BTV4 definetly needs to stream TV anywhere

[segadc]

Check out what Media Center will have...

http://www.betanews.com/article/MS_T...ing/1137177825

[noodleNT]

Hmm.... It can.

I have been watching shows from my BTV server in Paris, London, Cabo, Utah, California, Florida, DC Beltway, a Tie food resteraunt on my PPC that had an open WiFi AP near by..... do I need to keep going?

[segadc]

Ok how then? Just using BTV4 no BTV link or anything else...

[btvfreak]

It should support streaming livetv with a software encoding card.

[merrypig]

Hmm is tie food spicier than thai food though? I need to get the food network running over orb to find out

[queonda]

freak, how well does orb work? I use fileshare to download files for later viewing.

[segadc]

Yeah but I can see XP MCE being able to stream to anywhere no matter if it is software or hardware encoding card.

[ccarlin]

Well there are a few things that BTV really doesn't compare on.

1. They only stream software based cards.
2. They only stream at the preset quality and not based on available bandwidth.

The second one is not that big a deal because you can always use the web interface to change the quality but it still wouldn't be dynamic.

[ZetaVu]

I am really against the btv link situation specifically because it limits streaming to your network and you have to buy a licence for anything you stream to. That takes away my ability to get on another computer and stream my programs to that, well, actually I can't do anything over the internet.

And software streaming? Not an option unless you only have a software card. BTV does not work with a software and hardware card, I've tried, the software card screws up playback with the hardware card. THe only way it might work is if you had a dedicated server that you didn't watch movies on. So, software streaming is not a workable solution either with BTV.

I won't rant on further as it will get this thread closed, but I think it is important for snapstream to either fix their software/hardware capture incompatibility, or more importantly find a way to stream hardware encoded mpg over the internet, adn by that to any computer, not just ones with link accounts. They could set it up as a one use ability, aka, if you are connected throught the internet or web explorer, then no one else can access the interface unless they have link or something to that effect. I still think that there should be a server/link standard setup where you can setup one computer as a server only and one as a link only using just the btv license, but that is another argument long since stomped upon.

[18jun06]

Hi, new to the forums. I plan on setting up a TV server and a Link client or two. I really only care about my LAN, and not accessing my shows from any where else.

So, bear with me... Your streaming discussion & limitations, are you specifically saying that to stream OUTSIDE of your LAN, you need software encoding, but INSIDE your LAN, hardware encoding with a wired 100 or 1000 connection (or fast wireless) is completely cool and Snapstream recommended? Also, are we talking Live, Recorded, or both?

And, just my two cents if the above statement is true... WHY? Why would they tell customers to focus on hardware encoding (heavy lifting yada yada yada), but then not even focus on it themselves for accessing your data from other locales. I would not mind paying for an extra Link - stlye license in order to access my shows which were encoded the SNAPSTREAM - recommened way... hardware, from the Internet. Would not use it much, but would be cool to have.

And one question on streaming recorded to a LINK clint (maybe not important due to network speed): Does it stream it (such as the TV server has to access it slowly over the course of the show? Or does it make it a fast file transfer to some temp spot on the client, and then the client plays it locally? Seems to me it would be less overhead for the TV server Hard Drive and IO if it was sent completely to the client first, so that the server can re-dedicate all resources to recoding, instead of slowly reading a file on its Hard Drive. So curious on how it does it for my own knowledge.

I have a PVR150, Link, BTV and B Media on the way. We will see how this all works out.

Thanks and Cheers.

[merrypig]

The problem is; you can only 'stream' mpeg2's using the BTV Link client. You can stream wmv's via internet explorer. Unfortunately, wmv streaming only really seems useful if you have a software encoder card.

BTV won't let you do a mpeg2 capture and on the fly recode to wmv and stream that. If you have a software encoder card - it skips the mpeg encoding part and just encodes into wmv to stream. Then you can have a streaming quality and/or a recording quality.

