Start Your Own Dial-A-Song Music Channel
Video PlayStation is the Video Juke Box Channel software developed at Trinity Technologies for the Cable Television operators. It is a complete software that will let Cable Operators start their own Dial-A-Song or Near-Video-on-demand Channel. The computer at the Cable Operator's end running Video PlayStation will act as a Video Jukebox. Cable viewers will be able to demand Music Videos, Comedy Scenes, Important Information by dialing the computer through their telephone lines. Here the reverse path is the PSTN line. The requests will be queued and played one after the other. Video PlayStation also informs the viewers of the time when their demand will be played.
Simple Explanation
Here is what Video PlayStation is all about in simple language
A cable operator will have a computer system with the requisite hardware and Windows 98 or XP installed. He will then Install Video PlayStation which will be supplied to him on a CD A Hardware Lock (A small electronic part) will also be given to him which he will insert into the printer port of his computer. After that he will copy as many 'dat', 'avi' or 'mpg' files from the VCD to his Hard Disk as the Hard Disk space permits. One song of 5 minutes takes about 50 MB of Hard Disk space. So for a collection of 400 songs he will require 20+ GB. 40+ GB HDD don't cost much these days.The viewers will get to demand only these songs which are there on the Cable Operator's computer.
The Cable Operator will enter data about the songs in Video Playstation software which is a simple task.He will then connect his computer thru the modem to the telephone line. Video output from the AGP video card and the audio output from the sound card of the computer will go to the modulator for transmission on the cable network.
He will run Video PlayStation and all the people will be able to see this new Video-on-Demand channel.Viewers will dial the number which will be displayed on their TV screens. The computer will pick the line (totally automated). A menu pops on the viewers screen giving him options. There can be maximum 10 such categories to chose from. The Viewer will punch the category number as shown on the screen.
Next, a list is displayed with the item number and the item title (e.g. : Song Number + Song Title) eg for "3"category we may have
"0 KAHO NA PYAR HAI"
"1 AILA RE"
"2 ANDE KA FUNDA" ...
The viewer will punch in the digit corresponding to the song title on his phone. The phone will take his request and display the time when the song will be played. The song won't be played instantly if there are other songs in the waiting list as songs will be played one after the other on first come first served basis.
That's it. The viewer will hang up. He will be kept informed of the coming up videos along with their times by a blue display just after a new video starts and just before the video ends.
Note: Trinity is greatful to people like Mr Akhtar at Bhiwandi City Cable which ran the First Crude version of Video PlayStation in 1999! That was the time when hardware was unreliable (P-2 MMX 16 MB RAM and 8 GB HDD) Our first sale to Bhiwandi City Cable insipred us to make Video PlayStaion and RequesTV and all other CATV Softwares to what they are now!