methods of using TV server - discussion thread (1 Viewer)

[and-81]

Sounds great. Thanks for the info Frodo. Much appreciated.

Cheers,

 

[joboehl]

Now mpeg-2 transport streams are meant for streaming and thats why we're now working on streaming mpeg-2 transport streams.

Newbie question. mpeg-2 transport streams can handle the same extra content of a mpeg2 stream, namely multi audio tracks, subtitles and etc, so user can view this content over the client?

Julio

 

[BKCH]

oh snap!! I'm seriously hanging for the TV Server (I've already built the server box with 2TB raid and multiple tuners but I've just read that MyBlaster will not be supported in the first version for control of an external STB - please; say it ain't so...! (I'm hoping I've misunderstood!!)

(I understand there's lots to develop - I've just been looking forward to this for ever!!)

Keep up the good work

 

[Frodo]

Newbie question. mpeg-2 transport streams can handle the same extra content of a mpeg2 stream, namely multi audio tracks, subtitles and etc, so user can view this content over the client?

Multiple audio streams/subtitles can indeed be streamed as well to the client.

but I've just read that MyBlaster will not be supported in the first version for control of an external STB - please; say it ain't so..

This question has already been answered.
The first version wont be able to control external STB's
and.. Please dont re-ask questions i already did answer since
the answer stays the same!

Frodo

 

[SweMart]

donate a card that is able to receive such a broadcast and the developers can start to code the support

Just my 0.02$

The Football world cup was broadcasted in MPEG4/H.264 in Sweden in the Boxer DVB-T network last summer. I was watching it using my Twinhan CI-TER and FloppyDTV-T using DVB Viewer + PowerDVD 7 codec.

So you don't need a special card you just need to support a demuxer(?) that can do MPEG4.

MPEG4 HDTV broadcasts have started or will start all over Scandinavia during this fall.

 

[Frodo]

The Football world cup was broadcasted in MPEG4/H.264 in Sweden in the Boxer DVB-T network last summer.

Exactly what i mean, at this moment almost all broadcasts are in mpeg-2
and mpeg-4 is only used for demos or special situations.
It will take a while before mpeg-4 will be broadcasted on most channels.

So you don't need a special card you just need to support a demuxer(?) that can do MPEG4.

for dvb-s2 you will need a new card;-)

frodo

 

[bunker12]

This "magic packed" would be called WOL (Wake On Lan)

Genreally speaking a server is running 24/7. Maybe such a "Wake On Lan" feature will be added in the future. but this is not planed at the moment.
there are much more importand other things on the ToDo list now.

Well I did some calculating just now and according to the current electricity prices (SEK 1.22/kwH incl taxes) and a 200W average power consumption the yearly electricity cost for running a server 24/7 would run up to 293$US. Sure the electricity market is not a healthy one right now but that's still a lot of money. Then there's the wear on the server. Cutting all those costs by 75% or more is important. For me this could very well result in a sizeable donation if a stable wake/suspend scheme for the TV-server was introduced. I don't want to ask that you support anything like this in the first release, but please keep it in mind and don't design anything that will make this hard to implement in the near future.

For example as an implementation you could propably put the same suspend/hibernate/resume functionality in the server and then to make it always be on when any client is on you could have clients send WOL/magic packets to the server on startup/resume of the client. On shutdown I guess you'd have to send a customized message to the server signing off the current client and then the server can check if it has other clients and current recordings and if not suspend/hibernate.

Edit: Recalculated on infinityloops idle power consumption. About 110$US per year.

Real time comskip would be nice, but unfortunaly i never got comskip to work 100% for my tv channels. It either misses ads or even worse, cuts out parts of a program Anyway, when plugin structure is in place we could add real-time comskip

Personally I tried ShowAnalyzer when using Meedio and I liked it. It had a good graphical interface to help you tweak settings and you could use filters to apply different search-profiles for different channels or shows or whatever. It worked well for many channels out of the box. I tweaked it for some other channels and it worked for those as well.

Bottom-line, again, could you please make room in the architecture for a commercial skipping plugin that could be general in how it works, not just comskip? Please?

 

[infinite.loop]

Well I did some calculating just now and according to the current electricity prices (SEK 1.22/kwH incl taxes) and a 200W average power consumption the yearly electricity cost for running a server 24/7 would run up to 293$US.

My Server:
CPU: Athlon A64 +3500
VGA: Onboard dx8
RAM: 2x 512MB PC3200
HDD: 4x 200GB SATA Raid 5 (file storage)
HDD: 2x 100GB SATA Raid 1 (OS and applications)
HDD: External 500GB (doing backups)
USV: APC Back-UPS CS 350

This server never consumes more power than 110Watt.
IDLE ~75Watt

For example as an implementation you could propably put the same suspend/hibernate/resume functionality in the server and then to make it always be on when any client is on you could have clients send WOL/magic packets to the server on startup/resume of the client. On shutdown I guess you'd have to send a customized message to the server signing off the current client and then the server can check if it has other clients and current recordings and if not suspend/hibernate.

you should know that setting upo WOL functionality is not as easy as enabling one setting in most cases.
this will sure be too much for the "normal" enduser.

but like we have allready been saying many, many, many times.
as soon as basic functionality of TV-Server is stable, we can talk about other nifty features

 

[bunker12]

I have never used WOL so I imagined it to be: enabling it in bios and possibly allowing some traffic in the servers firewall and at worst also changing some setting in the networking prefs. Sure too advanced for an average user but many tasks in conjunction with an HTPC is.

And yes, I did specifically say that I don't think either of my suggestions should be implemented now, just that the designer/architect/developers are aware of possible future requests so that current designs and implementations don't conflict too much if possible. Feedback was requested and I supplied it, feature requests will go elsewhere, I only described features as a general overview.

 

[infinite.loop]

I have never used WOL so I imagined it to be: enabling it in bios and possibly allowing some traffic in the servers firewall and at worst also changing some setting in the networking prefs. Sure too advanced for an average user but many tasks in conjunction with an HTPC is.

you will need either a mainboard with onboard NIC which is supports WOL or a additional NIC-PCI card which supports WOL, then you may have to connect the NIC with the mainboard with one cable that is never bundled with the NIC........

i could tell you much more about the problems now......

Edit: Recalculated on infinityloops idle power consumption. About 110$US per year.

which means ~ $9,- each month.
one stop at McDonalds with wife and kids costs much more