So, I have a pretty unique situation here at work. We have basically developed our own "News TV" channel that is currently running on 60 TV's at our facilities across the country. These TVs are simply connected to a PC that is running our "News TV" program. This program gets the news from a database in our Content Management System for our internal intranet news site & displays it all neatly on these TVs.

The problem: We're currently having to pay $2000/year PER PC for "upkeep" and licensing etc. because they're on our network and also running Windows XP. As I said, we have 60 of these PCs currently running, so we're paying $120K/year in "upkeep", lol. Stupid.

I'm looking for a solution to get rid of the PC's. I'm thinking something like a Roku box, WD TV, Google TV, Apple TV, etc. that will let us do this...the only problem is that we obviously dont want to hack any of these devices and get into legal trouble since this is for the office.

Also, something that we're conscious of is bandwidth. Our current setup is that each PC individually looks for new content every so often and only downloads content when new content is available. This way we're not constantly streaming the content and sucking bandwidth. This is a major issue at some of our sites as they have a pretty crappy bandwidth issues as-is.

Anyone know of something off-hand that might work for us? We're not against re-writing our program/creating an "app" that will work on any of these boxes. But the bandwidth is still the issue. Are there any media boxes that will download the content locally and only fetch new content when it's available?


ibt [/words]

[Edited on February 11, 2011 at 7:07 PM. Reason : .]

2/11/2011 7:06:17 PM

let me be the first to say: jesus christ.

really.

2/11/2011 11:57:13 PM

what kind of news?

2/12/2011 1:18:53 AM

Ok.... well. Part of me wants to have someone call me and do this for a job. It sounds fun.

If that was a scenario I'd so something similar to this:

1) Sync the files
--For linux based systems I'd use any of a variety of programs, but if you've got xp on everything why not something simple like dropbox or a script to download everything in a folder on your website at 1AM.

2) Play 'em back
--I would set VLC or some other player to close and restart once/day and run the "play folder" command via command line. This, assuming your files are downloaded, would loop the entire folder until the script kills it the next night and restarted the process.


If you're having to buy new PC's to make all this work I'd go with go with something cheap, small, and with win7. Run live mesh for problems, and you should have it nailed down (of course use mesh for file sync too.)

If you have people on-site that are competent you could have an emergency package that has portable VLC, all the videos, and a .pls with everything you need in one neat zip file. When it all goes to pot they can just unzip and run VLC. Hit play and they're back in business.


If you wanted to go full automation I would consider making everything linux/unix, and setting everybody up for SSH. That way your script can login, verify the daily file integrity (simple MD5 or other hash check), and issue the play commands - providing a method of reporting back to you. Something goes haywire and the system alerts you via email before they even show up to the office. You could even script in a tar ball so it only has to pull one file.

2/12/2011 1:46:22 AM

You could theoretically get a bunch of iPods and write an iPod app that does what the PCs are doing. They have VGA/component video out adapters. That of course would take some work...

If Apple ever opens up an app store for the AppleTV that would be a decent solution too.

At NCSU, they have Mac Minis running digital signage software (or MediaFurnace software on some displays for IPTV) around campus.

2/12/2011 2:52:09 AM

I wrote an app to do exactly this. I'm currently rewriting it for roku and yahoo widgets so it can be run directly from the TV. pm me the specs of the content you're looking to display

2/12/2011 1:05:20 PM

^you can do it on a roku box without streaming?

Streaming to roku is easy - you just need an XML file and someone to hit go with the files on your CDN or web server.

2/12/2011 1:25:52 PM

wwwebsurfer, we are trying to get RID of the PC's that are currently in use. This way we wont have to pay $2k/year per PC. We already HAVE PC's in place that are running our application and working flawlessly...but we're looking for a hardare solution that doesnt cost us $120k/year. We're looking for something such as a Roku/Apple TV, etc. that could be configured to work for us.

smoothcrim, I'll definitely hit you up with some info.


We were "technically" told that we couldnt put any computer on our network that runs an "operating system". I think they were specifically talking about a Windows OS. We've been kicking around the idea of just purchasing netbooks and running linux on them...because we already have a working program that works flawlessly...we just dont know if we'll be allowed to use linux either. Definitely cant use Windows OS though because we'll have to pay fees.


[Edited on February 13, 2011 at 7:00 PM. Reason : 1000 posts!]

2/13/2011 6:53:37 PM

Quote :

"We were "technically" told that we couldnt put any computer on our network that runs an "operating system""

Wow. That's some stuff for the tales of the technically inept thread right there.

2/13/2011 7:22:07 PM

why not just an IPTV setup with a server+ 60 hardware clients (basically small set top boxes that join an IPTV multicast feed and output to the TVs)?

2/13/2011 7:54:35 PM

http://www.markertek.com/Video-Equipment/Video-Processors/IPTV-AV-Decoders/Amino/AMINET125.xhtml

[Edited on February 13, 2011 at 8:56 PM. Reason : that is, if you're looking to go the IP multicast streaming route]

2/13/2011 8:55:34 PM

^, ^^

if he's trying to minimize network use, that would not work. That's constantly streaming data vs. just playing a local repeating cache (what he's doing now) that changes 1/day (?).

2/13/2011 8:57:45 PM

multicast would be a lot lighter on bandwidth usage than the ideas presented so far.

It's kind of the whole point of multicast.

2/13/2011 9:21:10 PM

Quote :

"Wow. That's some stuff for the tales of the technically inept thread right there."

I totally agree. This is coming from the head of our IT department too. "nothing with a Operating System"

2/13/2011 9:44:36 PM

^^ you're the expert, but wouldn't each facility have to have an operational multicast backbone? it seems if cost is a big consideration, this isn't the best option.

2/13/2011 9:49:51 PM

I'll definitely look into multicast.

2/13/2011 11:08:25 PM

^^ yeah, it all depends on how the sites are connected to the main office.

^, how are the sites connected to the main office?

2/13/2011 11:09:24 PM

whoa, geez. Just realized there are 2 "bobby" people in here. I was totally confusted for a second there.

2/13/2011 11:57:03 PM

like all the Astral people.

2/14/2011 1:41:04 AM

Quote :

"At NCSU, they have Mac Minis running digital signage software"

I'm trying to get more and more people to switch to our PC client, mainly because I hate having to deal with Macs and it makes the maintenance easier. Once IE9 launches officially, I'm going to push even harder.

Also Mac Mini's going up in price $100+ hurts it as well. Nice form factor, not cost effecient.

2/14/2011 12:24:23 PM