- August 29, 2009
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(note: this isn't ready for usage by end-users yet. You'll need quite a bit of technical knowledge to set this up and get it working).
I've developed a simple Android app that lets you play live TV on your Android device. Android 2.3 or higher is required. The stream is a 800x450 H.264 stream with AAC audio, at around 1Mbps. All high-end devices (HTC Desire-series, Samsung Galaxy S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, LG Optimus 2X Speed and more) should be able to play it. I've had it working over HSDPA or 3G networks, but you need to be a bit lucky. It also eats bandwidth: around 700MB for one hour.
Currently the server side setup is difficult to setup. Download and install the latest MPWebStream version. You need to host MPWebStream under IIS, as that's the only way to have the webservice working (basically a restriction made by Microsoft). For that to work, you have to remove the <configSections> section from Web.config. Add a new application to IIS, with the physical path set to the Site directory of MPWebStream. Disable the built-in webserver in the MPWebStream configuration and restart the TV Server. Verify that you have an Android transcoder listed and that it works (using your favorite mediaplayer such as VLC). If that all is working, you can install the app on your device and configure it. If it doesn't show a transcoder list but instead tells you that the server is invalid, try restarting the app (that's a known bug). If the stream doesn't start the first time you try, that's also a known bug. Try it again after a minute and it should work. There is a hardcoded 30-second timeout in Android which is a bit too low.
This will probably be a one-time release. I'm going to work with the other Android remote developers to see if we can integrate it all in a single app and to make the server side setup easier.
Btw, source code is as always available on GitHub.
I've developed a simple Android app that lets you play live TV on your Android device. Android 2.3 or higher is required. The stream is a 800x450 H.264 stream with AAC audio, at around 1Mbps. All high-end devices (HTC Desire-series, Samsung Galaxy S, Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, LG Optimus 2X Speed and more) should be able to play it. I've had it working over HSDPA or 3G networks, but you need to be a bit lucky. It also eats bandwidth: around 700MB for one hour.
Currently the server side setup is difficult to setup. Download and install the latest MPWebStream version. You need to host MPWebStream under IIS, as that's the only way to have the webservice working (basically a restriction made by Microsoft). For that to work, you have to remove the <configSections> section from Web.config. Add a new application to IIS, with the physical path set to the Site directory of MPWebStream. Disable the built-in webserver in the MPWebStream configuration and restart the TV Server. Verify that you have an Android transcoder listed and that it works (using your favorite mediaplayer such as VLC). If that all is working, you can install the app on your device and configure it. If it doesn't show a transcoder list but instead tells you that the server is invalid, try restarting the app (that's a known bug). If the stream doesn't start the first time you try, that's also a known bug. Try it again after a minute and it should work. There is a hardcoded 30-second timeout in Android which is a bit too low.
This will probably be a one-time release. I'm going to work with the other Android remote developers to see if we can integrate it all in a single app and to make the server side setup easier.
Btw, source code is as always available on GitHub.