Remember AERO? Streaming broadcast TV from anywhere using their forest of tiny antennas? It was killed off by a soup of weasley lawyers and overstrained regulation.I have developed my own version that works so well I hesitate to tell about it lest the FBI show up at my door.
What makes it work are two pieces of free software that I figure could disappear at any time.
I am a long time user of Windows Media Center ever since Windows 7 appeared. It took several years finding the right hardware for Comcast cable recording and a home network speedy enough to stream it all. About two years ago I discovered TEAMVIEWER for remote access and control of my network devices. Almost by accident I found I could access Windows Media Center from anywhere that had a reasonably high speed internet connection. The frame rate is less than perfect but I can watch TV recordings and live TV from most places where we travel. Windows Media Center runs on a server built from an older fairly high performance gaming machine. The server, HDHOMERUN Prime and Comcast cable modem are powered on a UPS. There are two other Windows 7 systems that run on laptops. These get used to remote access the WMC server but then I discovered TEAMVIEWER also works from Android devices. Occasionally I have been able to use an Android smartphone or Android tablet. TEAMVIEWER is free for non-commercial use. From time to time I get a blurb that I MIGHT be violating that agreement, which I am not. No one knows the eventual fate of Windows Media Center or free TEAMVIEWER.
The irony in all this activity on my part appeared when I upgraded my COMCAST to XFINITY X1 to get a higher speed cable modem. With it came a new cable box and system that has TV recording software that functions much like WMC. I am using X1 to record a lot of stuff for my wife but it has nowhere near a big enough storage capacity to compare with the 3 TB in my WMC server. Now XFINITY is hinting at remote access to TV content using any capable internet device.
