It is clear from reading the documentation and reviewing the discussion groups that developing a package which will allow people to stream from a local source will take a lot of doing. Is there any desire to organize among the members of this group to develop a usable open package to stream local content? A usable package for the Roku side and the Server side that moderately technical people can use is likely more than a one man job.A solution to stream locally stored content through the Roku has been a frequent request on the boards for a long time. Lets collectively put our desires into action and develop this.-Shlep'

I actually don't see it as being that hard. The biggest hurdle I've run into is the video format accepted by the Roku. It doesn't appear to work with just any mp4 stream, and so far I haven't figured out the right incantations to make it work. Brian

Great idea!I don't have the technical chops to contribute confidently, but I can help with managing.Shlepzig (and anyone else), feel free to reach out to me to discuss strategies for pulling people together and create a structure that allows multiple to contribute code and test.Meanwhile, if you are interested in helping, please respond here with your skill set and/or interests.Thanks!Jeremy

"Shlepzig" wrote:A solution to stream locally stored content through the Roku has been a frequent request on the boards for a long time. Lets collectively put our desires into action and develop this.I agree with BCL that streaming locally isn't that difficult at all by simple mods of the SDK example code. For those with the more recent version of the player, I'd bet the farm that the USB included on the device is for doing just this, a la WD Live and other recent media boxes.

I do think a group project would be the best way to go. Like any group project, I think each member has strengths that collectively can form a good product.IMO, a local content solution would need some sort of editor as a standalone part to organize the videos. There are others out there such as My Movies that would be good examples. Even better would be if the XML files for Roku could read a My Movies database, you'd save yourself some time.

I agree with BCL that it isn't super hard in itself to get a video to play. That is if you are willing to learn how to set up a web-server and deal with a bunch of individual edits. For a person that has a some web-knowledge already, or is willing to dive into the world of server structure it can be achieved with a little pain and suffering.Mere mortals however, may feel a bit intimidated setting up a web-server to stream the files, and then adding new files to stream is also a bit of a chore. Linking to an online database that can pick up images and other information is also not really hard, but it's a chore. Nothing is going to be completely easy to use, but it can be made fairly simple.Building a tool that packages that all together and is straightforward to use, is a complicated project. I expect that I am not alone that I spend most of my time working for someone else and have a limited amount of time to develop a really good package. There are some pretty smart cookies on this board that can probably pull their collective cookies together and put together a nice package for the rest of the world.-ShlepI think more than one person around here recalls DVArchive that was built for the old Replay TV DVR system. That was a nice package that was fairly easy to use, and did a lot of the same kinds of things. OK it was the work of one guy, who made a tremendous effort over the course of years.

Organized Local Streaming Development?

67 Replies

mjgundry
Visitor
16 years ago
Hello, new user here,

Has anyone looked into what (if any) changes would be required to the backend for MythTV to provide the XML in a format similar to that used by the videoplayer example in the SDK. I know that the DVP isn't a UPnP device, however, recent versions of the MythTV backend have intergrated support for UPnP devices. Part of that support is a small web server that serves up XML for other UPnP devices. Much of what is required to provide a program guide and stream AV to the DVP appears to be in place already, if not ideally formated for our use.

Most of that XML output (which appears at http://mymythbackendip/Myth/) appears to be prepared by the MythXML class in the backend. I haven't completely sorted out what information is exposed by this XML server, but it does look like it might be something that could be used by a suitable channel app. THe DVP simply wouldn't be able to auto-discover the media server through UPnP - you'd have to provide a configuration setting to point the DVP at the proper IP.

Barring that, it looks like it would be pretty straightforward to create another HttpServerExtension to handle requests from the Roku. If the new server extension handled requests to http://mymythbackendip/RDVP/, the DVP support code could easily coexist with the UPnP stuff.

Is anyone moving in one of these directions already? I'm thinking of pursuing option 1 first, because the resulting channel might be useful with other MediaServers besides MythTV.
jsj123
Visitor
16 years ago
I have been hacking at getting the Roku to work with Myth and making little progress. Most of my problems are that I don't understand Myth well enough yet. I just created my first backend server last week.

Currently I can manually transcode a video to h.264 and the roku plays it. I am working on getting a user job to transcode it, but I think user jobs occur after the the video has been completely recorded. I was going to hand roll some Perl to generate the XML, but if Myth is already doing it... Thanks for those links. At this point I have no idea how to transcode a show that is being recorded. I really need to discover the Myth workflow, what happens when, and where the hooks are to tie into it.

We should probably start a separate Myth thread. I will admit that I am only interested in getting to work with Myth, other media servers hold no interest for my.

--Stephen
KennyJ
Roku Guru
16 years ago
the Roku seemed to have problems with TVersity's trans-coding on the fly. I'm not sure why -- it could be that it takes to long to initialize and the Roku thinks it's an invalid URL.
dellsweig
Visitor
16 years ago
"KennyJ" wrote:
the Roku seemed to have problems with TVersity's trans-coding on the fly. I'm not sure why -- it could be that it takes to long to initialize and the Roku thinks it's an invalid URL.

I noticed the same thing when I tried to use Tversity's transcoded mp3 output for the SirusXMPlayer

I saw the request come in the players logs and the debug output from the Roku looked like it should be playing but nothing happened....
RokuMarkn
Visitor
16 years ago
"KennyJ" wrote:
the Roku seemed to have problems with TVersity's trans-coding on the fly. I'm not sure why -- it could be that it takes to long to initialize and the Roku thinks it's an invalid URL.

What format are you transcoding into? For most formats, the Roku wants to parse all the metadata in the file to determine indexing information for seeking. So Roku won't play a partially written file in those formats. This sounds like a live streaming situation, which as was mentioned earlier today, we'll be supporting with HTTP Live Streaming soon.

--Mark
mkolby
Visitor
16 years ago
Has anyone tried or looked into the ps3 media server to stream to the roku dvp? It looks like this might be a possibility. People have used it to stream to the roku soundbridge. It provides an http stream and transcoding and it's open source. http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=2
joetraff
Visitor
16 years ago
Thanks for sharing.
It worked for me. 😄
tim lowe

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Organized Local Streaming Development?

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