Video streaming across small home network - easy to do?

I have a live video stream from a wireless camera which I would like to have
available across my small home network. It is a (wireless but not wifi)
baby-cam which has infra-red night vision and the base unit gives an RCA +
stereo audio, instead of being tied to a single TV I thought it would be
good to be able to split the signal and stream the feed to the PC's / laptop
on my home network. Then we can log in and check up on junior from anywhere
in the house!

I initially looked into buying one of the network web cameras, but based on
advice that their low light performance is poor went for a purpose made
baby-cam which works well in the dark.

I am guessing I need :

Video capture device of some kind on Server PC (one of external usb 2 ones
perhaps with TV tuner and RCA-in)
Server software to provide live feed to the network (no idea)
Software to playback stream (realplayer or the like?)

I have googled a bit and haven't come up with much that is easily
digestable. I am not really clear on what it takes to recieve, encode and
broadcast live video on the fly, does it need a hardware accelerated card
like a PVR250?

Any advice on software or hardware or links to helpful websites appreciated.

My stuff:

Draytek 2600We router 802.11b
AMD XP 2400, radeon 9800 pro vivo, 1gb
AMD XP1700, ti200 vivo, 768 gb
Thinkpad centrino 1.4, 1gb
a wifi palm, squeezebox

This is just for messing about (fun) so I can't spend mega bucks on a new PC
but am willing to spend some tinkering money!

Thanks in advance

Chunkers

> Server software to provide live feed to the network (no idea)
> Software to playback stream (realplayer or the like?)

Hmmmm,

Much googling later :

http://www.videolan.org/

Looks messy though.....

Chunkers

Soni tempori elseu romani yeof helsforo nisson ol sefini ill des Fri, 28 Jan
2005 23:22:05 -0000, sefini jorgo geanyet des mani yeof do
uk.comp.home-networking, yawatina tan reek esk "Chunky" <No> fornis do
marikano es bono tan el:

>http://www.videolan.org/
>
>Looks messy though.....

Showshifter might do what you want, or even Windows Media Encoder - which is
free.

deKay
--
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|- My computer runs at 3.5MHz and I'm proud of that
|- Hurry up and go touch it.

do this to watch episodes i download from the net if i
> wanna watch em on other pcs:
>
> download Windows Media Encoder, make sure it is a GUI version
> then just run the wizard, and go to Broadcast a live event, choose your
> webcam as your source (can be a normal webcam) and then choose the bitrate
> etc... choose a port that you know will be free.
>
> then to watch from any pc, lets say the name of the pc on the network is
> pc1, then in media player, goto open url.. and paste in the box
>
> http://pc1:1300
>
> where 1300 is the port nuber you chose in the encoder.
>
> to simplify the process, once youve set this up, you can save the encoder
> setup file, and you can also paste that direct link into a text file and
> save it wihtr an .asx extension so that when you click it, it loads in
> media player
>
> confusing and fast but hope it helps
>


"Chunky" <No> wrote in message news:41fab244.0@entanet...
>I have a live video stream from a wireless camera which I would like to
>have available across my small home network. It is a (wireless but not
>wifi) baby-cam which has infra-red night vision and the base unit gives an
>RCA + stereo audio, instead of being tied to a single TV I thought it would
>be good to be able to split the signal and stream the feed to the PC's /
>laptop on my home network. Then we can log in and check up on junior from
>anywhere in the house!
>
> I initially looked into buying one of the network web cameras, but based
> on advice that their low light performance is poor went for a purpose made
> baby-cam which works well in the dark.
>
> I am guessing I need :
>
> Video capture device of some kind on Server PC (one of external usb 2 ones
> perhaps with TV tuner and RCA-in)
> Server software to provide live feed to the network (no idea)
> Software to playback stream (realplayer or the like?)
>
> I have googled a bit and haven't come up with much that is easily
> digestable. I am not really clear on what it takes to recieve, encode and
> broadcast live video on the fly, does it need a hardware accelerated card
> like a PVR250?
>
> Any advice on software or hardware or links to helpful websites
> appreciated.
>
> My stuff:
>
> Draytek 2600We router 802.11b
> AMD XP 2400, radeon 9800 pro vivo, 1gb
> AMD XP1700, ti200 vivo, 768 gb
> Thinkpad centrino 1.4, 1gb
> a wifi palm, squeezebox
>
> This is just for messing about (fun) so I can't spend mega bucks on a new
> PC but am willing to spend some tinkering money!
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Chunkers
>