdam Hardcore") but the point is that it is international content, some of which is not available here by the usual TV viewing methods.

I think that I will have a lot of fun setting this stuff up, with a view to pumping out "Simon's Guerilla WiFi International TV Feed" to anyone keen to watch it in Auckland (Once I find somewhere to live and my WiFi kit arrives ) But right now would like to gauge interest.

Assuming that this all works as I envisage and the quality of the feed is acceptable, would anyone out there be keen to watch?

I'd also be interested to hear what everyone else is planning to do with their node. Once we have the basic wireless nfrastructure in place, some of the projects we undertake are going to be collective and some are going to be like this; node specific. What are we going to do with our shiny new wireless network and what are you going to do with your node? I wonder if we can put together a wish-list of services.

I should emhpaise that my grand scheme for "NZWireless TV Yo!" is very much in the planning stages and I might find that it's not good enough after I set everything up. If this is indeed the case, all is not lost, I'll use the equipment I purchase to do freevo http://freevo.sourceforge.net

-Simon.[/url]

the TV idea sounds great, i'd definately be keen to use that once it's up and running

I was also trying to find services to run on my node, at the moment i have an i386 debian mirror and a microsoft SUS (software update service) server on there, but i was also thinking of doing some voip and trying to hook up some nice national bandwidth (although this isn't very likely), as it's cheaper than international

You could try and do a PVR service as well, so ppl can set a time to record off your sat and then download the avi or whatever later, that'd be pretty cool

wow that does sound pretty neat

i would like to host something that would be compatible and benefit hend held users.. havnt thought of anything yet, maybe something media driven music/ pocket pc apps / avant go server / ..

i would like to host something that would be compatible and benefit hend held users.. havnt thought of anything yet, maybe something media driven music/ pocket pc apps / avant go server / ..

That sounds bloody cool
I have a ton of docos and movies etc if you need content

i will run a movie and porn video channel off my node.

Im initially going to share my MP3/other audio stash, on the hope that people will reciprocate the shareing my uploading stuff that i dont have.

There are 2 other people listed in beach haven, so soon I think there will be some form of omni up on the roof beside my weather station and if funds permit, I will buy a directional high gain and try to hit some furthur away points. being halfway down a no exit street I dont think there is much chance of people finding it by themselves eh..

Richms, i am not far from you. ICQ me at 2984885. I am away at mo but we may be able to get LOS to each other.


Wookie

I'm just wondering how hard it would be to set up national inet over the network and how expensive. Once you spread the cost over 5-10 ppl who want access, might become more viable.
The main reason im setting up a node is to get some sort of inet access as im stuck with 56K thanx to fibre optics running up to the house :? .

WideLoad

I have 10Mbit flat rate here and if we can get a link here (near gillies ave), then we can have a internet link. I also have a few hundred GB of stuff to share on the network.

i will be moving to parnel in october and will be able to see you clearly with a extension for the aerial, i THINK.

I work for an ISP which offers nationwide(wgt, akl, whan, palmy, cc, q twn etc) wireless, I may be able to see if we could use some of their systems to link pops in exchange for some sort of advertising perhaps...

You need to talk to Noodles. He runs the show, i am sure we would be very interested!

Wookie

unfortunately you may encounter a bit of a bandwidth problem with this though...

IIRC wireless isn't "fat" enough to handle something along the lines of a "normal" 700mb movie stolen style DivX

You need to get a connection to APE, then you pretty much have national internet access. To give you an idea mosts ISP's would have a 100mb link to APE in Auckland and Wix in Wellington. Pretty much can be achieved by most fibre providers although depandant on location.

Sounds like James has this already


Wideload where exactly are you, that node map doesn't ave flatbush so might as well throw a dart at the board

That sounds good to me, but does anyone have some figures on how much it would cost us to get some gear into APE? I guess we would need to get a link to the wireless network from the Sky Tower, but how do we do that? I'm assuming that they wouldn't less us stick a wireless antenna up outside.

could allways ask spazrat ... he has a boxen @ APE dont he?

Nope, but his ISP connects to APE

As for the whole APE thing, that's a bit off topic, when cAPTAIN_k said that there'd be bandwidth issues, he wasn't talking about on the internet, wireless doesn't do streaming video very well. This will change soon with different standards being formalised (there's one being worked on at the moment that gives wlan QoS, which means video and voip will work better)

As for getting wireless gear at APE, umm... yea, it'd be extremely difficult, there's a lot of wireless gear up there at the moment, i would imagine that there'd be a lot of interference. The wireless gear is mounted behind special glass at the top of the tower, which radio waves can pass through easily, i don't think any is mounted on the outside of the tower.

thanks for pointing that out Noodles, I was getting a bit worried with how people didn't get what I meant

I guess you could always run some sort of streaming video at a lower quality with lots of buffering but then it'd probably end up looking like something the toddlers at the kindygarten did one afternoon when finger painting

what abour that VideoLAN project?

wasnt that ment to allow streaming over low speed networks, or does "low speed" mean a 10/100mbit ethernet connection :|

It could be worth experimenting, i haven't used video over wlan before, but i have encoded stuff for use over the internet (real media streams, windows media streams etc), so we could test what bit rate is acceptable for watching vs bandwidth usage.

I think that videoLAN software does a video broadcast, so that cuts down on bandwidth used (1 stream of video, rather than 1 per client), so it may be worth a look.

Maybe we have a workshop soon for testing things like this? I'll start another thread to ask people what they'd like to see tested at the next workshop