Streaming HD Television from Japan?

I'm going to visit a friend in Japan this summer and since he has a home server running 24/7, I wondered if I could buy him some hardware that would stream TV Tokyo in High Definition over the internet right to me here in Germany. :dance:

Did anyone ever do something like this? How does it work? Which kind of hardware is needed?
He currently only uses analog TV, but I think I read you can get HD over digital terrestrial broadcasting there...?

Thanks!

 

LocationFreePlayer or similar. though not in HD due to bandwidth restraints.

 

Yeah, I was wondering about the bandwidth... maybe it can be re-encoded to a smaller resoultion on the fly?
1280×1024 (widescreen) or 1024×768 (fullscreen) or so would be fine, too. I don't need Full HD.

Hmm, LocationFreePlayer... first time I hear of it. Seems to be related to the PSP (Most of Google's results are PSP forum threads). Would it work with a regular Windows PC too? Will it let me capture the stream?


Edit: Looks like LocationFreePlayer not really a good device for doing this. Quality seems to be very bad, etc. :-(

 

? Are you ill? Japanese TV is the ultimate in shit. Believe me. After 11 years of the crap on TV here I still can't name 1 really good TV show. UK TV out does Japanese TV with no effort at all as long as you take away all of those reality shows.

Yakumo

 

There's your problem there, there's nothing other than reality TV!

 

I do like the Japanese game / quiz shows they do seem to be slightly more high brow then the UK ones and are funnier. But your right the rest of it is fairly dull, the news is too american orientated and the acting is painful.

However I do like NHKs PythagoraSwitch program, especially Framy the dog. < I am going to buy this book.

 

Stuff like Liar Game, Bara No Nai Hanaya (shut up, I enjoyed it!), My Boss My Hero easily surpass half the shit on UK TV.

 

yes, LocationFree is available on the PC as well.

 

Basically, I want TV Tokyo for anime! :lol:
I know most of TV is shit.

Anyway, is there any other way? LocationFree doesn't seem too good.

In some German forum someone showed pics of his experiment and apparantly it seems to work fine for him: http://forum.digitalfernsehen.de/forum/showpost.php?p=2800629&postcount=15
*Drools.* He didn't tell exactly how to do this, though. I think he set up a laptop somewhere in Japan that does the streaming work...

I would be fine with just TV Tokyo.

 

Surely there are easier ways like waiting for a few days and getting it via other means...

 

Sure thing, but not every series is released in HD, so... :-(
Some series won't even be released at all.
(If you're talking about torrent stuff.)

Well, looks like nobody from here ever tried to do this. Hmm...

 

Rather then stream why not just get a recorder and get him to send you the files instead?

 

He did that for me every now and then (with his Analog TV), but he said it's boring work for him.
He had to capture TV with his hard disk recorder and then re-encode it and put it on his server. I can understand this is not too great for him when he doesn't even care about the series himself.

Would be better to just stream it, so I can capture it right here on my PC.

 

Live here mate and you'll soon change your mind. It's as if there's no schedule for the program listings half the time because it seems to be the same shit on with the same wankers every time the TV is on. Games shows are just annoying I find since they don't use normal every day people. The "TV Talents" that they do use act dumb at times as well for cheap laughs. In fact most comedy on Japanese TV is cheap "I'm a dumb fuck with a clever co-comedian" acts. Seriously, I can not stress how bad TV here is. When I lived in the UK I thought Japanese TV was great but now I'm wiser.

At least in the UK I can name at least 5 shows that I'd watch. Here I can name 2, E.R. (American) and the news when it's not kissing America's arse.

Yakumo

 

So he won't encode the files for you, but he is happy having his TV locked to whatever channel you want and having his PC on 24/7 uploading a stream?

 

This seems like the best idea out of them all, simple to do.

 

having a LocationFree Player doesn't mean locking down the channel as long as you use seperate signal inputs for the TV and the LocationFreePlayer.

 

Yeah but those things aren't cheap, hell of an expense just to watch anime a week early.

 

I agree, I agree. But is it possible to get HD via antenna digitally? In that case, he wouldn't have to change his analog setup at all. I don't expect him to use the HD stuff.

So, if it's just setting up some device connected to the internet and another device that gets the digital antenna signal, it would be fine... I think.

It's more than just 1 anime a week.

 

Getting the basic HDTV digital signal without re-encoding it would mean that each 25 minute anime program would require somewhere in the region of 1 to 3gb, so you could be asking him to transfer you a hell of a lot of data...