Differnt Streaming/Networking issues, "a mind Game&quot (4 Viewers)

[tom1502]

Hi,

i am now thinking since at least a year to contribte to MP...
In my opinion, the most interesting missing feature in Mediaportal is the networking, or streaming functionality.

So in my free time(not much at the moment), i started thinking about this.

First thing that came into my mind was, to rebuild MP with a client/server architecture. This architecture should be able to run on one machine, to offer the functionalities as MP currently does. The interesting thing would be, that if you install MP on a second computer, you can connect to the first one, and use this one as "Tuner-Hardware"/Reciever. This way, you could take one powerful machine, standing "whereever noise does not matter", to recieve TV(DVB, HDTV or whatever), and one not that powerful client, for output of all these nice things.

Maybe this could be realized via Streaming(UDP), so multiple clients within your home-lan can use streamed Data, and can be controlled via Remote procedure callse(RPC, RMI - OOP-RPC from Java, of course i mean this technology implemented in C#, but i am not used to C# until now), or via a MP-Control-Protocol via TCP.

What i want YOU now to do is, if you're experienced with Networking/Streaming issues, tell me waht you think about it, and let's try to develop a concept for this. I dont want anybody to start developing, but just make up his mind to this.
This way, we can maybe plan such a solution...
During this, i am going to "pimp-my-C#-abilities" ;-)

BTW: Imaginable would be, if we use a TCP based control protocol, to implement a platform independant client Via Java or whatever...


One last thing: Please no posts like "thats what i am looking for", or "great, start doing this!!!". Dont get me wrong, i understand enthusiasm(i am too :lol: ), but what i am trying here is, to develop a concept, not to ask if this is useful...

So if you're experienced with Software development, experienced with C#, with Video-Streaming, Network communication or wahtever fits here, please let me know what you think!!!

Cheers,

Thomas

P.S.: Have to say this again and again... MP Rocks!

 

[Tech Geek]

Just my thoughts on a client/server MediaPortal setup.

Sharing existing stored data (music, movies or whatever) is not be a difficult task. It can already be done through ftp or shared folders (or Microsofts media link or whatever it's called). This could be simplified within a network with some sort of client server link between all MediaPortal boxes and by adding an option to the setup for each folder to share it. Rather than share a folder with everyone on the network it would just share with MediaPortal boxes you designate. That is 100% doable.

I like the idea of distributing the recording load over tuners in multiple boxes. If you have multiple boxes in the house, each with their own tuners you can spread recording duties between different machines when there are schedule conflicts.

Streaming live high quality picture video from a tuner could prove difficult. HDTV skipped when I streamed it over a 108 SuperG network just from a shared folder on a machine wired to the router and if you have multiple boxes watching something at the same time I'd say you will probably have to resort to Gigabit ethernet for the present. Even then you have to used double buffering on the receiving end, channel changing delays are even worse, etc....


It's doable but very dependent on the network setup.
If you think MediaPortal's forums get a lot of needless setup questions now just wait until you involve routers of 50 different brands including people that want to do this over an 802.11b network.

I think you would be talking about many releases down the road and once network technology can handle the bandwidtch. That doesn't mean someone can't start working on it though. I think there is pleanty of open source code for streaming media to draw on and start testing with.

 

[tom1502]

Hi,

i think you're right. Networking bandwidth will be an issue, and i think 802.11b/g will be problematic(dont know which bandwidth "n" will provide), so "b" will not be able to do this, considering the net-capacity, and even "g" will be limited.
But i think "non-hdtv" signals shouldnt be the problem via Ethernet(100 Mbit/s). Via Gigabit Ethernet even HDTV shouldn be a problem!(i think ~+100Mbyte shold be sufficient!)
You talk about many Computers in a network. Well i haven't thought about scalability yet, and i think there will be another problem. So first target should be to just allow one(or more) Clients, but only one single Server(until Machine's allow realtime encoding to divX, or whatever ... :lol: )!
For me it would even be interesting to have one machine as server, not in the living room, and a silent one in the living room.

Of course this cannot be done within a month or two... as i said, at first what i want is talking about it, so thanks a lot for your minds!!!

The topic "just" to share records, music or whatever has not been in my range, because i think this can be easily done via releasing(is this the used engl. word ?!?!) Folders in windows. Everybody with a network where user-permissions are necessary, should be able to handle this, and in a small network, user-permissions should not be relevant(or not?).

