If you're into HTPC's, this might be something interesting to check out. You could do the Media Center Microsoft version of Vista or XP (soon Windows 7), but there are open sourced alternatives out there that work pretty well and do a bit more than Media Center Editions of Windows.
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/
Some of the major features it does:
TV (Tivo like functionality)
Videos and DVDs
Pictures
Radio
Weather
They do have a large library of plugins for their 1.0 version which includes some streaming from the net (Like CBS for example).
The thing I don't like is it does not support DLNA at the moment (version 1.0), although you could point it to your files on your network, but that won't allow you to use PlayOn or other cool online streaming functions. Their version 2.0 which seems to have been in development since around 2007 still hasn't really got to far as they are fixing version 1.0 and stabalizing it still. It seems their version 2.0 has an alpha or beta out (not sure, was checking forums you might want to look into it more) and that it supports DLNA, but since it's alpha obviously not in the best shape.
It still is a cool project, and with their V2 if it can come out of alpha / beta might really be a great HTPC project to use. I will see about posting a few more HTPC like applications in the coming days for those interested in that kind of tool.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
PS3MediaServer
I just found out about this little gem on the PlayOn Plugins website through a post asking what others are using for software. Just in case you're interested in trying something new it's Java based, so will run on any platform, and it does say "DLNA" compliant so effectively it should work with any DLNA compliant device (XBox and Media Consuming Devices) but I don't know any of that for sure, and with it being named "ps3mediaserver" it's obviously coded to work on that platform the best, play at your own risk.
The features sound impressive, and are all about high end streaming:
- Ready to launch and play. No codec packs to install. No folder configuration and pre-parsing or this kind of annoying thing. All your folders are directly browsed by the PS3, there's an automatic refresh also.
- Real-time video transcoding of MKV/FLV/OGM/AVI, etc.
- Direct streaming of DTS / DTS-HD core to the receiver
- Remux H264/MPEG2 video and all audio tracks to AC3/DTS/LPCM in real time with tsMuxer when H264 is PS3/Level4.1 compliant
- Full seeking support when transcoding
- DVD ISOs images / VIDEO_TS Folder transcoder
- OGG/FLAC/MPC/APE audio transcoding
- Thumbnail generation for Videos
- You can choose with a virtual folder system your audio/subtitle language on the PS3!
- Simple streaming of formats PS3 natively supports: MP3/JPG/PNG/GIF/TIFF, all kind of videos (AVI, MP4, TS, M2TS, MPEG)
- Display camera RAWs thumbnails (Canon / Nikon, etc.)
- ZIP/RAR files as browsable folders
- Support for pictures based feeds, such as Flickr and Picasaweb
- Internet TV / Web Radio support with VLC, MEncoder or MPlayer
- Podcasts audio/ Video feeds support
- Basic Xbox360 support
- FLAC 96kHz/24bits/5.1 support
- Windows Only: DVR-MS remuxer and AviSynth alternative transcoder support
I am going to give it a shot just for sheets n giggles.
PlayOn!
Okay, I thought I had the perfect setup until just recently a friend of mine from work suggested PlayOn. He said he had heard about that it can stream Hulu and Youtube and Netflix (three things my setup below is sorely missing). So I gave it a try, I am on the Netflix and PlayOn trial right now, and I have to say... it's freaking awesome.
First off it streams off the net fairly well, I have better luck with my PS3 than my XBox 360. On the XBox I have to start a stream 2 or 3 times for it to finally catch, but after it has caught it works pretty good. It very well could be my ISP rather than PlayOn here but I really don't have this problem with the PS3. The software is just kicking off the ground, so I am sure it will just get better over time.
But what really put it at the top of my list is the following. A couple days ago I contacted PlayOn's API Developer support because I was interested in using their API and writing a file aggregator where it would allow me to do what Mediatomb is currently doing, feed video from my Ubuntu box. Since C# and DotNet is what I use at work, it looked like it was going to be a snap. They sent me to a site http://www.playonplugins.com which is a bunch of like minded media geeks with C# skills, and after a few posts there, it seems one of the moderators named "human" whipped out a fileshare plugin that was perfect using OPML so essentially it could handle multiple file paths or shares. This saved me a few hours of work and let me get back to killing things in COD4. ;-) On the page that you downoad the plugin I put instructions for making it work on a UNC share so I could have it read from my Ubuntu box over the network, so you can go check that out.
Now PlayOn with that plugin does everything! They also have a few other plugins you can grab from the site above that are very interesting. For the adults it has a plugin for you, which I won't go into depth here you can go there and check out for yourself. ;-) There is also an OPML aggregator plugin that you can just drop an OPML feed in a directory and it will stream that content. People are sharing OPML files and feeds through the site as well, even has it's own section of the board for that. There is one for the Food Network, HGTV, The Onion and a handful of others that really makes this PlayOn amazing for pulling together all your online video feeds as well as now your own local file share.
I think in a few more days my trial runs out, but this will be the software I purchase as I want to support their development efforts. I like the idea of something so easy and extendable, and the only issue I have is now I need to upgrade my Ubuntu box with more powerful CPU's so I can run this software on a VirtualBox XP machine instead of my main gaming rig. ;-)
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