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This is one of those cases where the stuff seems to be there to do it, but no-one has knitted it all together yet. Typically there's a PCI TV card involved and then you try to assemble the oftware to do what you want. For example there is the program VHI Studio from IOSpirit. You can use this with a TV card and here is also a webcam (it's not live right know) that is supposed to be using it.

People also reported success on MorphOS with Harald Frank's AmithlonTV.A company called Tyra Group tried to field a Peg1-based entertainment center with their own software, according to this article. Genesi's Mark Olsen also whipped up software for something called the Psylent, there are a couple pictures here.

So I think the home entertainment TV center Pegasos is something that is totally doable, but no-one has done it yet. There's a lot of stuff we can do but haven't done yet. Maybe Harald Frank or some other developer might take a crack at it if he or she got a free Peg2 or some cash incentive out of the deal.

That's very interesting, but I think that this needs a custom motherboard, with graphics hardware onboard. The graphics chip must supports 15KHz RGB output for scart, and VGA too.

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Isn't tv cards and VHI studio for viewing tv on your desktop screen, same with AmithlonTV ?

Unless i've missed something ??

For getting your desktop screen on your tv, you need to utilize the tv-out on some Radeon cards,
and currently this is only possible with X86 cpu's, meaning it won't even work in linuxppc.

Else you have the possibility to use some external device that converts your vga signal
to composite/scart, this usally needs no software.

All i want is do leech some movies off the net and watch them on the tv, this is so much better
than burning some cd's that my kids will destroy anyway.

Also setting mysticview on slideshow and show
photos on the tv would be great too.

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Ah, if that is what you want to then it might be better to buy some hardware converter than to wait for someone to write those drivers. Don't some of these cards output video right now? I think I used the video out of my Radeon 7000 in my Peg1, but all that was visible was the open firmware text. It really seems to me you could get some cheap box to convert (or split and convert) VGA to RCA video or S-video out?

I certainly don't think there is anything intrinsic to the PPC processor that stops you from using video out as opposed to the X86. It must just be a driver issue, right?

You and I go in different directions for the same sort of thing. You want to run video to your big TV I think. I want to eliminate the need for a TV and pipe everything to the monitor (which I want the biggest LCD variety I can afford).

PS: We should ask bigfoot what he did for the Psylent project pictured in that page I linked. That's a big plasma TV, it isn't a monitor.

31 to 15 sucks, better native 15KHz output, on some graphics cards
it's possible not know about radeon chips...

And as HDTV is like vga, it's possible do HDTV output easily too...

This is a proposal I sent a while back, it's for this sort of system but more for sitting under the TV than as a computer, it could be used for both though.

Notes:

1) It's also based on the idea of a dedicated board develped for the purpose but the additional functions could be added to the Pegasos via add in cards though there would be some interesting propblems to solve if that was done.

2) I had some ideas for the GUI so I'm doing that as a seperate project (I'm not working so it's something to do) it's really only a specification though.


------------------------------------------

Proposal for "The Psylent Game"

A consumer electronics device with STB, media recording / playback, internet and gaming capabilities.
Intended for licensing to 3rd party manufacturers along with access to an on-line game collection.

This system is a combination of both hardware and software, by providing both it can serve as a turn-key solution for manufacturing companies who do not have the R&D departments to develop such a machine.
Can also be modified to fit with a manufacturer's requirements - i.e. add their logo / colours to the GUI.


Despite the complexity of the system described below I don't think this will take a big team or take an excessive amount of time.

The initial specification / research / design & prototyping phase (software) can be done by one person, I've already built systems which work in much the same way as this control system so I propose that I do this. At a guess the initial phases will take a few months with other people coming in later. The system will be made from a number of primarily existing systems and the work will largely consist of modifying these to work with the control system & GUI of the system.

The current idea is to build it in Python on Linux using a web browser and standard web technologies (XHTML / JavaScript / CSS) to build the GUI.
By using these technologies the system can be made very flexible and portable and can thus be used for different devices and products. Providing Python is supported the system should run on MorphOS though the type of HTML will be limited with current browsers.



