[mythtv] multicast mpeg2 as an input (iptv discussion cont.)

[Unit3]

On Wed, 2005-06-15 at 16:30 -0400, Keith Irwin wrote:
> If it's just a straight MPEG-2 stream over IP, that should be pretty 
> simple.

It looks like that's what it is, with the small exception that it's over
UDP multicast. Neither XINE nor Mplayer seem to handle this natively as
a streaming source, unfortunately.

I'm not entirely as up on multicast as I should be, but from what I
understand, you get the kernel to join the multicast group, and then
listen on the multicast address and IP you would normally connect to,
and packets end up just coming your way.

> If there's a little more to headers and stuff, you should 
> still be able to handle it.  Try using netcat to connect to them and 
> redirect the output to a file and then see if mplayer will play it.  If 
> so, it should be a piece of cake.

I'll try this tonight (as my MythTV box only has one NIC in it at the
moment, and that means it either connects to the net, or it connects to
the feed that the video comes down), and see how it goes. My MythTV box
is just upgrading to 0.18.1 now (Gentoo, so it takes a while ;) ), after
that's done I'll poke around in the code and see if I can make sense of
the class structure for capture sources. Of course, if there's something
like API docs for them, I'd love a link. ;)

Graeme