Sagetv via iPhone/iPad thoughts/discussion

[2002cbr600f4i]

Hey gang.


I recently picked up an iPad to go with my iPhone. I've been looking for ways to access my sage tv setup and was hoping we could get a discussion going here...

I have sage running on a windows box, and I have installed the web server control add on a well. However, my cable modem connection doesn't give me a static ip, so I can't really get to the web pages to control sage from outside my home LAN right now.

For playback, I'm using an inexpensive app on the phone/pad called air video. It can only access your pre-recorded content, and it transcodes on the fly to stream it to your pad/phone. It works quite well, but you just get a file system listing of your server... There is software that you need to be running on your sagetv machine to do it. It seems to bring my athlon64 x2 4800 to it's knees when it's streaming, but it works... Also air video uses an indexing system like the sage place shifter locator Id for finding your server.

What would be ideal in my mind is if there was:

1) a way to tap into the place shifter locator system to find my server's ip address
2) something similar to the air sharing server component that would do the transcoding on the fly.
3) a way to control the sage server, via the web page interface. Right now I can get it to set recordings and such, but control of live tv doesn't seem to work right so I think I have something misconfigured.

If those 3 could be achieved, it would be relatively easy to build an iPhone/iPad app that was a combined web view and media player, a couple config screens, and that would do it.. You'd access the Sage server via the web interface in the app to control sage, then it would flip to the media player to show the streamed transcodes video.


What do you guys think? Is there already a better way to do this that I'm missing?

[matt91]

Originally Posted by 2002cbr600f4i

However, my cable modem connection doesn't give me a static ip, so I can't really get to the web pages to control sage from outside my home LAN right now.

lots of ways around this. This is the first hit I got from google:
http://forums.techguy.org/networking...ynamic-ip.html

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by 2002cbr600f4i

1) a way to tap into the place shifter locator system to find my server's ip address

Since that isn't going to change (or rarely), that is a bit overkill...

2) something similar to the air sharing server component that would do the transcoding on the fly.

NielM's web server can use VLC for that part...

3) a way to control the sage server, via the web page interface. Right now I can get it to set recordings and such, but control of live tv doesn't seem to work right so I think I have something misconfigured.

That does sound like a misconfiguration...

[2002cbr600f4i]

Hmmm well if somebody can help me figure out how I have it misconfigured, and help me get the vlc doing the transcoding correctly, I could certainly work on the iPhone/pad app. I just have been hesitant to bother until there was a way to tie it all together...

[2002cbr600f4i]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Since that isn't going to change (or rarely), that is a bit overkill...


NielM's web server can use VLC for that part...


That does sound like a misconfiguration...

Well, I'd prefer to just have the user be able to set up with the place shifter Id and have that be it. If that service already exists and sage uses it, i'd like to be able to take advantage of it rather than users having to also install dyndns or something like that.

Well, the way I have it set up right now, I can use the schedule, and I can play/dl videos, but none of the live tv controls (channel, ffw,rw) controls work. It keeps giving me an error (I'll have to look it up when I get home from work, I don't remember exactly what it said.)

Likewise, I couldn't get it to play the videos in the web pages directly. I have the newest version of vlc installed, but I don't think I have it configured correctly to do the transcoding. The directions for the web control wasn't super clear on how to do all that.

[Narflex]

We had done an update to the server a few weeks ago that enabled IP resolution for locator IDs via HTTP; so this seems like a good time to mention that:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...00&postcount=1

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Narflex

We had done an update to the server a few weeks ago that enabled IP resolution for locator IDs via HTTP

OK, so that addressed point 1.

As for point 2, I don't suppose you could (or want to) expose the transcoding used for the place-shifter and by-pass the need for VLC/air video/orb?

[tchapin]

I just read about another app that does transcoding on the fly, servetome. It's paired to an iPhone app.

The benefit to having this built into the sage webserver would be that we'd no longer be reliant on using third party software (orb, air sharing, servetome, etc) for remote access to videos and it would be device independent.

I always find using Placeshifter to be annoying and slow.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by tchapin

I always find using Placeshifter to be annoying and slow.

But how would using something generic be faster than the dedicated code in the place-shifter?

