Streaming/playing any A/V format from browser.
 

New to forum this weekend where this is my first post. :)

I have purchased the Nokia 770 specifically for home web browsing and Control/Playback of my A/V media with A/V streaming high on my wish list. I want to be able to select and play any A/V media format from wherever I am in the world where I might want to play the media on the Nokia 770 directly OR control events on a TV and Hi-Fi. (via Wi-Fi when available, via Bluetooth and mobile when not)

I have been messing around for over a Year with PC based UPnP Media Server TVersity with a Wireless UPnP A/V Hardware device connected to my A/V equipment Philips SL300i (Controlling UPnP events with another application, Cidero running on a Laptop)

I been having great fun Streaming both local and internet streams that are unsupported directly by my Hardware player, where the TVersity Media Server takes care of the transcoding requirements of the Audio and Video based on a profile which understands the SL300i's limitations.

Now to the problem with the Nokia 770, I have been working closely with the TVersity team recently (User Level) to ensure that TVersity can fully interoperate with the Nokia 770. TVersity is well placed to become not just a UPnP but more a true "Universal" Media Server ;)

Like SlimServer running in a web page on the Nokia 770, with TVersity I am able to browse my Media, but unlike SlimServer where we need to have the Audio Player pre-loaded, the TVersity team would like to ensure that if I browse and click on an A/V item it will directly open either the Audio or Video player and the stream and play or download the item being served and streamed via TVersity.

On the PC we have Orb which enables a user to stream and playback his own A/V media from another PC anywhere in the world (Sling Like), on the Nokia 770 we can have a cool interface with TVersity to achieve one and the same, if not more!

At this stage, I am interested how many other Nokia 770 users have this type of requirement, where we could share thoughts and experiences on how best to achieve on the Nokia 770 especially now that the OS 2006 is imminent where it seems we need to give a consensus on what we need in the underlying delivery or as a plugin?

Apologies if this topic is already covered elsewhere in the forum, but a quick search did not find anything… :o

Useful web links in relation to this post ?

TVersity
Cidero
Streamium
Orb

forums ? (Where I post as MikeL)

TVersity Forum
Streamiumcafe Forum
Cidero Forum

My Fledgling Blog :o

I'm not so much interested in watching TV from the other side of the world as from the other side of the garden. It would be great if I could use my 770 as a mobile display for media content -- streaming or even only stored -- piped from my PC over the intranet.

Something like Philips's Streamium, only not tied into that particular manufacturer, and preferrably OS-independent on the server side (I really like Linux, but on the subject of mutimedia, it's lagging seriously behind).

Can I have it next week, please? :)

I hope so ;) I think we are already close to the download method with OS 2005 of .wmv internet streams. I was using the Nokia Media converter which is already a great way to re-encode the PC dowloaded wmv media for playback on the Nokia 770, TVersity though will hopefully take it to a whole higher level of integration.

I am already run a slimserver and nfs server. The NFS server can act as a video and audio streaming server, and with ssh and vpn you can access it over the internet. And I watch movies stored on the nfs server, the quality is pretty good but there are sometime there are lacks here and there, that may be caused by the slow wireless b that I am running at home. For the best quality, copy the media files to the N770.

Streaming seems to be borked in OS2006, at least for me. Any video buffers, but none will play.
Perhaps it is the crazy new video player quirks (some of my OS2005 videos wont play in OS2006)...
It seems that theyve added additional streaming functionality to OS2006, so it looks like they have plans.

I think the silver bullet would be for someone to port mencoder and codecs to the n770 (despite the low processor power, it could be used for emergencies), or more realistically:
for a media server app to do realtime transcoding to a supported n770 format and stream that (perhaps from a named pipe to save space?)

:) And this is exactly what TVersity does/will do when profile for Nokia is fully defined ;) :) TVersity is in beta and only currently runs on win XP (not been released to other platforms)

By way of a taster, I have been making slow progress with selecting wmv feeds such as http://rssnewsapps.ziffdavis.com/aud...s/DLTV.wmv.xml adding them to the TVersity Media Server (Supports RSS media feeds) running on my PC and subsequently selecting the feed items from my Nokia 770's browser window and downloading them "*.wmv to *.mpeg1" transcoded and transfered via wirelessG to the Nokia 770 for later playback.

When OS 2006 is available for the Nokia 770 we will hopefully be able to stream rather than download all these types of AV files, which will free up the limited flash memory (Even with a 2Gb RS-MMC) for other purposes and needs.

