Mac Placeshifter Question

[ultrajones]

I have SageTV 7 and the Placeshifter enabled. Do I need a license for every Mac laptop that connects to the SageTV Placeshifter?

Regards,
Ultrajones

[Spectrum]

Placeshifter is licensed on a per connection basis. If you are going to have it installed on 5 machines but only 3 would ever be connected at one time, you would need 3 licenses. Although ast time I checked there is no Mac version of Placeshifter v7 and a v6 Placeshifter won't play nice with a v7 server. Be sure you do your due dilligence before you spend any money on licenses.

[Ron]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

.................there is no Mac version of Placeshifter v7 and a v6 Placeshifter won't play nice with a v7 server.

I just upgraded my Sage dedicated PC to v7, however I have an iMac and Macbook Pro with Placeshifter. I've not noticed any difficulty. Can you please let me know what doesn't play nice between Mac Placeshifter v6 and v7 Server?

I suppose, if I encounter any major problems, I can always install v7 clients (I do have several unused client licenses from my PC days) and run under XP or Win7 as a VM.

[Bagal]

I've been running the trial of the placeshifter on my Macbook Pro connecting to a v7 server and haven't had any problems with it.

[Spectrum]

Good to know that it is working for you. Just be aware if you do run into issues, you are using an unsupported setup and may not have much luck for a resolution. Of course if you never have any issues it is a moot point I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into before you plonked down $ for licenses.

[Bagal]

I appreciate that just because it's working for me doesn't mean it will work for everyone, I just wanted to point out that it does seem possible.

And yes, you're correct about it being unsupported, but the benefit of going down the placeshifter route is that it won't be wasted $ as I can switch to running Windows in a VM or via bootcamp and still end up using the placeshifter license

[flavius]

Originally Posted by ultrajones

I have SageTV 7 and the Placeshifter enabled. Do I need a license for every Mac laptop that connects to the SageTV Placeshifter?

Regards,
Ultrajones

Sage has stopped support of OS X. Placeshifter v6 for OS X still works with v7 servers, sort of.

[Bagal]

Originally Posted by flavius

Sage has stopped support of OS X.

Really? Where have you heard that?

[rochurch]

I have searched and searched but I can't find anyone else with this problem.
I have a couple of Macs that used to run Placeshifter (yes v. 6) without a problem. These are 2009 Mac hardware.
Of course Apple keeps upgrading their OS and that is probably the problem here.

Now when I try to run Placeshifter (having downgraded Java) it starts, goes through the setup wizzard, after selecting screen size the app just disappears.

Anyone get Placeshifter to work with a modern (probably not latest but within the last couple) OSX version?

[SageWizdom]

I am using a mac and had this exact same problem. Below is the workaround that will make it work. In my queue of things, is to figure out why its happening and see if we can fix it.

Workaround to make Mac Clients work on v9
note, this may work with v7, but I don't have v7 to test with

this requires the use of the OSX command line/terminal and some comfort working around the guts of a unix system

1) Open the OSX terminal application. It is located in the Applications/Utilities sub folder. It will start you in your user home directory.

2) Change to the downloads directory.

cd Downloads

3) Create a directory to work in and go into it.

mkdir sagetemp
cd sagetemp

4) Download the latest SageTV Client (v9) and save it in Downloads\sagetemp
* I can not seem to get curl or wget to work, so just click on the below link and save it to the right place via finder as needed. (thank you to stuckless for the build!)

https://bintray.com/artifact/downloa...4_amd64.tar.gz

4b) In the terminal copy the file into your directory

cp ../sagetv-client_9.0.4_amd64.tar.gz .

5) Extract the file

tar vfxz sagetv-client_9.0.4_amd64.tar.gz

6) Run the sage client

./sageclient.sh

7) Configure your Sage Client
Run through the whole configuration and setup process. This should allow you to set your screen size etc.

I don't know why (havn't looked into it) but the new client doesn't work. however...

8) Revert back to the old v6 client
Boom, this now plays like a champ. There are still some issues. I find that the skip forward and skip backwards don't seem to work right, and if you click on the timeline it is decidedly not going to the right place, but I can otherwise watch all video on my mac. Fixing this client is on the list... but its not very high on the list unfortunately.

Good Luck and holler if you get stuck.

[SageWizdom]

I found the logs and it looks like mplayer doesn't work. Does anyone know how to extract mplayer from the old v6 placeshifter client? if so this may work. I'm going to pick at it some more, but it appears to be compiled into the binary.

thoughts/suggestions welcome.