The general consensus has been from SS that you can't use btv over the internet - but this is really coming from a support end I think - (speculating here) than any real reason it won't work. BTV link uses some broadcast/udp packets during finding the server stages - and these don't work well over the internet. Rather than get into teaching folks networking and tricks it's easier to say it won't run well over the net. The other reason is that the BTV mpeg2's are usually higher bandwidth than can _uploaded_ via someone's dsl etc. And since BTV Link won't recode to lower bandwidths, you're stuck with either recording a lower quality file to stream it (and thus look crap on the server) or your files are too large to stream.

So.. essentially. if you have a software capture card; you can stream wmv anywhere using IE. If you have a hardware capture card, you can only stream on a high bandwidth network - ie 802.11g/a (possibly b in some circumstanceS) or a wired network.

Or you use another approach entirely

As to how BTV works to a link client; I believe BTV spoon feeds the mpeg data to the client so it can watch it with a small amount of buffering. It's no overhead for the server really. A small trickle of data from the harddrive sent virtually untouched to the network card.

[noodleNT]

You can get BTVlink to work over internet via a VPN connection. Check out OpenVPN or some of the others out there that are free if your router doesn't support VPN connections.

Now... what I do:
I transcode all shows to a smaller WMV file to another folder where I keep about a weeks worth in there. I call it "Mobile Media". When I am traveling I start up my VPN connection and then launch the BTV client with the private IP of the btv server. I then just navigate to the "Mobile Media" folder and watch it like any other recording. Now I could do live TV but I would have to change the recording quality to something much lower. Yet... I record enough stuff so this really isn't needed.

Now you could skip all this and just foward the ports on your router that are used with the web admin and watch your recordings that way and avoid the whole VPN thing. But I find the BTV client works better for playback over the VPN.

Do Note:
I am on Comcast cable and paying for their Fastest connection speed. It is 6mb down and 768kb up. Does a good job but I will switch to FIOS with Verizon as soon as possible. This would allow even better video quality and possible full quality LiveTV steaming.

[merrypig]

The thing I don't like about the transcode approach using btv is that in order to show squeeze, you have to define a video folder for it to go into; and there's no way to NOT include that in the library view on the fsui etc.

Since I like to keep the full quality for viewing with link/live - I end up with two copies of every show in the library. It's not always obvious which is the wmv or the mpeg2 until you select to view it. I'd really like to be able to showsqueeze to a media folder that BTV does not show in the library view. Then I can simply have a small pool of shrunk files to view on my pda etc and not clutter the rest.


Why not use btv link without vpn though is what I can't figure out... it should work just as well. Specify the ip address to work around the ssdp discovery limitations and you should be set surely?

[noodleNT]

I could never get it to work through my firewall. I could get it to connect, but never show files in the library. The VPN option worked instantly. Now I use a SonicWall Tele3 at home so I already had something for VPN.


Yes.... the double entry is very annoying. I wish they would just put a check mark in the web admin, "Show Folder in FSUI Library". Till then, I just use folder view.

[cosiz]

There is a work-around to use hardware encoder card and software encoder together in the same BTV setup. I searched a lot of threads before nanook105 kindly gave me an assist when I was adding my hardware card. The trick is to add the software video source and configure all of the recording settings with WMV as the default quality, then add the hardware video source. The system remains stable provided the Recording Settings menu is not selected -- if it is, BTV reverts to MPG only.

I'm able to stream WMV over my network okay, but over the internet it's pretty choppy. And another work-around is needed to keep the remote admin browser active while viewing. The session times out when there's no activity (about 10 min if I recall). Someone wrote a little script to keep the session active and you can find that somewhere here in the forums.

I'd like to see SnapStream add a h264 mpeg-4 software encoder so I can squeeze to my video ipod, and I think that format would also be better suited for streaming. But I'm afraid Rakesh must have gone for one of those Plextors to fill his ipod...
:-)

Cheers,
Bryan