Wanted: Developer for Web Interface Mobile

[jreichen]

No the icon should be to the left of the text. I made some changes to that page to get the menu items to line up better. What does it look like if you open the page in IE or FF on a PC? How big is the screen on your mobile device?

[Sparhawk6]

It looks fine when I browse to the page in FF on my PC.

My phone res. is QVGA (240x320).

Here is what I see:


EDIT: Actually, this is how I see it when I have "one column" checked under view (this is Pocket IE), which I don't think is the right way to view pages. When I have "Fit to Screen" checked, it appears just fine.

[jreichen]

I haven't used Pocket IE, but that setting sounds like it's the cause. I changed the menu to use tables with 2 columns so the icons and text would line up better.

[jreichen]

I started a wiki page of devices and emulators people are using. If you want to share the type of device you're using please post it here and I'll update the wiki, or add it to the wiki yourself. Also include other details if you know them such as the os, browser, screen size, and other info that would be useful (e.g. the iPhone doesn't work with SSL yet, Pocket IE's "one column" option affects the menu display).

If you're using an emulator, I'm interested in that, too. Include a link where the emulator can be downloaded if possible.

The content on the page is pretty thin but hopefully we can fill it out more and get an idea of how people are using the mobile web interface.

[LehighBri]

Just wanted to see where things are with this plugin. Has there been any updates since late June? Appreciate the great plugin!

[jreichen]

Thanks for asking. I haven't worked on it much. I've been busy with a couple other things (SageTV and non-SageTV), plus the weather has been too nice

[Brent]

Looking forward to when you get back to it

But yeah it is Summer and all Some day it would be very cool to have streaming to mobile devices as a capability from this plugin. It's already very useful - I'm using the plugin once in a while for instance I'm on the road, hear about a show I want to record, check the SageTV Mobile Page with my blackberry and if it's not set up I schedule a recording. Also have used it to see what upcoming recorings I have set up and when a show is scheduled to be on...

Love the plugin in its current form and as always looking forward to it's future. You've done an excellent job on this thus far

[jreichen]

Version 1.3 of the Jetty plugin is now available on the downloads page. This version mainly addresses SSL support. After upgrading, follow the wiki instructions for setting up SSL.

Changes in this version:

• Fix NullPointerException when a resource is cached on the client (HTTP 304 Not Modified) and does not need to be downloaded
• Add SSL properties to JettyStarter.properties and jetty-ssl.xml
• Add Jetty and JettyStarter plugin licenses
• Add documentation to JettyStarter.properties
• Upgrade Jetty from 6.1.7 to 6.1.11. Be sure to follow the instructions on the wiki upgrade page to remove Jetty 6.1.7.

[Homebuilder]

Hi,

I got the software installed, but I do not see any way to actually play a file. Does this software play files on a phone over the net?

What am I missing? Any help is appreciated.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Homebuilder

Hi,

I got the software installed, but I do not see any way to actually play a file. Does this software play files on a phone over the net?

What am I missing? Any help is appreciated.

As far as I know the current version of the Mobile Web Interface does not allow you to play a file. That is in the future plans however.

[Sparhawk6]

How is this coming? I am really looking forward to being able to open transcodes using this mobile phone interface.

[jreichen]

I finished up the conflict management and started a search page. I also started looking into using Ajax for a web remote (tried to avoid JavaScript thus far but need it here). It works well in Firefox, but Opera Mini has this annoying habit of reloading the page anyway and resetting the page position and focused button. That makes for really poor usability. A Java ME app may be the way to go there, except for you iPhone users.

I started looking into transcoding and streaming video. Nielm's webserver uses VLC, but it and the phone are picky about bitrates, resolution, etc. I can't seem to nail down anything reliably.

The standard for phones is 3gp (H.263) and from what I understand that doesn't lend itself well to real-time transcoded streaming. Most streaming servers serve up files that are already in 3gp format. But I'm no expert in this area. Another option I just saw something about this week is adaptive streaming, which sounds like what Placeshifter does. That would be cool. I don't know what kind of tools are out there though.