Side question. Any chance someone could compile an up to date placeshifter client? I would be interested in trying that as well. (Is that actually different?)

Update:
I found where mplayer was hiding.... its in /Applications/SageTV\ Placeshifter.app/Contents/Resources/Java/mplayer

copying it to local allows the new version of Sage Client to play, however it plays in its own video window

Looking through the logs /tmp/miniclient.log

Error loading QuartzGFXCMD class, reverting to default rendering:java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: sage.miniclient.QuartzGFXCMD
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: sage.miniclient.QuartzGFXCMD
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:171)
at sage.miniclient.MiniClientConnection.GFXThread(MiniClientConnection.java:609)
at sage.miniclient.MiniClientConnection.access$200(MiniClientConnection.java:18)
at sage.miniclient.MiniClientConnection$4.run(MiniClientConnection.java:378)

Exception getting video server params: java.lang.NoSuchMethodException: sage.miniclient.GFXCMD2.getServerVideoOutParams()

Ignoring resize command because it exceeds video dimensions rect=java.awt.Rectangle[x=0,y=0,width=720,height=480] videoDim=java.awt.Dimension[width=0,height=0]

stderr:The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
stdout:Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
stderr:Try appending the scale filter to your filter list,
stdout:VDec: vo config request - 704 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
stderr:e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
stdout:[PP] Using external postprocessing filter, max q = 6.

stdout:[swscaler @ 0x6f0c00]BICUBIC scaler, from yuv420p to yuyv422 using MMX2
stderr:Get device error: Device ID -1 do not exist, falling back to main device.
stdout:[swscaler @ 0x6f0c00]using 4-tap MMX scaler for horizontal luminance scaling

I'm posting these just in case someone knows an obvious fix.

[rochurch]

Thanks so much! That helped me limp along during a trip where I had a Mac and not a PC. I'll make sure I take a PC or Extender on my next trip until a permanent solution is in place. That was really awesome that you posted your work around here. You are one smart dude.

[SageWizdom]

Glad it helped

Originally Posted by rochurch

That was really awesome that you posted your work around here. You are one smart dude.

Nah, just a frustrated computer guy who doesn't want to get another machine. Now if I can figure out how to rebuild it so it works.... that would make me really happy. One bug at a time.

[t_robinson03195]

I have several Windows machines and 2 Macs running place shifter.
The Windows machines are working fine and so is th emac book air.
However the mac book pro is failing. After it finds the place shifter server clicking the connection it disappears then comes back to the place shifter list of servers.
The following is the miniclient.log.
Anybody understand how to fix my problem?

Starting MiniClient
Exception occured loading MiniClient library: java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: no MiniClient in java.library.path
Thu 11/3 21:00:39.468 Detecting cryptography support...
Thu 11/3 21:00:41.435 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Thu 11/3 21:00:41.459 Starting SageTVPlaceshifter Client
Thu 11/3 21:00:41.461 Starting main loop
Thu 11/3 21:00:41.461 StorageDeviceDetector started...
Thu 11/3 21:00:44.785 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@4bf54c5f
Thu 11/3 21:00:44.788 Added server info:192.168.2.199 192.168.2.199
Thu 11/3 21:00:51.445 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Thu 11/3 21:00:51.583 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@76caf6c1
Thu 11/3 21:00:51.584 Added server info:192.168.2.199 192.168.2.199
Thu 11/3 21:01:01.448 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Thu 11/3 21:01:01.629 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@70e35d5
Thu 11/3 21:01:01.630 Added server info:192.168.2.199 192.168.2.199
Thu 11/3 21:01:11.451 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Exception in thread "PowerManagement" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: sage.PowerManagement.setPowerState0(I)V
at sage.PowerManagement.setPowerState0(Native Method)
at sage.miniclient.MiniClientPowerManagement.setPowerState0(MiniClientPowerManagement.java:66)
at sage.PowerManagement.run(PowerManagement.java:61)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:695)
Thu 11/3 21:01:11.600 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@2d8e8541
Thu 11/3 21:01:11.602 Added server info:192.168.2.199 192.168.2.199
Thu 11/3 21:01:21.458 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...

[daminc]

I'm using a 2011 Macbook pro with Sierra, haven't had any problems running placeshifter with sage7 or 9... (yet)