How to stream a news feed to TV's in multiple buildings.

ausrere

ausrere

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Lisa
I'm looking for suggestions on how to do this:

I need find a way to have a scrolling news feed streamed 24/7 to several TV's mounted in various buildings, some several miles apart. Sort of like a powerpoint slide show running 24/7. All the buildings are on a shared network. The feed needs to be able to post basic text information and sometimes photos (No Video though), and be able to be updated easily by only handful of people with supervisor privileges from any location on the network without interrupting the feed that is running. It would be nice if the information in the feed could fall off the list in a set number time (like 7 days).

How do we do that, software and hardware wise? Any suggestions?
 
If they are on a network, and don't have dedicated Co-ax going from one to another, I have a feeling it would be a pretty intense network load to stream video to everyone. Add that to the fact that the data you are sending isn't that intense (just slides), I would suggest a set of small PCs to drive the individual terminals, a running service acting as a server to power/send the info to each one, and a web-site that permits configuration.

The solution I would think of (cheapest/easiest way) would be to grab a bunch of oldish PCs and throw cheap video cards into them (anything with an Svideo-out). Have the PCs run an application that feeds off of a web-feed (something like an image-empowered RSS feed?), and cycles the info over the monitors.

In addition, there would be a single machine to act as the server. It would have 2 apps, 1 is a hosted web site which would act as a configuration panel, and the other would be the feed source that the individual clients would connect to.

I don't know of any software that does this already, though i would assume that there is some out there. It wouldn't be terribly complex to write something like this if you can, otherwise it wouldn't be terribly expensive to have this written for you.

If you go into the details of exactly the setup you have, and what sort of things you need, I could put together proposal or something. Due to the distance, I would obviously need a qualified hardware-setup person on your end though.
 
I second Erich's suggestion. If things are networked together and I had a decent budget.

I'd go with a good sized flat screen monitor and perhaps the linux mini's (about $300) connected to a server.

Remote software could be a web browser in full screen mode.

Server has a directory with images like png or jpeg and a self refreshing web page which is a script that picks images (sequentially or randomly). A background job that deletes them after your specified time frame.

Add another page that uploads images. Then the supervisors use their favorite program like PowerPoint and export single images, and uploads them.

Joe
 
Areeda said:
I second Erich's suggestion. If things are networked together and I had a decent budget.

I'd go with a good sized flat screen monitor and perhaps the linux mini's (about $300) connected to a server.

Remote software could be a web browser in full screen mode.

Server has a directory with images like png or jpeg and a self refreshing web page which is a script that picks images (sequentially or randomly). A background job that deletes them after your specified time frame.

Add another page that uploads images. Then the supervisors use their favorite program like PowerPoint and export single images, and uploads them.

Joe
Click to expand...

I was thinking a little more complex than this (some sort of display app set on startup to take up the whole screen), but yeah, thats basically what I was thinking. It could be done inexpensively enough. The only thing, instead of an LCD, there are many video cards that drive standard TV outputs, so those would work just as well, and give you the cheap platform I assume the op is seeking.
 
Windows Media Server or the Linux equivalent (or similar software) is what you want. Basically you can feed a content stream (live video, or powerpoint, or whatever) to the media server (if you're using static content you can format it in a stream with simple scripting). This stream gets assigned a url at the server, and clients (your pcs in other areas) point their browser to this url and get the stream via quicktime, windows media, flash, or whatever format you choose.

The advantage of these servers is that the connection is UDP/IP with low network overhead, and the server can literally stream at the full bandwidth of it's network connections.

You need to be sure you have the available network capacity so that this stream doesn't interfere with other traffic. This isn't a concern if you put the devices on a dedicated network segment.

I did some experimentation with this stuff over (my god) a decade ago when Gigabit Ethernet was new, and found that even a commodity desktop motherboard made a good media server and could stream out hundreds of different streams at multiple megabits per second. The little start-up I was working at eventually built a movie server and wrote some smart disk write/seek/cache routines to make it perform very well. The concept and IP was bought by a larger company and it or something similar is what companies like NetFlix use to stream content today.

This sort of technology is widely used for webcasting today. It's NOT bleeding edge anymore, so you'd have no difficulty finding a product made and supported by a reliable vendor to do what you want.

Hope this helps,
 
With the network infrastructure in place, the job could be quite a bit easier....just depends on the layout.

There are several ways to do this...none really cheap...

1) PC and VLC Player...This is a decent way to go but has its limitations.

2) See attached brochure. I have quite a few of these units installed and doing exactly what you describe. In one plant we use one unit, updated by a clerk and supervisor from Human Resources that feeds I think 11 televisions. The unit will switch the feed from a new program, run he message, complete with scrolling text and a basic PP slide show and then switch the network BACK to the new program that drones on all day.

The material can be scheduled to run when you choose, ran for a period you choose and then it deletes itself form the hard drive. It will also turn the displays on and off so that they run only when people are there to view them.

You never stated the number of displays and the number of different messages (or zones) you needed to operate simultaneously. This information is key to setting this up.

I could go into much further details on laying this out. If you want to talk about this PM me your phone number and I will give you a call.
 

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Lisa:

One of my University clients uses IPTV...You will be very happy!
 
I would say something like VLC server or similar to send out a multi-cast stream and then VLC as the client to grab it.
 
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