Any Chance of a Placeshifting with WinCE/PocketPC/SmartPhone

[arngur]

It has been a while since the last post here.
Can anyone from Sage or the user community update on the status, plans?

I have used Sage some time back and it's an excellent product.

Have not used it recently since I passed to MythTv. Streaming for WM would make me seriously consider going back to Sage. There are plenty of streaming options for Myth, but non is as slick as a full pvr client including livetv. Placeshifter sounds like the product with the best potential in the market to properly implement this and finally complete the placeshift revolution.

Orb works besides some codecs annoyances and lack of PVR level of controls. In fact I have not yet gotten it to play my recordings, but I am sure that is doable by either changing the format of my myth recordings, or by installing the right codecs on the orb machine (windows) to read myth recordings as is.
Specifically encode the recordings to some phone supported format in addition to the original format is described on the web, just that immediate streaming sounds slicker, and will thus likely be the going forward method of choice.

Have not had a chance to try slingbox.

FWIW, I use an EVDO unlimited data plan for $15 with an HTC wizard which is dubbed PPC6700 by Sprint.

[motobarsteward]

I have exchanged PMs with Narflex about this. I offered to have a look at it before Christmas. I changed jobs and did lots of other stuff so didn't have chance to look at it until a couple of weeks ago. He asked me to set up a build environment and get back to him. I am in the process of doing that (using the IBM MINDIP runtime as that's what comes on our PDAs). In the mean time, assuming that Sage uses mplayer, I went to look for mplayer based apps that run on Pocket PC. What I found was that there was only a small amount of work done on it a couple of years ago. I can't get anything that was developed to run on my PDA. It reports that the exe is not a valid application!
The next problem would be that although Sage uses Mplayer, it uses an old version that has been modified by Sage, so we would have to 'Merge' these into the Pocket PC version.
So, in conclusion, I feel that porting to Pocket PC will be quite a lot of work and will probably be beyond my capabilities and time. I will try and talk with Narflex by phone when I've got the build environment up and running.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by arngur

Can anyone from Sage or the user community update on the status, plans?
...
Streaming for WM would make me seriously consider going back to Sage.
...
Orb works besides some codecs annoyances and lack of PVR level of controls.
...
Specifically encode the recordings to some phone supported format in addition to the original format is described on the web, just that immediate streaming sounds slicker, and will thus likely be the going forward method of choice.

How about this...

Use the WebServer to (adaptively...) stream the file via Orb...

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...postcount=1369

This would allow you to control Sage, stream a file, and also give you the file/recording specific information... all via the Web. This would open up Sage (specifically adaptive streaming...) to ANY web enabled device out there!

-Jason

[thorinn]

I would love to see a Placeshifter client for mobile devices!! Come on Sage!!!! Been a user for about 3 weeks, LOVE IT!! The more I use it the better it gets! Money well spent!!! Thanks Sage!!

[akenis]

Any one ever heard of this:

http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/enu/..._Features.html

I wanted to try it back when I was running Palm OS. WM 5.0 now on a treo. Not sure if this thing can stream, or if it's designed to play portable content?

[Fuzzy]

WM5.0 does support streaming media, the mobile version of media player can open up streaming URL's for most common streaming media types, and there is a version of VLC for windows mobile that works for most other types. The shortage we have here is on the server end. I am hoping for a way to list sceduled recordings on my device, and let me choose what one I want, and have it transcode on the server and stream to my phone. The transcoding and serving should be possible to do with either the windows media encoder (free), or VLC (also free). Just have to add the code to the web server to launch the encoder, and offera quick link on the web page to load up VLC or WMP on the mobile. I hope someday I have enough time to look at doing this, but for now, I'm just too darn busy.

[mkanet]

Is there a phone out that acts like a real PC and fully support the current placeshifter app?

[motobarsteward]

It can be done!

I have nielm's web server running on my server. The latest version allows transcoded streaming but the only way I could play the treams was by running Orb on the server as well. This had two problems. The first is that Sage locks the live recording files so you can't use Orb to watch something as it records. The second problem is that Orb was causing my server to pause every hour, which was really annoying and occationally causes the clients to lock up.
You should be able to play the transcoded streams on the Pocket PC, but for some reason, the Windows Mobile Media player just gives 'Unspecified Errors' when I tried. I spent ages mucking about with the VLC transcode options to no avail.

The Solution?

I ditched the Windows media player and installed TCPMP. I then went Options - Settings in TCPMP and selected the 'File Associations' page. I ticked the 'Windows Metafiles ASX, WMX, WVX, WAX' box so now TCPMP application was the default player for Windows Media Streams.

My pocket PC now plays files using the '256kbit deinterlaced third-res' and '480kbit deinterlaced half-res' options towards the bottom of the Streamed Transcode window.
VLC only appears to produce WMV streams at 64Kbit or faster, which means that you are stuck with WiFi only unless you have a 3G or HSDPA mobile (Which I do!).

My phone is an HTC Tytn phone running Windows Mobile 2005. If a couple of you try it on your mobiles as well and let me know how it goes. If it works for everyone, I'll put a section in the wiki.

