Multi user streaming tv

[Erikje]

Hi,

At the moment I'm aquiring information how to build a server that can stream tv to a minimum of 150 nodes. The server will be equiped with 5 Haupage wintv pvr 500's and will be streaming 10 tv channels.

I have three questions that I can't resolve:
1: What's the maximum number of nodes on 1 server?
2: How strong ( cpu ) does the server need to be?
3: Is streaming memory intensive?

[tvtalkshowshigh]

a mutlicast stream will allow you to stream to any number of clients with the same network overhead. If you have a 4Mbit multicast stream you will always have 4Mbits per second used on the entire network, irrespective of how many clients (even if it's zero!) are viewing the stream.

NB. in order to use multicast streaming, all network switches, routers, etc have to support multicast.

If you're streaming 10 channels then devide your available bandwidth by 10 and thats the bandwidth per stream. Of course, not all streams have to be the same; you might consider certain channels more important, or find that certain content can cope with lower bandwidth.

hth,
mark.

[Erikje]

Thnx mate,

I haven't thought about doing it multicast.
I think bandwidth won't be a problem( 1 Gb connection ) so max 100Mbit/channel aught to be enough..

[cozmo_]

Thnx mate,

I haven't thought about doing it multicast.
I think bandwidth won't be a problem( 1 Gb connection ) so max 100Mbit/channel aught to be enough..

Did you get the 500's for streaming ? I've got a PVR-500 myself, I no mather what I've tried (and now I've tried A LOT) I'm not able to get it working with streaming i VLC...From what I can see in the forums, a lot of people have issues with the 500, so I'm kind of curious about it..

[robc]

Thnx mate,

I haven't thought about doing it multicast.
I think bandwidth won't be a problem( 1 Gb connection ) so max 100Mbit/channel aught to be enough..

For that number of unicast clients however, you may run into problems with hardware throughput and bottlenecks - Given that the clients will all be viewing the same content, multicast is really the way which you should go with this (unless there are elements of the network between the clients and server which you do not control).