[mythtv-users] Samba for LiveTV?

stan stanlist at cox.net
Sun May 21 17:20:41 UTC 2006


Andy,

Thanks for continuing this thread.  I haven't given up; I put another twenty
hours or so into a general "watch mythTV programs over the network with a
native Windows machine".

I think I have it down to three general approaches, each with current quirks
and/or unknowns.  There's lots of discussions on this users' group about the
general topic and users' results vary widely.  I think the differences in
results are caused by (1) mismatched versions of streaming methods and
mythTV components and (2) differences in existing Windows Media Player
plug-ins on the Windows client side. (In testing, I noticed my Windows DVD
burner program installed a plug-in in Windows Media Player I didn't know
about.), and (3) the types of recorded program files stored on the mythTV
machine.

The approaches:

1. SAMBA

This works perfectly on my Windows machine.  All I had to do was turn on
samba on the mythTV machine and change one line in the MythWeb configuration
file to a file:// to force Internet Explorer to open Windows Media Player
and access the recorded program file over samba.  If others try this note
that your mileage may vary.  I have a PVR-350 capture card, and all my files
are mpg's rather than nuv's.  Also, I already have a bunch of extra codec's
and Media Player plug-ins installed.

Problems with samba:

Windows Media Player won't treat the liveTV recording as a growing file.
So, it plays only from the beginning of the file to the point where Windows
Media Player was launched.

I can't yet get samba working for guests with no account on the mythTV
machine.  How do you open samba for a share (/video/recordings) without
required an account or password? 

2. DSMYTH

I don't fully understand how this one works.  I thought I found a
description on a DsMyth web page once, but I can't find it again.  What's
the link?  All I could find was a main page with lots of news.  It looks
like it's mostly concerned with getting Windows Media Player to play the
files commonly stored on mythTV machines and possibly uses VLC to stream the
files?????  I'd rather not put anything on the Windows client side.  I'd
like guests to be able to turn on their laptops and watch myth stuff (but
this might be too harsh a requirement.)

3. MythStreamTV

MythStreamTV needs ffmpeg and VLC so I figured I'd try these packages one at
a time and see if I could get them running manually.

I found I already had ffmpeg on my system.  Right version?  Does it matter?
I don't know.



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