Hooking Up: Do-It-Yourself Remote PCTV

by Matthew York
Fall 1997

The prospect of a full blown PCTV system is intriguing to many of our readers, but the costs are prohibitive for most people. The Compaq/RCA PC Theatre, for example, retails for nearly $5,000. Gateway 2000's Destination is a little less expensive, ranging from $3,500 to $4,700 depending on configuration. As a result some people may consider building their own, which is really quite possible.

Using your existing TV as the monitor could save you several hundred dollars right off the bat. You'll need a PC to drive your system, but you can acquire a Pentium PC with a CD-ROM, a decent-sized hard drive and plenty of RAM for as little as $700. You'll need to spend around $150 for an encoder to convert the PC display signal so it can appear on your TV. Get a few extension cables, add a trackball (using a mouse from the couch isn't practical) and you've got your basic PCTV. Use Windows to re-scale your fonts so they'll look better on your TV. These scaleable fonts were originally intended for the visually impaired, but they work well for adapting computer text for television viewing.

You can get a little fancier by adding a wireless keyboard for another $100 or so. For about $200, a tuner card will allow your PC to control channel selection. This is particularly helpful if you want to exercise parental control to block channel selection by station and time of day. Some tuner cards will also allow you to experience Intercast, a new system of data transmission that sends Web pages along with the TV signal. The result is something like a TV screen in a Web page (Web page superimposed over a TV show).

Intercasting will permit you to order a product by clicking on the home shopping Web page that appears on the screen with the TV program or to check team stats while you are watching the big game. Even if you buy the elements to build your own PCTV, the investment can wind up being a bit costly.

There are some ways to reduce cost. If you already own a PC, you could add a tuner card and an encoder and drag it into the living room. This will work fine as a television receiver, but not so good as a traditional PC.

Traditional computing requires that a high-resolution VGA monitor be right in front of your face, whereas the couch is a place for the ten-foot viewing experience. We rarely sit as close to the television as we do to our computer's monitor.

Another option is to leave your PC where it is now (the den, for example) and create a remote user station in the living room. The least expensive way to accomplish this "remote" PCTV is with long extension cords: one for the keyboard, one for the pointer (mouse/trackball), one for the video signal (converted by the encoder) and one for audio. Eliminate a few cables by using a $25 RF modulator and combining the audio and video into one coaxial cable (the kind used for cable TV).

You could avoid carrying your keyboard and pointer from room to room by purchasing an additional keyboard with a built-in pointing device and running the cables right into the living room. The kind with the built-in trackball is about the same price as a keyboard and a trackball purchased separately. If you do this, you will need an A/B switch that handles both the keyboard cable and the trackball cable; a simple splitter or "Y" cable will not do the trick. You could eliminate the last leg of the keyboard and pointer cable by going to an infrared (IR) wireless keyboard, then placing the IR receiver on your television. You'll still have to run the cables to the computer from the IR receiver, but this might simplify things a little.

If you don't like the idea of wires cluttering up your home, or if the distance between your PC and your TV is greater than 40 feet (beyond that, the signal gets weak), you can go with a wireless system. A few companies make short-distance video and audio senders, which eliminate the need for cables by transmitting radio frequencies (RF). By the end of 1997 there should be RF keyboards on the market; at the time of this publication, the only wireless keyboards are light-based IR (infrared) which can't send a signal through walls.

Matt York is Smart TV's publisher/editor.

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Do-it-Yourself PCTV Shopping List

Encoders

AITech
http://www.aitech.com
(510) 226-8960

Aver Media
http://www.aver.com
(510) 770-9899

Extension Cables
Computer retailer or catalog item

Trackballs

Logitech
(800) 231-7717
http://www.logitech.com

Evergreen Systems
(805) 445 6492
http://www.trackballs.com

Keyboards

Sejin America, Inc.
http://www.sejin.com
(888) 373-3273

Keytronics
http://www.keytronic.com
(509) 928-8000

A/B Switches
Automatic

Omicron
http://www.omicron.ca
(888) OMI TELE

Manual
Computer retailer or catalog item

Video Senders

RF Link
http://www.rflinktech.com
(888) 273-5465.

Recoton
http://www.recoton.com
(800) 231-0031

RF Modulators

Radio Shack
http://www.radioshack.com
(800) THE SHACK

Tuner Cards

Antec Inc.
http://www.antec-inc.com
(510) 770-1200

Miro Computer Products
http://www.miro.com
(415) 855-0955