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Stuart · 19-07-2005, 22:42

Technically, this should be fairly easy to do. However, I should point out that unless you have permission from Sky for viewing their channels on commercial premises, then you will be breaking the law.

Assuming you have permission, and assuming you have network connections at all the points you will be having monitors, then it is quite easy.

You connect a sky digibox to a PC with a TV card. This PC runs Windows Media Encoder, which is used to send the Windows Media encoded transmission to a Windows 2000 Server machine, running Windows Media Services. This server will broadcast the data it recieves from the Windows Media Encoder.

If you are using less than 50 machines, you can possibly skip the Windows Media Server and just attach straight to the Encoder. The advantage of going through the Windows Media Server is that the amount of users you can have is limited only by the speed of the network. You could, in theory, have 1000s of users attached to one Windows Media Server. In fact , when I was learning to use Windows Media Server, running on a Pentium II 266, I used the User simulator you get with the Windows Media Software Developer's kit, and was able to get 1,200 simulated users to access the broadcast. The only reason I couldn't go further is that doing this flooded the network connection on the machine running the simulator. The server did not appear to be under strain at all.
Windows Media Player on each machine can then connect to the broadcast coming from the the Windows Media Server.

19-07-2005, 22:42	#2
Stuart - Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Somewhere Services: Virgin for TV and Internet, BT for phone Posts: 26,546	Re: Sky TV across a network. Technically, this should be fairly easy to do. However, I should point out that unless you have permission from Sky for viewing their channels on commercial premises, then you will be breaking the law. Assuming you have permission, and assuming you have network connections at all the points you will be having monitors, then it is quite easy. You connect a sky digibox to a PC with a TV card. This PC runs Windows Media Encoder, which is used to send the Windows Media encoded transmission to a Windows 2000 Server machine, running Windows Media Services. This server will broadcast the data it recieves from the Windows Media Encoder. If you are using less than 50 machines, you can possibly skip the Windows Media Server and just attach straight to the Encoder. The advantage of going through the Windows Media Server is that the amount of users you can have is limited only by the speed of the network. You could, in theory, have 1000s of users attached to one Windows Media Server. In fact , when I was learning to use Windows Media Server, running on a Pentium II 266, I used the User simulator you get with the Windows Media Software Developer's kit, and was able to get 1,200 simulated users to access the broadcast. The only reason I couldn't go further is that doing this flooded the network connection on the machine running the simulator. The server did not appear to be under strain at all. Windows Media Player on each machine can then connect to the broadcast coming from the the Windows Media Server.