DCTV: The Next Generation?

[TheCotMan]

It would be great to validate the scope of the DCTV coverage in order to make a decision regarding which hotel we would intend to book for DC. This is actually the one thing holding up my booking for a reservation.

From Twitter:

URL1=https://twitter.com/_defcon_/status/591418613673824256

@_DEFCON_

Whoever was asking, yes #DEFCON TV will be in both Paris and Ballys!

[supersat]

That being said, it would also be valuable if the feeds were of adequate quality in lighting/gain and audio.

I'm not sure about the video, but the audio clipping could be due to the mismatch between "pro" line level (+4 dBu) and "consumer" line level (-10 dBV). Hopefully the DCTV capture hardware can accept "pro" line levels. A simple software audio compressor/processor (like the free stereotool) could help a lot.

I've said this before, but I'd really like to get the live caption data streamed out somehow. I think it'd be kind of awesome to idle in an IRC channel for each track and see what's going on everywhere simultaneously.

[supersat]

Who needs over the air for broadcasts? Send it with Ustream or Qik, or even YouTube live, and those of us on the ball probably have a way to go from a microUSB connector to Displayport and we can feed the video tp the hotel TV. Give us a little credit!

Sure, that would work, although you might have to contend for bandwidth. A broadcast or multicast system is more efficient and seems more elegant. We should strive for using technology to its best and fullest potential. (Consider DEFCON Secure WiFi... Sure, DEFCON could offer the same insecure WiFi experience that we're all used to, but if we can do better, we should.) Plus there is the novelty factor. It is now possible to transmit multiple HD streams over the air on a tiny budget. An OTA broadcast would demonstrate capabilities that we could only dream of a few years ago. That being said, there are a lot of practical hurdles to doing DCTV over the air, and falling back to technically inferior but tried-and-true technologies seems like the way to go, at least for now. (Anyone remember M-Bone?)

[goathead]

We had wondered why not something like Twitch as a multicast-er. Clearly getting the streams to a service like this could have some issues, both technical and meat-space interference.

[L0g1c10101]

Ideally I'd love to see DCTV piped via the interwebs vs broadcast into the rooms of either/both hotels. I think this would be far better for people around the conference (ie. not in their room) to catch some talks. Last year between the villages, and gooning I seen 10 minutes of 3 talks (maybe).


If that can't/won't be done rather than attempt a side by side or PIP speaker vs slides view I'd rather see 2 channels piped to the room per talk. 1 channel for the speaker/panel/stage shot and another channel (with an identical/synced audio stream) tide into the projector/slides. This way for ex. you could watch track 1 speaker on ch.50 or track 1 slides on ch.51 with the same audio on either.

2 cents

[goathead]

Thanks CotMan, that was what we were figuring in order to best assure access to the DCTV; locating at the source.

As far as anyone responding to me, unnecessary to close the loop with me. Just raising some observations/perceptions/points in case they have not been considered yet.

Thanks sir.

[TheCotMan]

It would be great to validate the scope of the DCTV coverage in order to make a decision regarding which hotel we would intend to book for DC. This is actually the one thing holding up my booking for a reservation.

I found a recent tweet on new estimate of when information would be available on which hotels would have a DCTV Feed to the hotel rooms:
https://forum.defcon.org/forum/defco...015#post220015

If you look earlier in that thread, I suggest earlier public discussions or announcements suggests that the speaker tracks will mostly be in Paris Hotel and Casino, and that would suggest Paris hotel rooms as more likely getting DCTV Feeds than Bally's.

For the rest of your post? I don't have anything to provide in comment on the rest. It is not my department. Maybe someone else will reply with an answer for you.

HTH,
-Cot

[goathead]

It would be great to validate the scope of the DCTV coverage in order to make a decision regarding which hotel we would intend to book for DC. This is actually the one thing holding up my booking for a reservation.

That being said, it would also be valuable if the feeds were of adequate quality in lighting/gain and audio. I don't want to make any assumptions about the black box, but the output has been poor in the past. Not my intention to offend a volunteer workforce's good efforts, but really wanted to emphasize how nice it would be to be able to be see and hear the tracks from the rooms when unable to attend talks in person, due to a multitude of things DC; capacity, timing, drunk stupor, etc.

