UPnP (PlayOn) Browser

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Do you have example code on how to tune the InfiniTV? I was thinking about tuning the HDHomeRun.

Fortunately tuning the modern HDHomeRuns is a lot easier than the InfiniTV since you don't need to use the Cable Labs approach. It's a lot of steps to get very simple things to happen; I can't recommend it. They are available as a standard media server similar to Playon.

As I said earlier in the thread, I was actually able to browse the channels on the Prime I have with what you already put together. Playback just didn't start. I wonder if now with the progressive playback working if it will just work.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

It might also be interesting to turn Sage into a UPnP server. I'm not a Kodi user but I image it would make it easy to play Sage content on Kodi without going through a lot of hassle to get the metadata to work.

What does the Phoenix UPnP server do?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

What does the Phoenix UPnP server do?

No clue. I forgot that was available! I'll have to ask Sean.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

What does the Phoenix UPnP server do?

Originally Posted by tmiranda

No clue. I forgot that was available! I'll have to ask Sean.

It's a UPnP server that uses the CLING apis as well... As of the last release of Phoenix, I think it's been removed (or will be).

It was my experiment into serving up Phoenix Views over UPnP. It worked, but I wasn't happy with it, so I didn't develop it any further.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by stuckless

It's a UPnP server that uses the CLING apis as well... As of the last release of Phoenix, I think it's been removed (or will be).

It was my experiment into serving up Phoenix Views over UPnP. It worked, but I wasn't happy with it, so I didn't develop it any further.

I'll take a look at it for inspiration. What were you not happy with? Performance? Usability? What problems can I expect?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I'll take a look at it for inspiration. What were you not happy with? Performance? Usability? What problems can I expect?

It's been a long time... but, if I recall...

1. Performance... The fetching of UPnP data is a little sluggish.
2. Metadata... If I recall, I think that setting the metadata and having it show up the way I wanted was a little finicky.
3. You will need to serve up the media files over http connection. We don't really do this, nicely, inside sagetv today. I've done several attempts at this trying to support http range requests, etc, but, I've never actually got it quite right.

As for the 3rd item... i will be taking another attempt at this over the next few months, since I'd like to have this sorted out... and maybe added to core. SageTV, in the core, will actually do a HLS stream, but I haven't played with that, and, it might be something that can be used here... not sure.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

As I said earlier in the thread, I was actually able to browse the channels on the Prime I have with what you already put together. Playback just didn't start. I wonder if now with the progressive playback working if it will just work.

Can you send me the logfile for this? When I try to browse channels on my HDHR it comes up empty.

[tmiranda]

After more testing I have to retract my statements about getting progressive playback to work. It still doesn't work and I have no clue why. I've been staring at the code for months and have no idea what to try next.

It would be great if somebody with studio experience could take a look at it with fresh eyes. I'm sure it's something simple or subtle, but I am stumped.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Can you send me the logfile for this? When I try to browse channels on my HDHR it comes up empty.

I can see logging is set to trace, but I cannot figure out where the log file should be. I was looking throughout the SageTV directory for recently changed files and I'm a little baffled. Can you point me in the right direction?

Also I'm sure you noticed that the HDHomeRun Prime shows up as 3 different UPnP devices. You need to pick the right one for it to work.

Update: I tried my Connect and I think I see what you're talking about. I can't browse it. I appear to only be able to browse the Prime.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Update: I tried my Connect and I think I see what you're talking about. I can't browse it. I appear to only be able to browse the Prime.

I have an HDHR Prime but it has no cable card installed.

The logfile is in the Sage install directory, sagetv_0.txt.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I have an HDHR Prime but it has no cable card installed.

The logfile is in the Sage install directory, sagetv_0.txt.

Mine doesn't have one installed either.

I didn't realize you meant that log file. I probably don't know what I'm looking for, but I didn't notice anything that looked related in the main log file, so I thought you were referring to something else. Anyhow, here it is.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Mine doesn't have one installed either.

