I did a few searches and didn't find anything.
I'm curious if it's possible to be able to use my n810 as a mini screen. I was thinking that maybe somehow through the usb port it would be possible to connect a usb card that can take a composite video line in. Of course the problem becomes that its linux, and also an arm processor. So if anyone has heard of a way to do this or any specific hardware to try please post. Thanks.

I am interested in this too, exact suggestions for usb capture cards and which modules to load to view via mplayer or something, are appreciated. I have a Canon HD camera you see, and I'd like to use a larger screen during shooting.

Another solution that would work for what I'm doing would be from a computer to the n810 through the usb cable and make the n810 mimic the video output of the computer somehow. I don't suppose anyone would know how to do that.

actually if I use something like rdesktop or VNC with wifi it should accomplish the same thing.

I am still without an answer though.

Probably by inserting a few modules and using something similar to this.

http://blog.locationist.net/2008/03/...g-goes-webcam/

The kernel has V4L support in it but I'm not sure how it relates to this:




but remember the video playback abilities of the N800 are not good at all. I have to convert all my movies beforehand etc so I'd be intrested to see how it coped with a HD Camera.

Thank you for the comment, but it doesn't help me much in my quest. Basically, I need two things:
1. A USB TV card dongle, that's supported by N810's V4L.
2. A TV application, like XawTV or a Gtk-based one.

Then, I just feed the USB dongle with a composite signal from the Canon HV20 camcorder, and then have the TV app display that as-is. Not major de-compression is going on for TV signals (composite is low-res anyway), so the N-series should handle them just fine in terms of CPU/gfx speed.

Problem is, to find the right supported dongle and TV app.

The only "video-in" type thing I've seen is the DVB-H project which is discussed here
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...d.php?p=152975

I too have an HV20 and the bigger screen on the N800 would be perfect as an external monitor.

Ah, but it does.
#2 is satisfied by the mplayer build in the post Faheem linked; it's non-optimized and everything, but the V4L support comes from upstream, so it can be easily added into the "normal" mplayer. Use the special one for testing, but once you've got something working (or even before) an e-mail to the maintainer is likely to start things rolling on that. Once v4l is in mplayer, Canola et al. can be used as shiny front-ends.

The dongle and driver are indeed the problem. Here's some tips (which you may have already realized):
It better work with x86 Linux. Well, duh.
It needs an open-source driver. Closed binary firmware probably works (though it doesn't make things easier), but closed blobs in the driver will kill you.

Fanoush is the go-to guy for kernel modules, and far more benevolent in compiling random modules than any mortal should be; if you find something that looks workable, you might ask him to try compiling the module. If the module compiles and loads, then you can try to decide whether to invest in hardware in hopes of success (which actually seems probable, from that point).