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ZeeVee: One Box to Broadcast PC's HD Video All Over the House
Posted by Wilson Rothman at 9:00 PM on May 1, 2008
Today, a startup called ZeeVee is launching the ZvBox, a three-part plan for getting all the good HD video content from your PC out to all the TVs in the house:
• The box itself converts the video from the PC's VGA port into a high-def channel and sends it out to your home's coax cable network.
• A PC app acts as a launcher for all the good PC-based internet video clients, like Hulu, Joost and even Microsoft's own Media Center.
• The remote controls not just your TV, but the app on the PC too, giving you decent control over the otherwise PC-locked experience.
No, you don't have deja vu: Two companies you never heard of launched similar-sounding interactive TV boxes within a few hours of each other. But this one is quite different: It doesn't mess with antennae or try to get in bed with cable or DSL providers. It's just a nice tidy box that sends all the world's content to all TVs in your house—without set-top boxes in each room. There are some catches, of course.
The first catch is that the box-and-remote combo costs US$500. Sure, you only need one kit for the whole house (unless you want additional remotes, but every TV would get the same experience anyhow, so there's no point). But US$500 is pretty steep.
Another catch is that the content itself is a little up in the air. Yes, there are plenty of services that let you buy or rent movies on a PC, and many more coming along that give you piecemeal content for free. But everyone does it differently, and you will have to become master of many interfaces with that one remote.
The launcher app, called Zviewer (what else?), is useful to aggregate all the different programs you'll want supplying you with video, and it also lists all of the BitTorrent and other video on your hard drive, not to mention photos and music. But there's no way to bring all web video into one seamless interface, and though ZeeVee will try to do just that, they admit that the beginnings will be a tad humbler.
I do like this concept. As soon as you connect your VGA out to the ZvBox and connect that to the coax network in your house, it scopes out the channels occupied by your cable box, and picks one that's not. Any TV with an ATSC tuner will see the ZeeVee stream as a high-def channel, and display it as such via the coax input most cable and satellite customers have generally forgotten about. You put the ATSC tuner to use, your coax cable gets new life, and you get an easy way to toggle from your other cable content to your PC's video bidness.
At this point, it's still a work in progress. Though the company promises a June ship date, the hardware shots are just renderings. The software, barely in beta, will only run on Windows XP and Vista, though ZeeVee assures us a Mac version will be out this year. I am a little leery of trying to use PC apps while sitting at my couch, so hopefully the software itself will handle most of my needs.
Promotional screenshots shown below depict some pretty nice media management, but the company admits that these are more aspirational, and will not represent the initial user experience:
If you think about it, the PC is kind of arbitrary here. I asked Brian Mahoney, ZeeVee director of marketing, if the company couldn't all the same turn this into a whole-house extender for my TiVo HD, or maybe a video iPod, and he said, "We can indeed take the video inputs from any device. That is a path we're looking at in the future."
My question for you, dear Giz readers, is this: Remote and PC software aside, how easy is it to build the box ZeeVee is talking about? And is it worth US$200 to US$250? Maybe it is. If you're really eager, it's going on pre-order at Amazon today, with plans to ship in June. If I were you, I'd wait until your friends at Gizmodo at least saw the thing in person before shelling out five bills. [ZeeVee]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
Glenn
Posted July 21, 2008 10:05 PM
can you watch more than one channel at once, say a differant show on each tv
Bloomy
Posted October 16, 2008 12:02 PM
I read about it. Thought it sounded fantastic.
Essentially it is broadcasting whatever is on your screen across your own coax cable in your house, and you use your Digital
Cable TV box to recieve it. Quite a neat solution. Essentially this is a mini version of what cable TV companies do.
Then I thought about it a bit more and did some reading....hang on...this is a US only device.
The TV systems and Digital encoding in the US is different to Australia. Yes, both digital systems use QAM to modulate
the signal in order to encode and transmit over cable. However, QAM does not specify the format of
the digital data being carried on this modulation. In the US they use ATSC, and in Australia we use DVB. These two
data formats are not compatable with eachother.
The majority of the world uses the DVB standard, one would think that US companies should be aware of economies of scale and
sell to a larger audience and make use of technology that is, from what I understand, generally a better standard for
a number of technical reasons and its cheaper to implement.
I'll just have to be happy with plugging my laptop into my plasma screen and using Plex to watch movies from my NAS array.
homerjay
Posted 10:04 PM 1/5/08
One box to rule them all?
homerjay
MeeM
Posted 10:02 PM 1/5/08
I like the concept. One box that, when connected to a PC, transmits hi-def content from the PC throughout your home cable network.
It's sorta like a DVR meets cable box meets home media player, except some features might need refining, namely:
- perhaps wireless connectivity? so no need to USB connection to PC? I guess wireless video would be good too, but I believe wi-fi has the tendency to drop packets.
- why not HDMI connection to PC?
- 5.1ch decoding should be included too
The idea of using the remote to control the app on your PC is neat.
Is it buildable? Definitely. You will need the following:
- VGA -> HD converter module
- Coax transmission module
- Serial controller (with USB support)
- Remote control transceiver kit
That's just a skeletal outline. I have no idea how much this would cost, but here in Australia, I estimate it would be somewhere in the vicinity of $300 USD.
MeeM
guitarmunkey05
Posted 12:11 AM 2/5/08
@takemetoyourtoaster: Sounds like a pretty good plan to me. I have a laptop with an HDMI port. i just keep an HDMI cable hangin out the back of my tv and bring my laptop to the tv when i want to watch something.
guitarmunkey05
OG512
Posted 12:07 AM 2/5/08
if the UI looks anything like the one pictured above, it will be way better than Windows Media Center. But like @MeeM: said, HDMI, Wireless, Bluetooth 2.0 and 5.1 decoding should at least be an option without raising the cost. Also, will it report illegal downloads that are on your PC? And, any Video on my PC will be converted or upconverted to HD 1080p or 720p automatically? hhhmmmmm, sounds too good to be true!
