[mythtv] Generic interface for getting video in to mythbackend

[Isaac Force]

Jay Sprenkle wrote:
> I haven't dug through the mythtv internals yet, so this might not
> be the best way to go about it. I know the tuners appear as
> raw devices in the /dev/ directory. One method would be
> to create a device driver that emulates a video device using the data
> from the network stream. Do you have a link to more information about
> the IPTV protocol?

The configuration of IPTV that I'm working with uses multicast as the 
transport mechanism similar to how broadcast television uses the 
airwaves. Each channel of raw MPEG-2 data is streamed from the head end 
down the pipe, and clients watch the channels by tuning in to the proper 
multicast group.

You can emulate this with VLC by checking the 'Stream output' box when 
opening a file and choosing UDP as the output method and a multicast IP 
(Such as 239.0.0.1) as the address. You can then go to other machines 
with VLC and open the multicast stream as the source and watch the 
video. That's (very) basically how it works.

I originally searched for a driver that will translate multicast to a 
V4L device or something similar, but I didn't come up with anything.

> The big questions for me are:
> "Is there anything worth watching on that channel?"
> Is the protocol free of commercial entanglements? Can anyone feed video
> or would I be just working to put money in someone else's pockets?

I work for a company that's currently deploying IPTV services, so yes.. 
There will be plenty for me to watch. :-) And multicast is a part of the 
IP stack, so it's free for all.