Connecting to the TV server...What am I doing wrong...what is going on questions (1 Viewer)

[mxD]

Win7 SP1 ..Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1600 (Driver installed as a WinTV 418 tuner)
I am having a big problem getting the TV server and Clients to talk to each other and I know I'm missing something basic that I am just not finding in the docs.
The tuner is set up with 2 channels from my cable box both analog one channel is the RF input to the card and the other is the s-vid ( the analog part of the card is assigned as device 3). Both of those play great in the media portal player but if I go to VLC and try to connect to a stream I get nothing. Using a port monitor I can see the port I have assigned (5554 in this case) listening but when I go to VLC and try to connect to a stream ( rtsp://192.168.0.70:5554/stream1.0 ) There doesn't seem to be anything happening other then the error VLC kicks out and if there is a connection log for the server I am not seeing it. I have the drive and folder shared (if that matters). I made this work in the past with a nasty lil hack by manually starting a time shift in the server config manager and then connecting do a different stream ...but it has been so long ago I really can't remember how I got it to work on the other 5 devices in the house...and I did have this running on all of them at once so I know it can be done but I was pretty sure at the time that it wasn't right.
So the questions:
1: does anything stand out that I am doing wrong trying to get this to connect.. as a note I have tried all variations on the address ....dns name ...loop back ..etc
2: how do I know what file name to put in on different devices ...for instance I am sitting at the computer with the tv on ..I assume that will be stream1.0 . If I go up to the next device will it be stream2.0 or stream1.1 ( it is the same channel after all ) and is there a generic name to use, for instance I would think rtsp://192.168.0.70:5554/SomeName would make the connection and the server would take care of the mapping or opening of another stream ..it is a bit ponderous to have to use a different file name every time I move to a different viewer.
3. what is the server actually listening for and what goes on. I could probably do a lot better job of figuring this out if I could wire shark this but not enough info.
4. Were and how are stream names made/assigned I can not find any file activity with a name stream** while the server is running so I have to assume it is virtual and actually just maps to the live3-0.ts.tsbuffer file somewhere in the code.
5. why oh why is there not a actual link or example shown in the server config page ..... and in the wiki some place. I would have been spared a lot of time with either of those ..knowing I am using the correct connection address and format.

any way sorry I got so long winded .. any help is probably good help at this point so thanks in advance.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome mxD

...but if I go to VLC and try to connect to a stream I get nothing. Using a port monitor I can see the port I have assigned (5554 in this case) listening but when I go to VLC and try to connect to a stream ( rtsp://192.168.0.70:5554/stream1.0 ) There doesn't seem to be anything happening other then the error VLC kicks out and if there is a connection log for the server I am not seeing it.

VLC is only able to connect to existing streams. Your later comments suggest you know that, but to confirm: you do have a channel timeshifting in MediaPortal or TV Server configuration, right?

Have you checked out this info (refer to the "stream" bit)?
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...n/TV-Server_Configuration/10_Streaming_Server

1: does anything stand out that I am doing wrong trying to get this to connect.. as a note I have tried all variations on the address ....dns name ...loop back ..etc

It sounds like you either don't have the stream up on the server side, don't have the right stream number (ie. stream1.0 etc.), or have firewalls preventing the client from connecting to the server.

2: how do I know what file name to put in on different devices ...for instance I am sitting at the computer with the tv on ..I assume that will be stream1.0 . If I go up to the next device will it be stream2.0 or stream1.1 ( it is the same channel after all )

Unless you actually start a new stream on the TV Server, all are stream1.0. VLC can only connect to existing streams. It cannot create new streams.

...and is there a generic name to use, for instance I would think rtsp://192.168.0.70:5554/SomeName would make the connection and the server would take care of the mapping or opening of another stream ..it is a bit ponderous to have to use a different file name every time I move to a different viewer.

Refer to the link above about the streaming server. The "some name" part is not intended for general human use; it can be used for testing.

VLC cannot easily be used as a MediaPortal front end replacement. On that note: is there a reason why you're using VLC instead of MediaPortal on these PCs?
If you think MP is too "heavy" for what you need, have you considered MpTvClient?
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/forums/mptvclient-stand-alone-tv-client.262/

...or even MPExtended?

3. what is the server actually listening for and what goes on. I could probably do a lot better job of figuring this out if I could wire shark this but not enough info.

MediaPortal tells TV Server to set up a stream using a .NET remoting connection. It then connects to the stream using RTSP.

4. Were and how are stream names made/assigned I can not find any file activity with a name stream** while the server is running so I have to assume it is virtual and actually just maps to the live3-0.ts.tsbuffer file somewhere in the code.

TV Server has an RTSP streaming server component that it manages. The stream name stuff is handled automatically when MediaPortal tells TV Server to start TV or change channel.

5. why oh why is there not a actual link or example shown in the server config page ..... and in the wiki some place. I would have been spared a lot of time with either of those ..knowing I am using the correct connection address and format.

It is not a common use case to need to connect to TV Server with VLC. Information is given in the streaming server section for those that need to troubleshoot streaming. Otherwise the expectation is that people would use MP, XBMC or some other front end and never have to know or care about these URLs.

mm

 

[mxD]

Thanks MM all your comments have been greatly useful and got me past my frustration point!

there are a couple of reasons I would like to directly connect to a stream. One being I have 2 wdtv server in the house that I'm not sure how to get to work with out connecting to the actual shared file (which I believe is how I got them to work last time) . and there is also the wifes and my notepads which im sure I can probably find a mp or xbmc app for but just knowing how the server works is a plus .

there is also the idea in my mind that down the road I may try to write a small app to try to pull together all my media (books music vidoes/iso's) into a "universal media browser" and using that to open the right app to play/read them and somehow getting all these 1000's of files databased in a way I like . there doesn't seem to be a universal app out there that does it all but MP comes close and in my humble opinion the tv server is probably the best one .

You were right by the way MP one my wife's system took right off ..so the problem is probably network or VLC related . I'll hack away at this a little more tonight. Really stupid of me not to have tried that hours ago but I just assumed that VLC would do all the necessary bits to hook up to the RTSP protocol

as far as front end I suppose I can get the source and try to parse out the connection code to see what I is going on now that wdtv does not support custom kernels anymore I am not sure I want to mess with those to try to get a good proper stream with those I may just have to go back to the file connection and live with it .

again thanks again ...
MX