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Sunday, 14 September 2008
Watching TV on my i600 and the mac mini... (techie!)
Since I invested in the remarkable Neuros OSD about five months ago, the main purpose to which I've put it has been to stream TV across the home network, so it can be watched - for example - in the kitchen.
As the excellent stream_fuse has evolved, it's now really easy to make this possible. If the stream_fuse software's been downloaded, installed and enabled (which is quite simple to do) and as long as the OSD hasn't been rebooted, it'll sit there waiting for a request from a capable media player.
The latest incarnation of stream_fuse has made it easy to customise the player for various screen sizes and bandwidths. What I've done is create a 'playlist' file with the correct parameters for each, and associated them with my media player of choice. Here's what I've done, then...
Streaming TV to the mac mini
The media player: VLC by VideoLAN. It's free, fast and extremely versatile. This would be my recommendation for Windows PCs, too.
The playlist file: I created StreamTV.pls as follows:
[playlist]
File1=http://192.168.1.111:10001/manual/3/13/3/2
Title1=streaming TV
Length1=-1
NumberOfEntries=1
Version=2
The address set as File1 is intended to contact the Neuros OSD and configure it to give a high-quality, high-resolution video stream using the excellent new manual settings, so I can run it full screen. I simple associate .pls files with VLC, and double-click it to start it playing. Easy!
Streaming TV to the Samsung i600
The media player: The Core Pocket Media Player. The link is to - what I believe to be - the last 'free' version of this software. A new, improved $25 dollar version is at corecodec.com
The playlist file: I created StreamTV-i600.pls as follows:
[[playlist]
File1=http://192.168.1.111:10001/manual/2/13/0/0
Title1=i600 streaming TV
Length1=-1
NumberOfEntries=1
Version=2
The only significant difference is in the parameters after the address - this reduces the bandwidth and video quality so it can display at 320x240 resolution across the wi-fi network. Once again, setting TCPMP to open .pls files is all that I need to do - the stream will automatically load and play.
Now, if only it were possible to change the channel using Matthew Wild's excellent Wooble (hopefully something that'll turn up in the next version), then remote TV Nirvana would be mine!
One of the most remarkable things about the Neuros OSD is the amazing sense of community it has. I have had email conversations and comments from many of the developers - people at the heart of this system. I can't think of a product that's so closely involved with its users, and I think that's what sets the Open Source model apart from the corporate world. Long may this continue and grow!
Posted by james at September 14, 2008 12:08 AM
Comments
{@home waiting for car to fail MOT says....}
As you know I managed to get summit similar working in a far more convoluted fashion - with a USB DVB stick, a Linux box and VLC. From the command line I've managed to transcode the video to within normal broadband parameters fairly easily. The VLM interface supports a "video on demand" set of parameters so this would lend itself nicely to channel picking remotely ie.:
http://192.168.0.200:8000/BBC_ONE
http://192.168.0.200:8000/BBC_TWO
etc.
Except that the transcode options don't work with the VOD options... So I'm in the same boat you are, one step away from remote tv....
Posted by: jon von bird at September 16, 2008 12:22 PM
@jon von bird: I should probably not say that, but if you have a linux box at hand and you want to watch DVB (-S,-T,-C) remotely you should install video disk recorder (VDR) and the stream-dev plugin. This will allow you to specify the channels through the URL and can use ffmpeg to recode the stream.
But i think the whole point of doing this with an OSD is the fact that you have a low cost low power device that can do that.
And besides, i think it is a good idea to include channel switching in stream_fuse. Maybe i will include that after i got some results with the Ipod/Iphone streaming
Greetings
Mike
Posted by: Michael Gschwandtner at October 29, 2008 1:13 PM
