home TV/RF broadcasting network

[ktsaou]

Hi,

I have a small tv broadcasting network playing back 3 private TV/RF channels. Today I use a setup like this:

1. Media Library with DIVX, XVID and X264 video files (all encoded at 720x576 PAL)
2. VLC Streaming Server, streaming concurrently 3 videos, while transcoding them to MPEG2, on a pretty good box (old dual Xeon @3.4GHz, with 50-60% average cpu utilization - this is a headless server - not used for desktop)
3. TV-OUT computer (a very old P4 celeron @2Ghz), receiving the 3 streams (with fbxine) and sending them to 3x DXR3 cards (MPEG2 PCI decoders, with TV-OUT and AUDIO-OUT). This machine is totaly idle.
4. RF Modulators, RF amplifiers, etc.

This way, my home can have my private channels on every TV (actually I am also allowing all 8 houses on the same building to watch them, since I have connected my RF outputs to the master RF amplifier of the building).
Everything is very good, except a small problem: 2 computers almost dedicated to streaming 3 TV channels, running 24x365, cost a lot (just their power consumption costs around 500-700 euro/year).

I am trying to find alternatives:

1. Buy 3 set-top-boxes to receive the streams, and play them on their TV-OUT, so that 1 computer can be eliminated. The problem here is that I don't know any set-top-box capable of playing around the clock without any human interaction. Do you?

2. Find some kind of a PCI/PCI-e card with 3x TV-OUT slots, attach also 3x USB sound cards, so that instead of streaming, vlc will play the channels localy. This is by far the best solution, since 1 computer will be eliminated and the cpu utilization of the other will also be much lower so that it will be available for other things too. The problem here is: PCI/PCI-e graphics card with 3x TV-OUTs?

Of course, the streaming server does not have enough PCI slots to host the 3 dxr3 cards (or 3 pci tv-out cards), the tv-out box does not have enough CPU to convert concurrently 3 video files to MPEG2 for sending them to dxr3s, set-top-boxes cannot be installed on every TV (wife rules - although I have all Ethernet cabling embedded in the walls), etc.
It might be safer to just replace the computers with GREEN alternatives... but I don't believe this can reduce power consumption by more than 10%.

Any ideas are welcome...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Why don't you merge the 2 computers now?
You can find a lot of graphic cards with 2 outputs, why not putting 2 of them on the master?

[ktsaou]

OK. But how I can get 2 tv-outs from a single graphics card?

[ktsaou]

I guess this http://www.hdtvsupply.com/vga-to-composite.html should provide vga-to-tv-out from the graphics card. So, two tv-outs from the same card seems possible.

I don't know about its picture quality though.
I'll order one and try it...

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Maybe it can be easier. Take a card with VGA+S-Video Output and buy a small converter from VGA to S-Video, so you will have 2 S-Video output from the same graphic card.