Hardware:
The hardware will need to be a board custom built for this purpose*, for STB / convergence parts a standard STB processor will do but for gaming a much more powerful CPU and graphics system is required, Emulation also requires a lot of processing power and again a STB device will not be capable of this.

I can look into and make recommendations for parts we could use for the hardware. My current inclination would be to have two independent systems in one, one handles games, the other handles STB tasks. This has the side benefit of solving the problem of a bad program crashing the system if it is recording, with independent systems such a crash will not be possible.

At the moment the only problem I see hardware wise is the AGP port which which needs to be something better than 1X to play modern games. If a SoC (System on Chip) version of an e600 (e700?) is used it should include RapidIO and it may be possible to find an AGP / PCI-E bridge for this.

--

Software:
I'd use Linux as the OS as this means much of the software necessary is already available as well as some high grade games (including Doom 3).

In order to produce a device with a large number of media and computing functions for the consumer, it is going to be a design challenge to say the least. For lot of the parts we can use existing open source applications but they need to be made to work in a seamless manner, with a single, simple GUI. All of this is done through a remote control, not keyboard or mouse.

This will require a pretty sophisticated control system which can interpret input then controls the hardware, applications and produces the correct display.

As this will be an international product the displays will need to be created in the correct language, the user should also be able to change this.

As this is to be a product for licensing different manufacturers will want to customise the GUI so this should also be possible.

3rd Party Licensed Software
Games will of course be 3rd party but we will also need access to system ROMs. The system should be capable of running (through emulation) all pre-PC computer games and console games up to PS1 / N64, GameCube may also be a possibility.

MorphOS *might* be usable for Amiga emulation with work - if not we could see about a special version of Amiga Forever or even go direct and talk to KMOS.

These can be sold as CDs or via an on-line service.

Other external software will need to be licensed:
MHP, Java, media codecs, DVD etc.

While the system is based on existing software the aim is to get it to work together in a seamless manner as would be expected from a consumer electronics device.
The user should not know this is really a computer.

----


Control system:
This is the basis of the system, it is the glue that binds all the parts together and generates the GUI displays.
This is the part which will be difficult to design but this in itself means it's a marketable product.

The control system combined with pre-licensed 3rd party packages and a hardware reference design gives manufactures a full solution for making their own Psylent-Console.


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GUI
XHTML based.
Generated on the fly from templates.

GUI Requirements:
Easy to use / Navigate
Multilingual.
Customisable for different manufacturers.
Easy to control using a remote control.
Generates display for LCD display (should be useable without a screen for audio playback).

Other notes:
DVD / CD drive needs to recognise media and data discs - a computer CD drive will not play many protected discs as they contain errors, in this case the Psylent console should act like a CD player and ignore the errors.


----


Development Phases (Software only)

1) Requirements gathering
Complete list of desired features
Fully list all functionality required to do these functions
Write a specification and requirements list

2) Design
Research (which components to use, licenses required etc.)
Architectural design
Initial interaction design

3) Construction 1
Full interaction & GUI design
Initial setup of control system (browser, server, page generation, input control)

4) Construction 2
Control system scripts
Application level changes
Integration

5) Beta Testing
As a consumer product this will have to be extensively tested.
Normal testing should be a continuous process - set a few machines aside and run a set of scripts on each new build.

6) Maintenance
This cannot be maintained like a normal system but options such as on-line updates and updater CDs should be considered.
It should be considered however that some machines will almost certainly never be updated - hence the aggressive testing and security control should be built in.


----

Hardware
For running emulations and modern games a CPU in the class of a 1GHz+ G4 or low end 970 will be required.
A modern-ish GPU will be required with complete 3D drivers as well as OpenGL subsystem.
For the majority of the STB functionality a standard STB device can be used, this gives additional stability as critical parts can be completely independent from the gaming parts.


I think there's some partnerships possible for the hardware as the companies who produce the components may also be interested in using it as a reference design.


*For volume production a single board version would be necessary to get costs down, An existing Pegasos with add-ons (i.e. TV card) could serve as an initial development system and possibly product.

hello Velcro,

I have a question wich wabcam have your brought?

working that good?

TNX!

greetings Cor van Londen.


