Mediatomb, Internet Radio and HD200

[sbherculano]

Hi,

I installed mediatomb upnp server (http://mediatomb.cc) in my FreeNAS server and I can easely connect to the mediatomb using my HD200 in Media Player/Stand Alone mode.

I can use HD200 to connect to the mediatomb to listem music and watch video in a very easy and smooth way.

This is very nice because from mediatomb server I can stream to my HD200, to my mobile phone, other computers and several other devices UPnP compatible.

As mediatomb accept external url I tried also to configure some Internet Radio streams in mediatomb following several configuration links available in the internet such as:
-> http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/MediaTomb
-> http://www.rockus.at/MP101/mediatomb.html
-> http://mediatomb.cc/pages/transcoding

The main idea is to configure the radio and configure the transcoding in mediatomb in these streams to be recognized by my devices at home.

I can stream to my PS3 but not to HD200, every Internet Radio that I can configure in mediatomb are recognized by HD200 as an .m3u file and is not possible to play.

I would like to know if somebody tried to use this kind of UPnP server and has some experience and advices to share.

I do not understand why my mobile phone and PS3 can play the radio streams but HD200 not.

All answers are welcome.

Regards

Sérgio

[gplasky]

because the hd200 need a video stream to actually play audio. The hd200 doesn't do just "audio" streams. Look at some of the plugins for slimplayer, webfeedencoder, etc and you will see they also generate a video file along with the audio to trick the extenders into playing the audio.

Gerry

[sbherculano]

Originally Posted by gplasky

because the hd200 need a video stream to actually play audio. The hd200 doesn't do just "audio" streams. Look at some of the plugins for slimplayer, webfeedencoder, etc and you will see they also generate a video file along with the audio to trick the extenders into playing the audio.

Gerry

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for your answer, I was not aware about that limitation.

My idea is to stream it to HD200 in a media player / standalone modes like you can do with WD HD Live (live365), Slimplayer and webfeedencoder needs to be in Extender mode, anyway that these 2 options are good.

Last weekend, I had success to stream it to HD200 using VLC transcode but generating a file in MP3 format in my NAS server, but this solution is not so good because you need to have a file to work and these files are too big.

Another possibility that I am analyzing is to change from FreeNAS to WHS and install my SageTV server there, so I can use SlimPlayer or Webfeedencoder in almost the same way of the UPnP but my first goal is to use UPnP, Playon is another possibility but I didn't find any reference for Internet Radio so far.

Regards

Sérgio

[standalone]

Hi Sergio, bought the HD200 with the idea of it being a standalone device with configurable media. Being that that seems unlikely to come to pass, I've investigated quite a few options and settled with Tversity. Initially I purchased Playon in spite of my hardware specs being less than advised, as many developers overstate cpu requirements, based on your sig I'd say that wouldn't be a problem for you and they often have half price sales. It has alot of plugins for online media with a focus on video feeds,I haven't however investigated much on the audio side, so I suggest you browse the mediamall.com forums.
Tversity is designed fo all types of media, photos, photos, video, music local and net. Never tried to enter a radio station until i saw yer query. trivial. went shoutcast clicked on a station that invoked vlc went to tools got the location of the station clicked on internet audio tree button in tversity pasted url, gave it a name and a tag done. Went another way at it, right clicked on tunein on shoutcast, copy link address, pasted as before, but when I used the HD200 to peruse to that station instead of one stream for that station I got every server serving that station. I guess that could be an advantage if the server you ended up on was choppy.
Oh yeah, tversity is a lightweight windows program, the free version uses so little resources it isn;t sensible on the machine I'm using right now.
The audio aside, the biggest differences between Playon and Tversity is that the Playon community is very focused around the plugin architecture of the program which seeks to make any and all video viewable via yer set top box.
The playon developers take a lot of control away from the user, "it's their way or no way". Tversity, incorrectly identifies the hd200, so my solution was to tell it that it was a PS3 AND TO NEVER TRANSCODE.
problem solved. HD200 can handle most media streams without it.
hope this helps. mark


ps you can generate a hierarchal menu system which is quite elegant with tversity using compound tags e.g. we want a category Called news with subcategories odd, alternative, mainstream.
to generate those we merely tag the feeds accordingly, say news.odd and all feeds that are concerned with odd news end up under News and then under the tree item odd

[sbherculano]

Originally Posted by standalone

Hi Sergio, bought the HD200 with the idea of it being a standalone device with configurable media. Being that that seems unlikely to come to pass, I've investigated quite a few options and settled with Tversity. Initially I purchased Playon in spite of my hardware specs being less than advised, as many developers overstate cpu requirements, based on your sig I'd say that wouldn't be a problem for you and they often have half price sales. It has alot of plugins for online media with a focus on video feeds,I haven't however investigated much on the audio side, so I suggest you browse the mediamall.com forums.
Tversity is designed fo all types of media, photos, photos, video, music local and net. Never tried to enter a radio station until i saw yer query. trivial. went shoutcast clicked on a station that invoked vlc went to tools got the location of the station clicked on internet audio tree button in tversity pasted url, gave it a name and a tag done. Went another way at it, right clicked on tunein on shoutcast, copy link address, pasted as before, but when I used the HD200 to peruse to that station instead of one stream for that station I got every server serving that station. I guess that could be an advantage if the server you ended up on was choppy.
Oh yeah, tversity is a lightweight windows program, the free version uses so little resources it isn;t sensible on the machine I'm using right now.
The audio aside, the biggest differences between Playon and Tversity is that the Playon community is very focused around the plugin architecture of the program which seeks to make any and all video viewable via yer set top box.
The playon developers take a lot of control away from the user, "it's their way or no way". Tversity, incorrectly identifies the hd200, so my solution was to tell it that it was a PS3 AND TO NEVER TRANSCODE.
problem solved. HD200 can handle most media streams without it.
hope this helps. mark


ps you can generate a hierarchal menu system which is quite elegant with tversity using compound tags e.g. we want a category Called news with subcategories odd, alternative, mainstream.
to generate those we merely tag the feeds accordingly, say news.odd and all feeds that are concerned with odd news end up under News and then under the tree item odd

Hi Mark,

Thanks a lot for your inputs, is very good to hear that somebody had success to configure Internet Radio streams for HD200.

I almost crazy trying to do that with Mediatomb, as I said I can stream to my mobile and PS3 but not with HD200, but now with your information maybe the way I have to try is TVersity.

For me the biggest issue to go to that now, is that I have to change from FreeNAS that is based in the FreeBSD (kind of Linux) and move my NAS to Windows Home Server because TVersity only works in Windows Platform.

My FreeNAS is working very good and has a good performance even in Raid5, but I think with the WHS I can solve all of my issues UPnP and also I can put SageTV running on that as a Server, anyway I totally convincend that the future of the media streaming at home is the UPnP/DLNA and SageTV shouw incorporate that fully in the SageTV MC and also in the Extenders.

I like the idea to use HD200 as an Media Extender of SageTV, but for me the main goal is really to use it as an Media Player in stand alone mode, in my opinion this way is closer than you do today with other devices like an DVD Player with an advantage to be connect to your LAN and Internet so everybody at home can watch local or internet media very easealy and UPnP can delivery that to us.


Thanks again I really appreciate your help.

Regards

Sérgio

[sbherculano]

Mark is the guy, I Installed Tversity and I can add Internet Radio url on that and it works fine in HD200.

As he said the unique thing that you have to do change in the Settings menu, the Media Playback Device to Sony Playstation 3.

Wonderfull progress, now HD200 is almost perfect !!!!

Cheers

[standalone]

Great Sergio, glad it's working