OG512
takemetoyourtoaster
Posted 11:57 PM 1/5/08
I think I am going to have this setup, mac mini with external drive, connected to tv, saves all ovies to both the shared folder (with password) and external drive, when I get home with my macbook, I can either get it via shared folder, or external drive so I can take it with me, or watch it on the big screen, also when orb comes out for mac, I will use that also. does that sound like a good media setup?
takemetoyourtoaster
guitarmunkey05
Posted 11:56 PM 1/5/08
I think all computer video cards should have a coax output too. This would be extremely ugly, but extremely useful. I had a desktop that had an adapter for VGA outputs, then ran that into a VGA-> coax adapter then ran a 100' coax cable from on floor to another to watch movies from my computer to the big screen on the floor below. It worked just fine, except it was only VGA quality.
guitarmunkey05
Monty
Posted 12:29 AM 2/5/08
I think it is telling that R2D2 post right after this one has six times the number of comments. Only Apple products can compete with the love of Star Wars, I guess.
Certainly a product like this can be built, but it is going to be within a hundred or two of this products estimate, and would not have the snazzy software to go along with it. If I actually watched programming on multiple TV's and had the money, this would be a very attractive possibility.
Monty
lutton
Posted 12:19 AM 2/5/08
Contrast the price point and (potential) features with another HD distribution solution: OWLink 2850 ( [digitalconnection.com] ) The OWLink sends HDMI, IR remote, and keyborad/mouse control over 100 ft of fiber. It's $800. It requires running the fiber, and offers a one to one solution.
I think the ZeeVee hardware provides a better solution by sending HD over existing wiring as a one to many solution at less cost. If they manage to develop a successful UI (a la TiVo), that'd be gravy.
The more I think about the potential of a unit like this, even as just distribution hardware, the better it seems. Heck, just give me the modulator feature with HDMI or component and digital audio input, and I'd be interested.
lutton
ParJoe
Posted 2:14 AM 2/5/08
This thing is like exactly what I've been looking for. $500 is just a bit steep. I'd trade that "multiple tv" feature for a $100 or so off the price.
ParJoe
chumpzilla
Posted 3:51 AM 2/5/08
If you have a network cable to your TV you can run sageTV or Windows MCE and use an extender at the TV location. That would cost less than $500...
chumpzilla
sideshowralphwiggum
Posted 4:53 AM 2/5/08
This is SO CLOSE to what I've been dreaming of.
Back in the day (analog NTSC) Coax (or as most people thought of it, Channel 3) was the worst possible way to move a signal from a home video device to a TV, since that analog signal had to get so modified and tangled up in order to fit it all into one TV channel.
Now, however, with digital broadcasting, Coax really needs to be enthroned as THE method of moving a signal from various devices to TVs.
Right now, if you want to hook up a TV to your BluRay or Computer, you have to hook up either 1 VGA cable and one to 6 audio cables, OR 3 Component cables + 1 to 6 Audio Cables OR 1 HDMI cable with 0 to 6 audio cables.
The HDMI option sounds good on the surface, until you learn about all of it's distance-based limitations. It's very hard(expensive) to send HDMI long distances (more than 10 feet) with reliability. Then, on top of that, it's extremely expensive to split HDMI to several systems.
Digital (ATSC, in this case) transmission solves most all of that. Now you can send video in full HD throughout all the same old wires already in your house. You only need 1 wire, not 2-8 to each TV. It encapsulates Dolby 6-channel Audio and MPEG2 HD video all-in-one. You can split the signal using the same old-fashioned splitters and signal amplifiers you used to have for normal Cable TV and antennas. Your whole house can enjoy full HD with just 1 cable.
The only caveat is that the video MUST be MPEG2. That means the pure, uncompressed HDMI/DVI that comes out of your computer/devices would have to be converted to a lossy, compressed format before being distributed. Purists will see this as a negative. However, MPEG2 HD sure does look good, and that slight drop in quality is certainly worth it for me to have all the other conveniences.
Even that downside could be greatly improved if they would just offer a device that took the ALREADY MPEG2 compressed sources from your device (BluRay is sometimes MPEG2, all American TV broadcasts, and most cable & satellite broadcasts are MPEG2) and simply modulate them to the ATSC RF signal without having to go through an HDMI (decompression) back to MPEG2 (re-compression) stage.
That's the dream for me. This device is a good start, but a device that would either take any HDMI and turn it into ATSC or even better, a device that would take pure digital files and transcode or just inject them into ATSC RF signals would be the dream come true.
As to the cost, for converting any high-res analog signal to a compressed HD MPEG2 and then modulating that into an RF signal, I'd fully expect a cost of $500. I'm sure it could be cheaper, but economies of scale would need to come in.
So close.
sideshowralphwiggum
banmojo
Posted 12:50 AM 3/5/08
@MeeM: I like your idea about wireless streaming to so-enabled TVs around the house. Sounds like in 2-3 years most high end sets will have this capability. If not then our technology industry masters are abusing us slaves. REVOLT!!
banmojo
dkoemans
Posted 4:22 AM 3/5/08
to answer your question, this is a remarkable price and bit of technology, at least at this stage. I know people that are home installers on high end whole house solutions and this nut has just been about impossible to crack. Their solution? Analog. They use amplified RGB (5 wire) video to get to every viewing area and combine it there. Very expensive and you need the existing infrastructure. The problem has been "modulating" HDTV into an SDI pipe has been very complex and the domain of cable providers only. None of geffen's products or other similar companies do this. This is a big deal people but I expect the price will drop as more competition comes in.
dkoemans