[mythtv-users] Streaming server, WAP addon to mythweb apossibility?

Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmunro at arjam.net
Thu Jun 5 14:21:42 EDT 2003



> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net
> [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at snowman.net]On Behalf Of Ben Bucksch
> Sent: 05 June 2003 12:38
> To: Discussion about mythtv
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Streaming server, WAP addon to mythweb
> apossibility?
>
>
> Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:
>
> >Streaming video is stupid, apart from for live usage. Much better to just
> >download the file. Quicktime player, and probably others, let you start
> >watching a file while the end of it is still downloading.
> >
> That *is* streaming (using HTTP) ;-).

Hmmm... streaming is usually where you request portions of the file as you
need them, rather than requesting the whole file in advance. If you want to
start playing the file half way through, you tell the server to start
sending from the second half of the file. It's useful if you don't have
space to cache the whole thing (diskless workstations), or if the thing is
live i.e. still happening, and you want to start watching it from the
present time, rather than from the beginning. I think that normally, neither
of those cases is true.

Streaming video is particularly annoying on my home set up because I have
ISDN (broadband is not available where I live). The video is designed to run
on a 56k modem, so it will often keep my ISDN line busy enough for a short
period for it to dial the second connection to try to download the data
faster. As soon as it does this, the server sends a bit more data at double
speed, then stops completely for a few seconds, until the viewer catches up
with what has been downloaded. It then proceeds to efficently use both my
lines for exactly half the time, and keep them both open. My on-line time is
limited, and using both lines halves the limit. If it could just get on and
download the whole thing, it could happily revert to one line, or I could
even disconnect completely.

> The problem is that the player probably won't be able to play the file,
> because the file format is custom to MythTV. Which means you need either
> a MythTV-aware or -specific client anyways or transcode in realtime on
> the server or transcode once.
>
> A MythTV client for Windows seems to be a FAQ, search the archive.

You should be able to just sort out the headers of the file, but not
actually re-encode it, if your media player can understand the compression
being used. Quicktime, Windows media player and realplayer are all capable
of at least some of the MPEG standards, if the data is in .mov, .wmv and .rm
files respectively. It is also possible to extend the players with plugins
for your own codecs.

Robert Munro



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