Hardware TV Tuner?

[BenRK]

I'm sure it hasn't been done before with the Wii, but would it really be that hard to have a USB TV tuner hook up to the Wii? Use it as a cable box or something? It already has a great controller that would translate well into a channel changer. + and - would be volume, dpad for channel changing, 1 and 2 being favorites, etc.

Of course I know this wont happen out of the box, but I can't imagine (if you know what you're doing) it would be terribly difficult. Just have to write the driver and the proper software... Ok, that's probably more difficult then first thought.

Anyway, thoughts? Has it been done? Is someone doing it? Am I going to have to collect code other people have written and compile it my self and take all the credit?

 

[tueidj]

That was actually the driving reason why I RE'd the USB2 stack.
Has been done by yours truly. Doesn't work well, wii can't adequately handle realtime 1080i MPEG2 decoding (which is what is used for digital TV where I live, US cable likely uses AVC which would be even worse).

 

[BenRK]

I would imagine anything above 480i would cause the Wii to chug along seeing as it can't output higher then 480p anyway. Besides, where I live, there are 0 HD cable channels.

 

[tueidj]

The standard def channels work fine (they're 576i) but here SD decoder boxes can easily be found for < $20, which is a lot less than what the amount of time I spent making the stupid thing work was worth.

 

[BenRK]

True, but it may be worth it to people like me and Mr. Body.

 

[AdamBrunt]

Surely - the question is why would you want to do that ?

Why not just watch TV on the TV the Wii is attached to ?

 

[tueidj]

We're talking about Digital TV, which requires a set-top box if your TV doesn't have a built-in DVB/ATSC tuner/decoder.