Just imagine streaming wmv, mov, m4v, flash, xvid, divx direct to the Nokia 770 wirelessly from anywhere in the world using TVersity as your Universal Internet and local content MediaServer.

See this thread, for details on the slight pain I have been going through in order to get the Nokia 770 to cooperate with the TVersity Universal MediaServer (Thanks to the TVersity team support)

Thread for Nokia 770 Video stream issues http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?t=1789

We are not there yet, but are getting well prepared for when the OS 2006 becomes available which hopefully enables full blown streaming of both Audio and Video.

Oh and by the way lest I forget, I must mention that TVersity supports transcoding of internet *.wma to *.mp3 and supports local streaming of Real Media streams :)

Thread for Nokia 770 Audio stream issues http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic.php?t=1761

MikeL,

TVersity server is running on my WinXP PC, the firewall allows port 41952, I am pointing the Nokia's browser to http://localhost:41952/ but the message i get in the browser says: "This application requires Flash payer 7. ..." ie. the v6 Flash Player is not enough for TVersity...

How do I go about this?

You need to add /lib in order to access the items you have shared via portable devices like the Nokia 770.

Just to let all Nokia 770 users know that the TVersity Team have released an update of the TVersity Universal Media Server (Beta 0.9.6.2) which now enables emailing of our local media as a FEED from which the files could be played remotely on our Nokia 770's from wherever we are in the world. As I mentioned earlier, the key improvement we need on the Nokia770 (OS 2006) is the support for streaming of all Nokia 770 supported Media formats rather than downloading. (As this wastes precious space on our flash memories)

Read more via TVersities release notes http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.tversity.com/whatsnew.html

PS:

I am NOT part of the TVersity Team, considering myself an independent, keen user of the Universal Media Server and its clever functionality.

I have looked in the Nokia 770 Bugzilla where I recently added a comment to existing bug 366, with regard to HTTP streaming Media requirement https://maemo.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=366

2006 OS video player
 

I can not play anything except the included Discovery video included. I cant play any video it just errors out, streaming or local, Am I doing something wrong?


I only get "playback error", with an ok button

Are you trying to open or save (download) the videos, because currently if you try to open Audio or Videos across the network, (i.e they are not already on the Nokia 770 or RS-MMC) that is the error I also receive. [apologies for not mentioning that]

Try the save option instead of open?

--------------------------------------------

PS on another note:

I have been successfully transcoding and downloading a number of audio file formats on the fly from my PC media store, using TVersity *.ogg *.wav *.wma (The resulting Transcoded *.mp3(s) downloaded to the Nokia 770 are at 320Kbps)

Isn't it just great to not have to pre-prepare and re-encode all your AV files just in case you may need them to playback on a device that does not support the originating format directly?

Oh and another important point, with TVersity Think NON DRM!!!! as the TVersity Team have an aversion to all Media that's DRM'd and believe that all formats should be able to playback on any device, not just the target supported formats with their bespoke built in C.R.A.P.
(Note, link is an interesting thought provoking Video on the DRM issue in wmv format)

Hi Mike. Have you tried using TVersity with the latest (fust released final version of) OS2006? I've just updated my firmware today and tried TVersity. It finds the files on the server but refuses to play the streams. If you save the audio to a file you can play it later (so its not the file format), but when the audio or video player opens the stream its given from the browser it complains "Audio stream not found at given address". Similar result for video. Probably another bug on the Nokia end.

Thanks for working on this Mike. It will be wonderful when it works.

/maurice

I have tried TVersity with official version of OS 2006 and the AV streaming/downloading experience is the same as it was with OS 2005 (Download only) which is a shame. The good thing is that with OS 2006 and standard additional RS-MMC swap file capability, web browsing is quicker more stable and enjoyable ;)

With TVersity both our Local and Internet AV content only needs to be transcoded when we make a decision to download to the Nokia 770 where the AV format is not supported by Audio or Video player.
(i.e. wmv and wma)

I have very recently been testing "remote Internet access" to TVersity (Running on home PC) via my Nokia 770 and can confirm that I can view my library content and download AV content from my home network to my Nokia 770 as easily as when connected to my local network.

TVersity supports RSS Feeds and creates feeds of our personalised content which can then be emailed to family/friends, this facility makes it easy to share both our personal and Internet AV media.

