iPad/iPod/iPhone application: TiSageTV

[Fonceur]

More images have been added to the first post and wiki. I pretty much have all the navigation handled. So the next big step is to parse the incoming data, put it in a database (core data) and fill the various lists from it.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

More images have been added to the first post and wiki. I pretty much have all the navigation handled. So the next big step is to parse the incoming data, put it in a database (core data) and fill the various lists from it.

Your Wiki link in the first post appears to point to the wrong site... currently pointing to: http://www.idev101.com/code/User_Interface/sizes.html

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Your Wiki link in the first post appears to point to the wrong site...

Thanks for pointing that out, not sure how that happened. You can try it now.

[Fonceur]

My preferred option for the video streaming, is to off load the work to a dedicated application like Air Video or ZumoCast. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, neither provides the necessary hook for that (i.e. Implementing a Custom URL Scheme).

I haven't been able to find any contact details for Air Video yet (anyone else found an email?), but I did inquire with ZumoCast. Now I assume that if enough new users were to install it through my referral link:

http://zumo.cc/cr/dir/DfDNzlmNG

that might give more weight to my inquiry... And yes, I do get a free premium account if enough people use the referral.

ZumoCast is a relatively new product, so still a bit buggy and with some buffering issues, but some tests over wifi and 3G looked good. Should they release an Android version, I would probably offer it as a choice for taSageTV too.

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

I haven't been able to find any contact details for Air Video yet (anyone else found an email?),

There's a contact us email address (inmethod@inmethod.com) at the bottom of their homepage: http://www.inmethod.com/air-video/index.html

I also have found them very responsive via their forums.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

There's a contact us email address (inmethod@inmethod.com) at the bottom of their homepage

Hmm, I assumed that was the web master's email, but I was probably wrong, thanks!

[mikejaner]

What about using vlc?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

What about using vlc?

Yes, that's what I do on the Android side, I just haven't tried to open up a rtsp link on my iPod to see if it gets handled natively or if I would need to hunt down some media player...

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Yes, that's what I do on the Android side, I just haven't tried to open up a rtsp link on my iPod to see if it gets handled natively or if I would need to hunt down some media player...

Ahh, I meant the app for iPhone. I am not sure of all of it's features.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Ahh, I meant the app for iPhone. I am not sure of all of it's features.

Oh I see. Well, that's assuming it doesn't get pulled from the app store... But yes, that seems like another good candidate too.

[Fonceur]

So Air Video have responded that there's no support for launching a stream from another app, but that they'll think about it...

[Fonceur]

So we are still waiting on the Apple iOS developer license to be able to start testing on some real devices. The process probably got delayed by a full week as no one at Apple knew how to print from an email or something, and instead insisted on receiving things by Fax...

The interaction with the SageTV UI/extender is pretty much done. There is a "Now playing" tab and a working Remote control.

It is possible to display the main lists: Favorites, Upcoming recordings, Recorded shows, Albums, Photos, Songs, Videos and System messages. It is possible to pick a channel on the first lineup and get the list of TV shows/movies for the next 1-14 day(s).

Next steps

- Display detailed information about one item from a list.
- Interact with those items (play, delete, record, etc.).
- Add support for iPhone 4 and iPad resolutions.

[pjpjpjpj]

Fonceur,
I've just recently started thinking about a small-scale home audio system, and I saw yuor link to this in the "whole home audio" thread. With the system that I have in mind, the ideal use for this app (on our iPod touch) would be if I could control my HD300 that is in the family room. This extender will be feeding an input to the distribution amp for the audio.

I had been looking at the Sonos ZonePlayer 90, and I was going to run it into the amp, and then have the HD300 audio as an "aux" input that I could switch to, for audio broadcast throughout the house of TV only (what was on the HD300). But then I realized that, if I could control the HD300 remotely, via wifi (iPod touch), it would basically have all of the audio that I would be wanting from the Sonos player anyway (my home collection, Pandora).

So basically I would only want an app for an iPod touch that can control my family room HD300, specifically the music browser portion (though it would be cool to be able to use the iPod as a family room Sage remote control, if my daughter had hidden the remote or something).

I read through your wiki and it sounds like it already works for that?

P.S. Considering a Sonos ZP90 costs $350 and your app will cost $30, guess who would win?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I read through your wiki and it sounds like it already works for that?

While it is not currently implemented, that is part of the second point in the "next step" section. The app will have similar features to the Android app, and one of the first feedback I got from the Android version was someone saying how he liked being in his backyard and basically doing what you mentioned with the outside speakers.

[mayamaniac]

Fonceur, I hope Jreichen's update of the Mobile Web Interface with streaming support isn't discouraging you from continue developement of tiSageTV. Although it works well and Jreichen did a great job, I would still like to see a polished native iOS app for SageTV.

I think we will have to wait and see how well it works to judge whether it's worth the price or not.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Fonceur, I hope Jreichen's update of the Mobile Web Interface with streaming support isn't discouraging you from continue developement of tiSageTV.

Of course not! I wasn't planning on writing the streaming code myself, so it's great that we don't have to mess with VLC and another third party app on the iOS platform.

I think we will have to wait and see how well it works to judge whether it's worth the price or not.

Actually, we got the Apple developer licensing tonight, so I have it installed and working on my iPod... The verbose logging seems to be killing the download speed, but that's easy enough to remove from the release version. Having issue to install it on someone's else iPhone, but that should be easy to address too.

[rotten]

Count me in on the beta I am very interested in testing this. I sent you an email with my UDID. Let me know what the status is.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by rotten

Count me in on the beta I am very interested in testing this. I sent you an email with my UDID. Let me know what the status is.

Check your spam filter, as the beta testers received the info 2 weeks ago, not that any have given much feedback, but... Or resend again if you can't find my reply.

[PiX64]

I will also gladly test this application :-)

[Fonceur]

I've tried to contact all the beta testers to try out .39, but in case I missed anyone (like the ones who haven't provided any feedback... )...

- Currently the app has over 90% of the planned functionality.

- The UI update (with optimization for retina display and iPad) has been delayed, since the person who volunteered for that got busy with other stuff, but hopefully it will get done.

- Managing big lists and their updates is still a bit problematic, leading to unresponsive UI (i.e. looking at a list while it updates, forces a lot of refreshes/reordering...).

- Since full size images are sent from the server, it is a bit inefficient/slow, but hopefully some rescaling will happen on the server side at some point.