I'd also like to support FF/REW but that's another thing to add to the mix. Makes me want to turn off the computer and grab a beer

If it's any consolation, I haven't seen any other DVR's supporting this yet.

Maybe if we get a dialog going we can figure something out.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by jreichen

I started looking into transcoding and streaming video. Nielm's webserver uses VLC, but it and the phone are picky about bitrates, resolution, etc. I can't seem to nail down anything reliably.

The standard for phones is 3gp (H.263) and from what I understand that doesn't lend itself well to real-time transcoded streaming. Most streaming servers serve up files that are already in 3gp format. But I'm no expert in this area. Another option I just saw something about this week is adaptive streaming, which sounds like what Placeshifter does. That would be cool. I don't know what kind of tools are out there though.

My phone handles low-bitrate mpeg4 and wmv files pretty well. I've used it before with Nielm's interface, but it's pretty painful to navigate on my phone. I think a lot of the smart phones out there right now can play back mpeg4 and/or wmv. I might even be able to watch very low bitrate H.264 files when I use CorePlayer Mobile as my player.

Maybe a good first step would be to provide a interface to the streaming functionality that's already in the Nielm's webserver. But, I don't think the mobile web interface should give users so many different options to choose from. It would be nice to make it configurable. Nielm's webserver has an option for setting a custom transcode mode. I think it would be nice to put that in a configuration file stored on the server, and the mobile webserver interface would stream videos using the parameters given in the configuration file. Maybe you could let people specify multiple sets of encoding parameters, and you'd let people choose which one to use in the mobile web interface (similar to what Nielm's webserver does).

[jreichen]

What kind of phone do you have?

Next time I get a chance to work on the web server, I'll try to get VLC working from the command line. If I have any luck then I can work on some integration. Any pointers or ideas are welcome.

I like the idea of a user-specified number of formats. Most people might want just one, but wi-fi phones could use more than one. Even better would be the adaptive streaming I mentioned earlier, similar to what the Placeshifter can do (but it's not as likely that I'll get that working).

I'm not planning on embedding the video in the web page. It think it would work best to launch the phone's native video player.

[reggie14]

I have a Motorola Q9C running WM6. CorePlayer mobile works pretty well, and I think I even got the standard media player application working with WMV encoded files and WVX playlists. When I get home tonight I can try various formats again to see what does and doesn't work.

[reggie14]

Everything (except mpeg2-I didn't try that) worked with CorePlayer mobile. Even 256kbit H.264 played quite well. However, I couldn't get anything working with the built-in WMP mobile.

The old, but free, TCPMP ought to be able to play most things back. I don't think it has H.264 support though (at least, I don't think it's included in the standard installation).

[jreichen]

Did you try a 3gp file with the built-in player? I have pretty good luck with this conversion:

ffmpeg -i infile.mpg -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec aac -ar 32000 -ab 192 -vol 512 outfile.3gp

Does your phone have Java on it?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by jreichen

Did you try a 3gp file with the built-in player? I have pretty good luck with this conversion:

ffmpeg -i infile.mpg -s qcif -vcodec h263 -acodec aac -ar 32000 -ab 192 -vol 512 outfile.3gp

Does your phone have Java on it?

Yes, 3gp files play fine on the built-in media player. I did a 3gp file with H263 video and aac audio and it worked fine. WMV files encoded with WMV7 play fine also, as do WMV files with ms-mpeg4-v1 (both with wma audio).

The strange thing is that this potentially goes against my experience with the webserver. I couldn't stream the WMV files off the webserver using the built-in app. I'm not exactly sure what version of WMV the webserver uses though.

[jreichen]

H.264 files won't play on my phone. Maybe it only allows certain bitrates, but I haven't experimented with it.

[reggie14]

What kind of phone do you have?

I can't play H.264 files using the built-in media player. I have to use CorePlayer Mobile to play back a lot of things. That seems to play anything I throw at it, although presumably my phone isn't powerful enough to handle high bitrates.