I would pay $30 for Placeshift for iPhone/iPad

[michelle-cat]

We are trying but it isn't easy.

There are just a lot of different formats, bitrates, codecs.. to consider.

FFMPEG also has the disadvantage of consuming more battery , all software encoders do. Air video does its decoding on the server side thus uses the resources of the serving computer.

Our approach is twoflold, do some transcoding on the serverside, but try to handle as much as we can on the device side.

We nearly have the video worked out, but we are running into issues with audio, and also movies that are originally coded in ac3.

http://sol3.typepad.com/tagalong_dev...-complete.html

also check out this project which we contribute to.

http://code.google.com/p/ffmpeg4iphone/

we have been making steady progress which is a plus, but we have some ways to go.

[wayner]

I would really love to see an iPad/iPhone version of Placeshifter. I am sure that iBrent agrees!

* merged *

[bhyman1]

That would be slick!

[MeInMaui]

Do you really think a SageTV placeshifter app would ever be approved?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

iBrent agrees!

Dang it. That nickname is killin' me. Especially since I'm normally pretty critical of Apple...
But hard to argue that I own way too many iDevices... And yes, I do agree. Certainly not the #1 priority for SageTV (SageTV7 is still in beta for instance), but I think it would benefit them in a big way financially and from a promotional, exposure perspective. And that helps all SageTV users in the long-run.

PS: I don't expect everyone (or perhaps even 1/2 of em) agrees with us though.

Originally Posted by MeinMaui

Do you really think a SageTV placeshifter app would ever be approved?

I do. At minimum as a Wi-fi function. At best as 3G as long as it limits the bandwidth.

[wayner]

Why not? How is it any different than Air Video except that it allows you to stream Live TV? (FYI - Air Video is an iPad & iPhone app that allows you to stream video files from your PC to your iDevice using either wifi or 3G transcoding if required). Air Video appears to use the iPad video player for playback and it has its own server app running on your PC (or Mac).

Is there not also a Slingbox client for the iPhone? There is also an Orb client for the iPhone. Are these all that different from Sage client apps?

[David G]

That might be a good thing, since then Sage will be forced to take a long hard look at their UI - if they want the app approved that is.

[White94Cobra]

But how do you really feel about the UI?

iPad/iPhone placeshifter client would be awesome.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

Why not? How is it any different than Air Video except that it allows you to stream Live TV? (FYI - Air Video is an iPad & iPhone app that allows you to stream video files from your PC to your iDevice using either wifi or 3G transcoding if required). Air Video appears to use the iPad video player for playback and it has its own server app running on your PC (or Mac).

Is there not also a Slingbox client for the iPhone? There is also an Orb client for the iPhone. Are these all that different from Sage client apps?

Here's my take... and take it with a grain of salt... Apples TOS prohibits you from writing an interpreter and running it on the iphone. That's why Java and Flash are not allowed. They "interpret" code and execute it within their own VM. A Placeshifter is an interpeter of sorts. The STV is an "application" that is actually running on a server and the server sends commands to the placeshifter client and "interpret" those commands and render a UI. Using the placeshifter a person could write a game in the STV language and have it run inside in the placeshifter vm.

ORB and AIR are native Apps that that contain thier own screens etc. A user cannot change the UI for Orb or Air.

if SageTV wrote a real placeshifter, which would actually be very cool, since it would mean that the UI would be same as what is running on other extenders... or different UIs could be created in STV and deployed to the server and the user could choose which one to use... if Sage did this, then I could see Apple killing the app. But, if all sage does is write a native app, using native widgets, that streams video, it would be approved (most likely).

[wayner]

I would be fine with having to live with the default UI as it is on the iPad.

Something that would also work as a first cut would be a slightly adapted Web UI where clicking on a file in RecordedTV (or Video Library) would stream it from your SageTV server to your iPad.

[jchisholm]

OK someone had to bring it up and I'm wearing my flameproof
underwear..
How about an iPad placeshifter?
Obviously some live conversion would have to occur as does with say Airvideo
but what a great frontend this would be!

* merged *

[Motofreak75]

Prehaps maybe we are thinking a little too much.

How about outside the box ? a server side plugin that trans codes the video feed to a http page like broadcasting video feed via youtube player. That way you can by-pass the iPolice and their stupid TOS etc...

just a thought a iDea

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

a server side plugin that trans codes the video feed to a http page like broadcasting video feed via youtube player.

As far as I know, the place-shifter is already doing that and built in SageTV... Now getting them to expose it to the developer is a different story...

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

How about outside the box ? a server side plugin that trans codes the video feed to a http page like broadcasting video feed via youtube player. That way you can by-pass the iPolice and their stupid TOS etc...

Yeah, that would work great.. then you'd just utilize a flash-based video player.. oh wait.. nevermind...

[Diginerd]

I've been mucking about with php, Batch compression starting with void pt's code. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48213

Right now I have select recordings automatically compress and then post to the web interface.

If someone who isn't a total amateur with this stuff (ie someone other than me!) I can see that integrating html5 video tags for playback in the regular web interface could be very easily doable. The biggest snag is on the fly transcoding to H264 will take an awful gnarly box to do in realtime and I have no idea how to make it happen in the first place.

This is all server side and "webbish" so there's no need to seek the blessing of Jobs or pay 30% to him.

[heffneil]

Isn't the argument that apple would approve the app a moot point now with netflix and sling box apps? If anything sagetv missed the boat on this andnif they'd come out with it they are latemto the party. I would still like to see it but I think it is doubtful. I think it could help sales and exposure to sagetv but look at the market. Sage doesn't have a beta of the osx client and hasnt replied to our inquiries in the forum. Apple products are low on the radar from what we are seeing.

[wayner]

I don't think that they have missed the boat because Slingbox, Netflix, etc. beat them to the market. Sage is a niche market that, IMHO, is much different than Slingbox, Netflix, etc.

And I don't really see the relationship between OSX clients and iDevice apps. I have an iPad, iPod Touch (and soon an iPhone) but I haven't touched a Mac in well over a decade. Most users of these devices are not Mac users and the target market for iDevice and Mac are very, very different.

[heffneil]

I think they missed the boat in the ability to entice new users with a portable media player for the iDevices. I would think that the development of the product would be to grow the current user base not only to sell additional product to current users. Does anyone know how large the user base for sagetv is currently? I would think more people would be interested in SageTV with iDevice compatibility.

I think the apple products are going ignored. The amount of iDevices sold as a whole and even with the launch of the iPhone 4 would indicate it is a large market. Yes Sage is more do it yourself however sage has talked about a plug in play version coming on a thumb drive so I think my argument for iPad iPhone is even stronger in that case... There is a thread asking about the future of an osx client as we just haven't heard anything about it. There is concern that OSX users are getting left out in the cold. Too bad especially if you look at the market cap of Apple vs Microsoft.

Neil

[wayner]

I agree with you heffneil - I hope that Sage is just so busy working on v7 that they don't have the time to work on other things such as an iDevice app. I wonder if the Sage on a thumbdrive is still being worked on as we haven't heard much from Sage about that in a long time now.

[Fuzzy]

I'm not so sure sage would gain all that much from an iphone/pad app. I just don't think there is really that much market overlap. Those few idevice users who would be interested in a full featured client would be a Very small percentage. Of the remainder, most would be perfectly content using something like a slingbox, or orb.