[Open-graphics] Re: X-video-server

[Lourens Veen]

On Sunday 02 July 2006 20:23, Dieter wrote:
> > Waitaminute...what if we forget about X and make this a
> > low-power=20 low-cost VLC box?
>
> What would dropping X buy us?  Other than the effort of porting the
> X server to the box.  Which will hopefully be minimal, since it will
> already support the OGC.

Having to have a CPU to run it...

> > There already is an open source solution to broadcasting=20
> > video all around your house.
>
> What solution is this?

VideoLAN, at http://www.videolan.org. This referred to my next 
paragraph.

> > VLC is available on multiple platforms, and can cross-code and
> > stream in=20 a variety of codecs. The pizza box itself could be a
> > Theora (or some=20 other chip,
>
> There are chips for Theora?

IIRC there's a digital camera that records into Theora, but that's 
encoding. I was thinking we would develop this chip however.

> > but if VLC is going to transcode anyway it might as well do=20
> > it into Theora) decoding chip plus an OGC to generate the video
> > signal,=20 with maybe some extra logic in the decoding chip to do
> > an OSD and=20 process remote control commands. Perhaps we could
> > even put everything=20 in a single chip, reusing the needed parts
> > from the OGC design.
>
> Are you suggesting that we could eliminate the general purpose CPU
> altogether? Can we get data from the Ethernet chip into this Theora
> chip without a CPU?

Exactly. I'm not sure how far we can integrate this and whether having 
everything custom is the right solution, but the idea is that we:

- Get a Theora signal from incoming Ethernet traffic
- Decode that Theora signal
- Transform it into some kind of TV or VGA signal

That could be three chips, or one. Documented Ethernet chips are 
plentiful, so that shouldn't be a problem; decoding the Theora signal 
is probably the hard part, but it could be an interesting piece of IP 
for Traversal to sell proprietary licences for since the codec is 
patent-free. Transforming the output of the Theora decoder into various 
video formats is something that we'll have to develop for OGC anyway, 
and it could probably be reused, either in the form of an OGC, or by 
taking the logic and adding it to the Theora decoding chip. It depends 
on how useful the extra stuff in the OGC (beyond the overlay scaler and 
video output stage) is for decoding Theora.

> I don't really understand your suggestion yet, but I get the feeling
> that it is worth exploring.  Could you add a few more details?  I
> skimmed the Wikipedia VLC page, and VLC seems to be a software media
> player similar to mplayer, xine, etc.  I'm probably missing
> something.

You're missing VLS, the server part of the system, which can stream 
video across your LAN (hence VideoLAN) to VLC. At my university, 
they're using this to stream high-quality TV streams (both SD and HD) 
across the campus-wide LAN. My PC isn't fast enough to decode HD, but a 
crisp and clear SD stream makes watching the World Cup much more 
enjoyable than a noisy cable signal...

Lourens

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