It did occur to me, and others during chats at last DC, that if a vendor was providing pass-thru feeds to the house, that the quality level and expectation could be set upfront within any agreement or contract. The fact that I've seen videos post con that have appropriate lighting/gain and audio leads me to perceive that the scenes were captured at a production quality level, but pass thru signal quality was not a priority, but rather a minimum of accommodation. The videos, post production, are good. I understand the complexities of attempting to provide that look and feel in RT, but the wideshot and audio quality is there and DC attendees would benefit from getting a higher quality signal in room. Seems like it's an issue of delivery and interfacing with the host infrastructure.

[astcell]

Who needs over the air for broadcasts? Send it with Ustream or Qik, or even YouTube live, and those of us on the ball probably have a way to go from a microUSB connector to Displayport and we can feed the video tp the hotel TV. Give us a little credit!

[The Dark Tangent]

We are working away at getting video between hotels, so if all goes well we should have DCTV in Paris and Ballys. No idea how many channels at this point, we'll know in a couple weeks after some testing.

[TheCotMan]

tl;dr;
Yes, in programs early years, but longer lists were on the DCTV website (probably gone now.) Movies were also discussed on the forums. (Check archives.)

unsure if this should go here or in a totally new thread... but does anyone have a master list of the /movies/ that used to be shown on the DCTV network in the past? i feel like a lot of the same flms wound up in rotation year after year. were they sometimes mentioned in the DEFCON program? i can dig through old PDFs, which are archived online, i am sure.

i'm working on share a list of some particularly good hacker movies for a few friends and that was going to be my starting point.

At one time, there was a "dctv" website, which was used to accept requests from users for hacker movies. Lists were made, and augmented year after year. There were forum discussions about these too. When we were at the AP, early DCTV (before DCTV was talks) was listed in the program, and one or two years they included an actual schedule.

Originally, the movies were just put in a queue, and played back-to-back. (Well, originally, the first instance of any kind of DCTV was probably DEF CON 6? There was a small square space with a TV and a VCR or laser disk or DVD player and a small audience sitting watching WarGames or other things on a TV. It was like a "family room" kind of setting in one of the DEF CON rooms where other stuff was going on, but with movies, on the DEF CON floor.) So, the first "DCTV" to hotel rooms was movies, and movies were played back-to-back. A schedule was provided, but the queue became "stuck" and that broke scheduling and planning. (There was also another channel used for other content, that was not movies. It was weird clips from con, and other places, but was not the source of the "filler.")

Later, the providers of DCTV took advice (or solved this on their own) with having movies start on the hour or half hour, and introduced random "filler" to fill the time between one movie and the next. So, if a movie started at 9am and lasted 95 minutes, then 25 minutes of random filler could be queued up until the 120 minute mark at 11am. This is what survived the longest for DCTV format before DCT became known more about speaker tracks being piped to the rooms. (You know about the DC Filler. :-)

[Deviant Ollam]

unsure if this should go here or in a totally new thread... but does anyone have a master list of the /movies/ that used to be shown on the DCTV network in the past? i feel like a lot of the same flms wound up in rotation year after year. were they sometimes mentioned in the DEFCON program? i can dig through old PDFs, which are archived online, i am sure.

i'm working on share a list of some particularly good hacker movies for a few friends and that was going to be my starting point.

[supersat]

There's a few concerns I have with this project.

1) Broadcasting something powerful enough to punch through walls even of the convention center is going to be difficult...

Well, a potential alternative is to set up a bunch of low-power transmitters. DVB-T is designed to allow for Single Frequency Network operation where you can have several overlapping transmitters on the same frequency without interfering with each other. Of course, this would dramatically increase the complexity of generating a signal, but if the walls are fairly impenetrable, perhaps they don't need to be synced.

For hotel rooms, perhaps small, low-power transmitters with line-of-sight to rooms would work? Of course you'd need several transmitters, and some way to get the content to those transmitters. And who knows what the window tinting does...