Ive found this: http://www.cybergarage.org/net/cmgate/cc/index.html
It is an OS-project offering UPnP AV Streaming with VLC as Client(maybe even interesting for use with MP, p.e. on a Laptop, to watch TV in the Garden via a - if possible "g"- or higher 802.11...)

How are exactly the bandwidths for

• DVB-S

• DVB-C

• DVB-T

• DVB-S2

• this American stufff. cant remember the name

• analog TV(Cable/antenna & whatever.. havent seen this for a while )

?!?!

Regards...

Thomas

 

[samuel337]

I personally favour an implementation that involves uPNP as much as possible, rather than all this 'shared folders' and FTP stuff because it is much easier for a user to setup (by user I mean the average user).

Once you have a single server going, I don't think it will be much harder to make it work with multiple servers - just have a broker type service running on the clients.

Sam
p.s. the American HDTV system is called ATSC.

 

[tom1502]

I also think UPnP (AV) would be nice, easing up a lot! If connection of 2 or more MP-Machines is just booting them, and choosing "search others" within MP, this would be great!

The problem is not, to make it work with multiple clients, but having enough bandwidth on your transmission-medium(or do you have 10Gbit Ethernet?! :roll: )

I think enabling MP to act as a UPnP AV Server would be absolutely great, making it possible to connect proprietary UPnP AV clients! There already is a implementation of a UPnP AV server in C++ which can be found in the Link above. Maybe it is possible to use this as a basis to implement UPnP as a Feature into MP(i think bionicdonkey already made a "non-AV" UPnP plugin?!)

Cheers, Thomas

 

[mzemina]

...The problem is not, to make it work with multiple clients, but having enough bandwidth on your transmission-medium(or do you have 10Gbit Ethernet?! :roll: )
...

Maybe as this becomes actually integrated/added into MP there will be as part of the configuration - a test mode. To insure that the user has enough bandwidth on their home network to actaully enjoy it. I would imagine that this test would have a simulated (simulated so that there is a known amount of data being fed over a set time) HD feed (maybe a choice of HD or SD) and then in addition to this test feed another "X" number of supplemental data feeds which would simulate HTML being sent/received. Then the data collection would put output into a statistics routine to show what the user could expect with video feeds along with others surfing the web. All this could be modified to also setup for children maybe playing online games.

Just some additional thoughts on this subject.

Mike

 

[tom1502]

For sure, this would be a nice feature, but i think at first the concept of "getting streaming workin" is more important. As soon as this works stable, the improvement of usability is the topic

 

[thechad]

My ideal setup would be to have MP stream live TV to my Xbox which is running XBMC. The only issue I have with the uPnP setup is that XBMC doesn't currently have support for it and my understanding of uPnP is that it uses multicast which the xbox also does not support.

I considered this some time ago and it seemed way out of my league. My thoughts were to create a Directshow renderer?? filter that would write the video to the network stream. By using direct show i thought it may be easier to integrate into the TV engine as just another part of the graph, and also possibly allow broadcasting the same card to multiple clients at once.

As for controlling this I was thinking a web service or something generic TCP, this way users could use a client like VLC and a web browser to veiw TV without to much fuss if MP was not on there other machine.

I think the uPnp aproach would be good in the long run but it would be a massive task and by getting some sort of basic TV streaming in place first then the uPnP side could be built around the basic implementation.

Anyways there is my ramblings, hopefully more people can post there thoughts on this one.

 

[tom1502]

Hey, thanks for this, quite interesting to hear!
Well my thoughts via UPnP have been that this will enable you to connect proprietary UPnP av clients to MP. the browser / VLC idea is great, but with VLC how will you control MP? Via a web service, commands could be sent via AJAX calling PHP scripts... using the already "maybe-existing" MPW installation. Other idea, concerning VLC would be, but i dont know if this is possible, streaming the whole MP-interface via Network, let VLC recieve it, and write a JAVA application, able to catch Keyboard inputs and later on Remote inputs and send these via LAN to the MP server...

what do you think about this? this would mean a complete platform independance, as far as VLC is available for lots of platforms and java too!

as you are Talking about DirectShow and Stuff, do you think you are a possible candidate for developing this streaming issues, or supporting this topic?
I think i will be able to create the Java stuff(command interface)...
IN my opinion this VLC-Java tool combination would be really great, and - if possible combining this(the MP-Server-output) to be able to recieve TV via LAN with a WMP as Browser plugin too!!!

What do you think?!
Probably this is the solution with the least amount of recoding within MP...

 

[Khris]

Is there any reason we can't use Windows Media Encoder to enable live streaming to another client?

BeyondTV does exactly this and also gives you a web interface to change the channel.