[ Edited by pegasosuser on 2004/9/5 18:24 ]

Hey pegasosuser Cor van Londen,

Oops that is not my webcam I linked, it belongs to a guy named Jochen I believe! You can email him about it: NOroschmyr@yahoo.deSPAM (remove the capitalized letters).

There are quite a few good ideas here. First the challenges...

This is a huge job.  Nicholas might be under estimating the magnitude just a little.  Nevertheless, nice write up Nicholas! In the STB cost is king.  The margins are so thin so as to be almost non-existant. The existing STB players - Scientific Atlantic, Digeo - Motorola, Thompson (Hughes, DirecTV, RCA), Panasonic, Pace, Eldon, Echostar (Dish Network) have mature products.  It might be better to talk to them about what games, fast boot cycle and cool computing MorphOS and Pegasos could bring to the table. This is what we tried to do with DYH (little war in Iraq messed us up there, but we are not out of the game yet!).

There also could be another application driver here...

Take a look at this:

http://www.skype.com/download_osx.html

Here is a part of a letter we just finished writing:

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Now, here MorphOS has an opportunity (all while Riding the Open Source Wave even though it is not -- remember the Trojan Horse discussion?). In this way if the Open Desktop Workstation gets in the hands of developers and focused on this kind of opportunity with the kind of support we are now getting (as seen in the recent Freescale Letter to Developers), the platform and the Company have a real shot at the future.

What we need to do know is get more things added HERE and HERE. Any OS that supports the Pegasos is a good thing and you will begin to see more things added to those pages in the weeks ahead.

So...let's get to work!

Any feedback on the Skype email is welcomed! We could also use gnomemeeting. It would be a good thing to be able to reach real telephones too.

Having a special MorphOS/Pegasos version of Skype would be, we think, a great thing to have with the home console we are discussing.

R&B

[ Edited by bbrv on 2004/9/5 19:57 ]

Personally I think that is a very good idea if is correctly addressed.

This isn't an easy market but I don't see actually a really interesting solution, so a product that is very competitive as it's described here could be more interesting for more people... Imagine a powerful product very competitive, a lot better than the others at a low price compared with the standard price of a good STB, if this is well marketed with very well marketing techniques, contracts with distributors and some big shop companies for being distributed the product (mediamarkt and others) could do very well selled. The key for suceed is offer a very revolutionary product at an incredibiy low price compared with the other solutions and a very good "aggressive" marketing, then the market will be for these product. If the product isn't good (see nokia ngage) and not very used (programs/games for the platform) it will not be well selled..

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Thank You.

It really only describes the control system, I didn't estimate anything else

It's a huge job alright but the reason it's based on Linux is because a lot of the work is already done and out there to be used. I don't necessarily think it's so much of a big job as a complex job, the integration is the difficult bit, that'll require a develoment team, but shouldn't take very long.

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This would have STB functionality but I wouldn't call it a STB. It's more of one of those mythical "convergence" boxes combined with a Games Console. Way more than any STB.
It's competition is Microsoft's media centre PCs.

It'll be expensive (at least initially) but todays high end parts are tommorows low end.

It needs a fairly high end G4 for the games as emulators take a lot of power, otherwise you end up with C64 style games and thats it, by including decent processor and Graphics chip it can emulate a multitude of different systems and thus from day one has *thousands* of games available, some of which will be very well known.

It also needs to be made in volume which is why I like the idea of doing it as a reference design, Genesi develops it and someone with manufacturing expertise - and the money - makes it.

I liked the idea of the Psylent + games as everyone is making a convergence box but I doubt anyone other than Sony and Microsoft is going to make one with thousands of games so this is a way for other manufactures to compete, of course this can all hook up with an online system for downloading games - want to be the Microsoft of convergence?.

Adding this like Skype / webcams etc. adds functionality so makes it potentially even more useful.

--

I think MorphOS can be used in some STBs but I didn't suggest it as the main OS in this case as some essential parts are missing and adding them would be a multi year job.

BTW you might like to read this, the guy who wrote it tried to sell an OS to consumer electronics companies and eventually gave up because none of them wanted to port all their apps across, this could also affect MorphOS so is something to bare in mind when targetting potential customers.

When I mentioned the possibilities of using AmithlonTV or VHI Studio in an entertainment center, I forgot Visionary. Gosh, look at that.