[2002cbr600f4i]

Originally Posted by Narflex

We had done an update to the server a few weeks ago that enabled IP resolution for locator IDs via HTTP; so this seems like a good time to mention that:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...00&postcount=1

Excellent!

That should be very Easy to interact with to do what I need for part 1. I figure the iPad app would have settings for:

Placeshifter Id
Username+Password (for the web control server pages)
Port number for the web interface
Port number for the streaming video

Ideally it would be a list of servers you could set up and select between.

So next it is a case of getting the web server pages to allow me to control sage completely (although I could live with non-live viewing) and transcoding the video to a stream.

If we can get that working on my server at home, I'll start working on an app to tie it all together.

[tchapin]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

But how would using something generic be faster than the dedicated code in the place-shifter?

Navigating Sage via the website is a lot faster than via Placeshifter. Once Placeshifter is playing videos, it's fine, but doing almost anything else is annoying.

[Brent]

So how does this help with the iPad thing? Just curious.

[2002cbr600f4i]

I don't think he's saying that it does....

Ok I will be working on this over the weekend. I guess the first step is getting my server setup correctly so it'll stream video via vlc.

[briands]

As a new owner of an Ipod touch, I would love to be able to run a UI instance on the Ipod to control the Media screen on the clients (PC and extender) in the house. I'm really not that interested in watching content on the iPod, but it would be nice to have as well.

I'm aware of the web server, but that UI is not a close enough match for everyone in the family to adopt.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by briands

As a new owner of an Ipod touch, I would love to be able to run a UI instance on the Ipod to control the Media screen on the clients (PC and extender) in the house. I'm really not that interested in watching content on the iPod, but it would be nice to have as well.

I'm aware of the web server, but that UI is not a close enough match for everyone in the family to adopt.

Have you looked at the Mobile Web Interface?

[briands]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Have you looked at the Mobile Web Interface?

I have in the past looked at it on my Blackberry so I loaded it up on the iPod... The larger screen size and touchscreen make it better, but I don't see how you can use this for anything more than admin. Even when I get to a recording detail screen, I don't see an option to play it on a client. I know the regular web server has the transport control screen, but I don't see it in the mobile version.
No disrespect to the developer, but it is just not what I am looking for. I'm thinking more along the lines of iPeng for my squeezeboxes.

[Fuzzy]

I'm thinking that noone here really wants to spend the time and money to dev up a tiny remote control app for the iPhone... There is one for Android though.. :-)

What I am curious about, is does anyone actually WANT to use a phone/ipod as their remote control? I can't see what you'd gain over using a basic remote control.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'm thinking that noone here really wants to spend the time and money to dev up a tiny remote control app for the iPhone... There is one for Android though.. :-)

What I am curious about, is does anyone actually WANT to use a phone/ipod as their remote control? I can't see what you'd gain over using a basic remote control.

I have used the iPad to do the same things I use the mobile interface for (using the interface of course) such as manage recordings etc. Would be great if the interface were more of an app designed for the iPhone & iPad.

And I would pay to use the iPad & iPhone to use for streaming TV, movies and music and I'm betting a bunch of existing SageTV users and potential SageTV users would as well. Same thing for android...

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Brent

I have used the iPad to do the same things I use the mobile interface for (using the interface of course) such as manage recordings etc. Would be great if the interface were more of an app designed for the iPhone & iPad.

And I would pay to use the iPad & iPhone to use for streaming TV, movies and music and I'm betting a bunch of existing SageTV users and potential SageTV users would as well. Same thing for android...

For those functions (favorite management, scheduling, even deleting and such) I fully understand the need for a phone app. The Mobile Web Interface I mentioned previously does those things just fine. Streaming/mobile placeshifter i also certainly understand. What I don't see the point of, is the remote CONTROL from a phone (which is what briands was saying the mobile interface was lacking).

[briands]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'm thinking that noone here really wants to spend the time and money to dev up a tiny remote control app for the iPhone... There is one for Android though.. :-)

What I am curious about, is does anyone actually WANT to use a phone/ipod as their remote control? I can't see what you'd gain over using a basic remote control.

Don't think remote... Think crestron. I'm mostly thinking in my theater.

also if you included media (music) you could address the whole music without tur ing on the tv issue