Any advise on how to get the Nokia 770 Audio and Video players to cooperate with TVersity and its HTTP stream URL's provided to the Nokia 770 browser or even direct to the respective AV player, please advise? Below are some sample URL's to give an idea of the format TVersity provides which the Nokia 770 does not like even though provided AV format is supported.

Thinking about this issue I noticed that the URL that TVersity provides is dynamic and I think the audio and video players probably expect a static url. By dynamic I mean that the real URL is generated by a TVersity as a CGI execution. The Opera browser is able to deal with the url so its able to look up the location and save the file. The players probably try to do a simple DNS lookup on what they are given so they cant find the actual stream and complain.

Perhaps someone can suggest a workaround for this. The nicest thing would be for TVersity to present a useable static URL instead of a dynamic link, but we have no control over that code.

/maurice

I have been following a number of Internet Tablet Talk threads with regard to streaming of different A/V media formats from the Internet where the ones about utilising VLC or Mplayer on the Nokia 770 have particularly caught my attention.

VLC http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ight=streaming
Mplayer http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ight=streaming

I have picked out the following recent point made by Serge in the Mplayer thread.
Serge‘s, goal of the thread is extremely desirable, but what if we were to link the goal for Mplayer with the use of the TVersity Universal Media Server running on a more powerful PC to transcode formats too tricky for the Nokia 770 and Mplayer to ever transcode on their own?

The idea behind TVersity is to take ANY AV source and transcode it WHEN required and “on the fly” to a suitable format for a number of different devices including the Nokia 770. Streaming rather than downloading to the final playback device Anytime, Anywhere is also a key GOAL of TVersity where it does this very well for UPnP Hardware Media players. (Support for transcoding of many AV Formats such as FLV, WMV, MOV to mpeg1 is already available)

Read more here
http://www.tversity.tv/
http://forums.tversity.com/index.php
http://forums.tversity.com/viewforum.php?f=21

Unfortunately the Nokia 770 is to-date proving a difficult beast to tame and we are having problems understanding how to interoperate with the OS 2006 built in browser and Audio/Video players such that Media served by TVersity is streamed and not only downloaded onto the Nokia 770.

With other Internet Tablet Talk user experience with Mplayer and AV streaming on the Nokia 770 we could possibly together understand how/why selecting a URL from within Opera browser and then streaming the file with the built in Audio/Video players is so proving so difficult to achieve with TVersity?

I would like to be able to advise the opera browser to automatically open streams being served on the Internet or my local network with one or more Media players installed on the Nokia 770, EASILY and without the need to worry about the originating format of the AV File.

Can anyone help, any support is greatly appreciated.

Tversity Version 0.9.7.1 (July 30, 2006) is out. (Runs on Windows PC)

With this version I am now able to stream my content to the Nokia 770 and utilise the built in Audio and Video players.

Read more on progress within the Tversity Forums i.e. http://s90264353.onlinehome.us/phpBB...?p=10853#10853

Read About and download TVersity from here http://www.tversity.com/

Note: Video streaming requires a bit of further tweaking and adjustment before we can claim it's operational but the Video Player starts playback already.

Ok, so I installed everything from the latest build and I can't get the streaming video to work at all. It keeps insisting that it's an Unsupported Format. What are the steps for configuring tversity to transcode to a format the 770 will accept?

If you transcode/download via TVersity and playback video does that work, because it should?

The default config settings of TVersity for the Nokia 770 (In ...\TVersity\Media Server\profiles.xml) are set such that playback of a streamed video will not work without adjusting the defaults and even then not well with default Video Player. If you search the TVersity forums for Nokia 770 you will learn more. Its really a work in progress rather than a real working solution for video streaming at this stage. i.e. http://forums.tversity.com/viewtopic...ight=nokia+770

As regards audio streaming of typically non supported streams, this seems to work well as long as the required codecs and filters are installed on your PC.

It seems like Orb does most of what you want, and it works on the 770.

http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/2006/...-770-with.html

Nope. I've tried quite a few settings and I can't get anything to play yet. If you could list the settings and options that you have set in your working configuration, I would appreciate it.

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

I was trying to let a whole thread go by without pimping out my blog... Thanks thomashp.

gultig: Post here if you have any problems getting orb to work. That banding issue I had was likely a codec issue and could possibly be resolved with ffdshow.

i read somewhere on the forum about getting opera and mplayer to work nice together. if i get thqat working you might be able to play something other than a realmedia stream.