IP TV (stream) support as real TV channels

[Xorphix]

I recently got IP TV, and that replaces my analogue TV channels with far superior quality.
I wasted a week figuring out how to produce a cable so i could go from the box (Amino) to my tuner card (s-video), and eventually found out i can stream the channels using the mediacenter and then avoid using stbbox and tuner card.

So, at the moment i stream the channels using VLC player on the PC, but i wish for them to run under Media portal as my old analogue channels did. I found the IPTv@UI plugin here, but that just opens VLC from under Mediaportal, and not really fit my needs, as i wish for timeshifting, recording and tv-guide (and a girlfriend friendly interface )

Is there somehow to feed the TV engine a UDP/RTP Multicast stream, instead of having it read from tv card?

Or is it possible to make it something like this:

Having "virtual" channels under setup of television, a bit like under radio setup.
So under channels i create a new, select it as being external stream, and setup IP and port per channel and give the channel a name, that is reference to TV guide.

So basically i wish for a TV channel that works exactly like the "normal" tv channels, "just" reading the stream from a defined ip:port instead of Tv-card. Would that be possible?

[jure]

I would like to know about that too!

[Spragleknas]

IP TV (TVoIP) support in (my) TV has been requested several times before, but this does not seem to be a MP priority.

It is my impression that this will not be "officially" worked on until first stable TVE3 is released.

[Xorphix]

I saw that on the other threads and also was informed on IRC channel, that IPTV is something everyone is interested in, but it will (maybe) be looked at when TVE3 engine is released.

In the meantime, till a full support is made i am following up on a thread by Stinky, sadly he is not active on the forums anymore, but the basic idea is replacing the TV server with a simple program that forwards the channel changes to VLC player.

I managed to get the VLC to deliver the rstp:// stream, so it theoretically would be possible to feed this to the TV client. My next step is writing the TV server "dummy" program, but i still need to look into what ports is used and the protocol of the channel changes. (If you have knowledge of this, pls let me know)

In general this would work under MyTV as normal, just replacing the TV Server' output stream with a stream from VLC, and changing channels using a dummy server program, that translates the TV Clients messages to VLC's telnet commands.

Stinky made this work, sadly he is not active anymore, and never posted his TV server software :-(

If this project caught your interest, let me know, maybe we can revive it till we get full support in TVE3

[Tobias Claren]

Hello.

We have here in Germany some real (e.g. the Tcom) IPTV-Provider (with Set-Top-Boxes for the TV).

IPTV is a real broadcastingway like terrestrical, cable oder sattelite.

Why not IPTV in MP?

[Salle]

If IPTV is not implemented sometime next year I think MP will loose a lot of users. IPTV is the future! In july 2008 I dvbc will get substiuted for iptv since we get 100mb fiber connections were I live. Hopefully MP will support IPTV by then.

[Spragleknas]

I agree that MP "need" IP-TV support. There has been done many steps in the right direction when it comes to IP radio, due to the introduction of virtual cards.

I have IPTV (triple play@fiver) and currently controlling STB via IR-blasters. The channels are encrypted, and no smart card

The STB is a linux-based Kreatel.

EDIT:
I now see that this is the TVE2-part of the forum. Don't expect any ITPV solutions for TVE2, as this is the last MP ver. that will include TVE2, I believe.

[Xorphix]

Justa quick, dirty unofficial update on this thread:

Based on the experience i gathered here, it seems like the best solution would be writing a "virtual TV card".
Its basically a software emulated TV card, that has streams instead of channels.

The pros is that it will work under any mediacenter out there, as long as they support a standard tv card, and it will work dependently on the tv engine.

The cons is that I have started developing it with a friend, we have a tv card running now, and are working on getting the streams in, but there are so many different formats, and so little time, that for now we will focus on unencrypted udp:// streams.

I will keep u guys updated

[Spragleknas]

Great news!
Here is a thread about what has been done with the radio part: http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/an...=radio+virtual

Also: The Elecard decoder (DirectShow) can handle UDP - but it is not free (got UDP-strams in MP and WMP that way
http://www.elecard.com/download/

[Xorphix]

Another update:
The filter is created and works under AMCAP, currently building the support for udp streams in now.

Anyone knows how to get it supported under Mediaportals configuration? Currently it says "No Video capture devices found" .. what do i do to make it "supported"?