I didn't realize you meant that log file. I probably don't know what I'm looking for, but I didn't notice anything that looked related in the main log file, so I thought you were referring to something else. Anyhow, here it is.

Nothing in here that is helpful

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Nothing in here that is helpful

Just out of curiosity, did you run a channel scan on your HDHomeRun Prime without the CableCARD installed? If you did, you should have several channels starting at 5000.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Just out of curiosity, did you run a channel scan on your HDHomeRun Prime without the CableCARD installed? If you did, you should have several channels starting at 5000.

I did run a scan. I'll have to look for those channels, what I initially saw were a bunch of unmapped channels.

[tmiranda]

Status update:

Still can't get progressive playback to work but I did get the basics of the server code working. When the server is running SageTV appears as a UPnP device that can be browsed and it serves up the video.

What's really odd is that if I use my UPnP browser to play videos served up by my server, progressive playback works.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Status update:

Still can't get progressive playback to work but I did get the basics of the server code working. When the server is running SageTV appears as a UPnP device that can be browsed and it serves up the video.

What's really odd is that if I use my UPnP browser to play videos served up by my server, progressive playback works.

I haven't looked at the headers for the replies from PlayOn, but maybe they are returning a specific length and since SageTV knows how large the "file" is, it's assuming it should download the whole thing? I'm just throwing ideas out there.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I haven't looked at the headers for the replies from PlayOn, but maybe they are returning a specific length and since SageTV knows how large the "file" is, it's assuming it should download the whole thing? I'm just throwing ideas out there.

I appreciate it

I don't think that's the issue. When I load the old PlayOn plugin it works fine. I've traced what it does and what my plugin does line by line and don't see any difference, except the minor detail the the other plugin works

[tmiranda]

Success at last. I finally tracked down the bug that was causing the progressive playback to fail. I will do some more testing and hopefully release version 0.3 tomorrow or early next week.

The good news is that it took me so long to find the bug that I had time to implement a basic UPnP server. Right now the server provides only a few basic views:

• All TV Recordings
• TV Recordings By Show
• Scheduled Recordings
• All Videos
• Videos By Genre

I'm open to suggestions for other views that people may be interested in.

[jimakrause]

Great news look forward to the next release.

[tmiranda]

Version 0.04 is now available in the plugin manager. Changelog:

• Added rudimentary UPnP server support.
• Added ability to do progressive playback of videos.
• Added support for containers that contained mixed content.
• Added recording options.
• Now handles mouse click on preview window.
• Fixed a bug that prevented downloaded files from being deleted after being watched.

When you open the options menu you will see two new items:

1. "Sort By" - You can choose to have items sorted by their title or by however the server returns them (Natural).
2. "External Address of Server" - If you enable the UPnP server (see below) and plan on streaming video outside of your LAN then you must specify the IP address of your server. If you only plan on streaming videos within you personal LAN then this setting can be left unconfigured. If you want to stream video outside of your LAN then this IP should be the WAN IP. You must also have your router setup to forward jetty requests to your Sage server. (See below.) In the next release I'll probably move this setting to the "Recording and Server Options".

You will also notice some new options in the "Recording and Server Options":

1. "UPnP Server is ..." - This starts and stops the UPnP server. If started then your SageTV server will appear as a UPnP device on the network. You should be able to browse and play recordings and videos from any UPnP client.
2. "Provide Thumbnail Information" - This controls if the UPnP server provides thumbnail information to the UPnP clients. Some clients do not like the thumbnails the server is providing (I don't know why yet) so the default is "No". You can set it to "Yes" to see if your client can display the thumbnails.

The UPnP server uses jetty and sagex to stream video and provide thumbnail information. By default jetty uses port 8080. You can change this by stopping Sage and changing the property "jetty_port". If you want to stream video outside of your LAN you must make sure you have your router setup to forward port 8080 to your SageTV server.