2) ... So by my reading, this is absolutely one-way, and is absolutely a broadcast---and both are prohibited for what you're trying to do.

I seem to remember reading something arguing that ATV transmissions aren't broadcasts because you need specialized equipment and/or knowledge to receive them--the general public can't readily receive them like they do with other TV channels. One way transmissions are also authorized for transmitting "information bulletins", which are defined as "A message directed only to amateur operators consisting solely of subject matter of direct interest to the amateur service." This would be a big stretch. (Maybe only talks about RF/software defined radio/etc?)

3) While you could in theory apply for STA, that's a big ask for the FCC; STAs are easy to grant for things like ToorCamp's ShadyTel and Burning Man, because *nobody is there*. In the middle of Las Vegas, that's much harder.

The reason I brought up STAs is that the FCC's amateur radio FAQ specifically mentions them as a way to seek a waiver from the regular Part 97 rules. Shadytel's STA sought permission to operate on spectrum licensed to someone else, whereas this STA might just seek a temporary waiver of the usual "no broadcasting" rules. I have no idea how open the FCC would be to this. It might help to know how much use the ATV parts of the voluntary ham band plan get.

BUT!

I do have another idea: TV whitespaces. Part 15(H) is new and deals with "television band devices" that either query a database or use spectrum sensing to operate unlicensed on vacant TV channels. Apparently fixed TVBDs can transmit up to one watt, which might work well with the "many low-power line-of-sight transmitters" plan. A *very* quick skim of the TVBD regulations didn't seem to indicate that you had to use devices that were specifically approved by the FCC for TVBD operation, but I could be wrong on that. But perhaps even if you do, an STA could be used to get a waiver for that requirement?

4) Even if you had approval, weren't breaking ham rules, and could buy enough equipment to broadcast strongly enough to be heard---very, very few people could pick you up, with the right combination of hardware and software, and knowledge to actually do it.

I think far more people could pick it up than you might imagine. Anyone with an rtl-sdr dongle, for example, could receive it. Drivers are built in to Linux, and VLC (and friends) seem to natively support DVB. Windows/OSX users can just install whatever software came with their dongle, as that's what they're designed to do. ;)

But perhaps this is way too ambitious for this year. Perhaps a better plan would be to try some small-scale, regulation-friendly experiments at DEFCON first?

[TheCotMan]

Would the Bally's and/or Paris allow use of their internal TV broadcasting system? I think the answer there likely lies somewhere in between "no" and "hell no"

Personally, i was impressed with some folk in the past who had talked about using network streaming for some of the talks. If there was a way to do that so that people could view from the rooms and suites, that'd be pretty cool. But, then again, DEFCON has grown so much beyond that now.... even this is not really feasible as a value-add anymore, possibly.

A better question would be, which hotels will have speaker tracks made available to the in-house "cable" channels like other hotels have allowed?

From DT: (thread discussion for 2 posts being quoted)

https://forum.defcon.org/forum/defco...amp;viewfull=1

[chop]
- Yes, if possible we'd like to have a speaking side and an events side. It will cut down on staff burn out from having to double their walking distances, it will cut costs by not having to pay to flip rooms for events in the evening and flip back for seating in the day, and will help keep the contests energy in one area instead of spread out.
[chop]

Then later in the same thread

[chop]
Because of that Paris seems the natural choice for speaking tracks.

With the above in-mind, consider this: (Twitter users asked if video of speakers will be available from Bally's rooms in addition to Paris room?)
https://twitter.com/_defcon_/status/499798165126914049

We are working with engineering to answer questions like that.

Network broadcasting, or multicasting might be options to make video of speaker tracks available to attendees staying in other hotels. My opinion? This is very unlikely this year.

[Deviant Ollam]

Would the Bally's and/or Paris allow use of their internal TV broadcasting system? I think the answer there likely lies somewhere in between "no" and "hell no"

Personally, i was impressed with some folk in the past who had talked about using network streaming for some of the talks. If there was a way to do that so that people could view from the rooms and suites, that'd be pretty cool. But, then again, DEFCON has grown so much beyond that now.... even this is not really feasible as a value-add anymore, possibly.