[jdamore]

Woo hoo!! I cant want to try! This is exciting for me because there has been so many times when I would want to stream video (via slingbox) but the wife was already watching something. I'm hoping by using the webserver I can stream in the backround without her even knowing.


Just to add a disclaimer for those streaming over your cell network: Check with your provider to ensure you do not violate your contract. Just because you have the "unlimited data plan", doesn't aways mean streaming audio/video is allowed. You could be charged a LOT of money or even shut off. ...sorry to be a buzz-kill, just looking out for ya's

[akenis]

That's great if it works.

Have you been successful getting the web server page to display in any usable format on the device. I've got a small screen on a Treo, and running PIE plus. I haven't been able to find settings that make the web server pages very functional.

Perhaps there's some talented folks who could add some "mobile" specific pages to the server with formatting for different devices.

[cenwesi]

Ok i can't wait either... i have the HTC 8525 and running WM6 Black Majik Rom. Please post link on how to set it up.

[jdamore]

I got it working!

HTC-6700/WM5
sage Ver 6.1

I downloaded and installed the latest of Neilm's web server.

I installed TCPMP v.72 rc1 on my phone(there might be a better version but this is what i had already)

I had the same results as motobarsteward. I was able to stream and play WMV. Streaming at 256kbit produced a stutter free video while 480kbit would stutter every few seconds possibly from a low connection speed. Besides the stutter, 480kbit stream looked fantastic.

FF does not work very well and it will throw off the audio/video synchronization. Thats about my only complaint.

Talk about battery consumption!! I got just over an hour of watch time on a full charge.

I think streaming H.264 and mpeg2/4 would be possible if you had a media player capable of playing these formats on your phone. More info on this needed for me.

I am still hoping Sage with develop this media player for WM.

[motobarsteward]

Originally Posted by jdamore

FF does not work very well and it will throw off the audio/video synchronization. Thats about my only complaint.

I seem to remember nielm saying that the streamer implementation didn't support fast forward or rewind.

As far as battery consumption is concerned, I guess it's down to the WiFi. I get a couple of hours with HSDPA but I'm not sure how T-Mobile will react when they see me stream multi gigbyte files over their network!

[Fuzzy]

I have been using this method for a couple weeks now, and the streaming seems to work great to my XV-6700. I am using the 1/3rd rez mode, and it seems to playback pretty reliably.

The web interface is really painful to use on windows mobile though, and I am thinking about dusting off visual studio and trying to make a small .net simplified app for this. I'm thinking that I could pull the recorded show info from the webservers XML exports, and make up a streamlined interface optomized for the mobile screens. All it would have to do is parse the XML, create a hiearchial list of programs, and then generate the URL for the webserver's playlist generator code. Then just launch the playlist file, which would bring up the media player.
Have some options to set your default encoding parameters, and it should be pretty straightforward. Still limited about not being able to skip around the show, but it might be a considerable improvement.
Perhaps there could be a method of streaming live as well. i have noticed that I can stream live TV from the webserver if i set it to manual record, but I don't see a way to get the program guide data frmo the web server. There is no XML or RSS export for that data. (Yet).

Fuzzy

[m4tth3wv]

I second/third/..fourth/etc the idea of a java player thats compatible with Windows/and other pda/smartphones.

I'm interested in reselling Sage to higher-end home entertainment customers but until a slick interface with mobile devices (java preferably) there's not a compelling reason to bump off other competition...

[dranockcir]

I think being able to run Placeshifter on a mobile device would be awesome for sure. But I think that a set of pages formatted for the small screen served up by neilm's webserver would be easier (not that I could do it or I would!) to implement. I've been using the method described above by motobarsteward with a Motorola Q and a Dell Axim x50v and it works great. Except for the scrolling around and not being able to expand folders (at least I can't anyway). I think a set of pages formatted for the mobile screen would be usable on more devices at once. As long as the device had a web browser and a media player that could play the streams. I don't know much about PalmOS but I'm sure there must be a web browser and media player like with Windows Mobile on the Q and the Axim.

Rick

[btrcp2000]

I keep getting either an unknown file format error in tcpmp, or a message that the player does not support windows media video 8 codec.

exactly which third res choice are you all using? wmv? the video i'm testing with is just an analog recording of a kids' show.

I am running wm6 on a ppc6700

[TechBill]

Placeshifter uses mplayer for playback and I am sure if mplayer was ported to WM then it possible to play it on mobile pda phones.

I will ask on mplayer mailing list to see if anyone could port mplayer over to Windows Mobile devices.

Bill

[drnemo]

Placeshifter on Ipod touch would be AWESOME!

[dranockcir]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

I keep getting either an unknown file format error in tcpmp, or a message that the player does not support windows media video 8 codec.

exactly which third res choice are you all using? wmv? the video i'm testing with is just an analog recording of a kids' show.

I am running wm6 on a ppc6700

I'm using:

WMV

* 256kbit deinterlaced third-res
o [Play in Web-player]
o Play in External Player: [wvx] [m3u] [pls]

choosing play in external player using wvx

Rick