Streaming cable TV question...

[Digitalgypsy66]

There several similar threads floating around, but none of them exactly answer what I'm looking for.

We recently got cable TV in our building at work, which houses the entirety of our campus' servers and data center.

Several of us - 3-4 tops - would like to stream this cable to our homes/phones for viewing, as we don't have cable. One of these persons is the head of I.T., who is fully on board with this.

What is a cheap solution for doing this? We have plenty of low end PCs that could be setup as media servers, but what software do you recommend? We would like to have independent control of channels, as I don't want to watch what the 20 something administrative assistant watches (Lifetime, MTV, ... )

[pittsoccer33]

this is kind of in my wheelhouse.

so the building you work in subscribes to cable. you would like to access that subscription in your home. am i correct in saying that this would be similar to saying you want to access my cable subscription in your home?

unless all of the cable channels are clearqam (meaning nobody needs a box - you just twist the cable out of the wall into your tv and watch) you are going to need one of two things to even think about this:
-a cablecard tuner or
-a cable box and a capture device.

as i think about it the only way i can imagine this working at all is if you all rent a cable box and attach a slingbox or monsoon vuklano to each cable box. any software that would allow you to take an incoming clearqam signal, independently tune different channels, and then encode it for online streaming would have to be commercial grade stuff.

a dual pci express tuner card runs around $120 if i remember correctly. that can indepenedtly control two channels.

the only software im aware of that even possibly will let you do this is windows media center, but it wont work for live tv. only finished dvr recordings. you would associate your home pc and server pc with the same windows live id to do it. when windows 7 came out microsoft ran tv commercials with a couple in an airport watching their home dvr recordings this way.

[JS©]

will this help?

http://lifehacker.com/5882209/five-best ... am-live-tv