Live TV playback support

[Brian Schneider]

I know a lot of work is in progress in terms of refining the Recordings Screen and working hard on getting the EPG to work in some capacity, but wanted to create a new thread to start the conversation around different options/approaches to enabling Live TV playback support in Boxee (both client and box).

I performed a simple test using r80 of this app (w/ the latest sagex api) where I started to record a show in SageTV, then opened my Boxee client, opened the SageBoxee app, went to the Recordings screen, saw the in-flight in recording in the list, clicked to Play, and watched nothing happen.  My sense is Boxee hasn't implemented the ability to watch files which are "growing" into their playback decoder (I don't have a Boxee Box and thus haven't been able to confirm if things perform the same there, but my sense is live TV playback doesn't work there either).

Here are some of my initial high-level thoughts on options to enable live TV playback:

• Option #1: Assume Boxee client/box does NOT change, thus leverage/enhance jreichen's mobile streaming services to stream back an HTTP live stream
• jreichen's mobile streaming services FAQ: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52158
• Boxee supports http live streaming: http://developer.boxee.tv/HTTP_Live_Support
• Option #2: Similar to option #1, but build entirely new libraries to stream back live TV (e.g. to support another playback mechanism that Boxee supports such as Web Media)
• Option #3: Assume Boxee can indeed change to support live TV playback via raw video playback (aka not http live or web media):
  
• I created the improvement request below on Boxee's Jira website... feel free to "watch" it to see how it progresses... will be interesting to see what Boxee's response is and/or if they kill it or not... but implementing this is really the holy grail for me as it would use Boxee's decoders, etc
• http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-10990

I'm not the most technical so certainly there may be more options, but these are the most reasonable to me.  Thoughts?

[Darci Hanning]

I'll chime in here quickly and say that the Box can play growing files (I posted about this in the sagetv forums previous to this endeavor)in v1.1 and I think in v1.2 ( will double check later today).

cheers,

Darci

Sent from my iPhone

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[Dan Kohler]

That's a pretty good assessment.  I've been looking into this for a while now and have been in conversation with Jason (jreichen) about the Sage side of things.  The plan right now is to use HTTP live streaming (HLS) as it is currently supported by both Boxee and Sage (via mobile streaming services).  In order to support streaming to Boxee, the Sage media streaming services need to be updated to recognize the proper user agents, in this case "boxee" and "boxeebox".

I have been pretty busy the last week, so I haven't had much time to put into this lately.  My most recent efforts have focused on getting the JDK / Eclipse environment installed and configured so I can make modifications to the media streaming JARs.

If anyone is interested in helping out with this, let me know.

-Dan

[Derek Battams]

I think we would be best advised to wait until the Boxee team addresses the tickets opened on this issue.  Also, if Darci confirms that the DLink box will play back active recordings (using Boxee v1.x firmware - PC builds are still on v0.9.x) then we may just save ourselves a lot of work.  Rumour has it the PC builds will be updated to v1.x sometime in the fall, so if the box can play these files live then the PC builds should catch up shortly.

http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-10990

http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-10892

  - Derek

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[Brian Schneider]

Darci - that's fantastic... great to hear live TV playback works in the Box!

Dan - Completely agree w/ Derek... I wouldn't spend too much effort on this for now given live TV playback will work in the Boxee Box (simply start a recording, then go to the Recordings section in the Boxee Box app and playback the live TV recording).  If you'd like to spend effort on this project, I'd recommend supporting Derek and Dan in trying to get the EPG working (both from a UI and a python API perspective).

[Michael Reid]

We could just do this

1) user navigates to EPG

2) user find what they want to watch

3) when user hits play

  -- start a manual recording

  -- tune boxee to the manual recording after a small dealy

This way we don't waste much time on "liveTV" but at least give the appearence of livetv support for now.

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Brian Schneider <lehi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Darci - that's fantastic... great to hear live TV playback works in the Box!

Dan - Completely agree w/ Derek... I wouldn't spend too much effort on this for now given live TV playback will work in the Boxee Box (simply start a recording, then go to the Recordings section in the Boxee Box app and playback the live TV recording).  If you'd like to spend effort on this project, I'd recommend supporting Derek and Dan in trying to get the EPG working (both from a UI and a python API perspective).

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~Mike

[David Hamann]

This sounds like the best solution I've heard. Not too difficult and we
don't reinvent any wheels.

[Daniel Kohler]

Yeah, this is what would have to be done even if we went the HTTP live streaming route.

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[Michael Reid]

seems pretty straight forward...i suppose we could spend a little time figuring out how to on exit or on livetv playback cancel the manual recording...but its probably not necessary at this point.

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~Mike

[Dan Kohler]

I can buy into that, but just out of curiosity, do we know what formats live TV playback actually works for on the Box?  (mpeg, h264, ts, etc)  If we're going to support live TV playback, we're going to want to try to support at least the popular formats.

-Dan

[Darci Hanning]

The HD-PVR does mpeg/ts. Not sure how else to test "live" files -- wouldn't it be an all or nothing kind of deal or does the format impact this capability?

Cheers,
Darci

On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 2:54 PM, Dan Kohler <dkko...@gmail.com> wrote:

I can buy into that, but just out of curiosity, do we know what formats live TV playback actually works for on the Box?  (mpeg, h264, ts, etc)  If we're going to support live TV playback, we're going to want to try to support at least the popular formats.

-Dan

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[Darci Hanning]

Hi all,

One last update for Live TV access: I did some more testing tonight by starting several recordings during the last 10 minutes or so of a TV show. Then on the Boxee Box (v1.2 final) I navigated via Files>>Browse>>Network and was able to play them over SMB (not from the SageTV app). I had one or two "glitches" (may have been related to wireless connection, may be related to new SMB code they've rolled out) but overall it worked fine. Boxee kept playing the file to the end even after SageTV was done recording the show.

Still issues with getting playback via the SageTV app on v1.2 final. I will do my best to follow-up with Boxee via their issue tracker (http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-10848).

Cheers,
Darci

[Brian Schneider]

I noticed Boxee responded to the JIRA ticket I created earlier indicating they are only using JIRA to track bugs and not feature requests, and that feature requests should be submitted through their forum.

Thus I created the post below to track the need to update the client version to support playback of live TV.  For any/all of you that are part of this project and/or reading this, can you be sure to go to this thread, vote for it, comment on it, drive traffic to it, aka... do everything to get Boxee's attention! :)

http://forums.boxee.tv/showthread.php?p=205830

[Tom Miranda]

I noticed this in the release notes for the 1.2 firmware that was just released:

It also marked the launch of the new Boxee Media Manager to stream content from your PC or Mac to your Boxee devices more easily. 

Will this make playing back live TV any easier?

[Darci Hanning]

But gut says no but I don't know all the gory details (nothing very technical about BMM has been shared).

I will say this, it's a bigger resource hog than AirVideo when transcoding on the fly for streaming to the iPad on the LAN. It's also an additional program that needs to be installed, doesn't work on Linux currently, and some users have had problems with setup and actual use (e.g folders/files they add to it, don't show up on the Boxee Box).

I can do some more testing on various formats (ts/mpeg2, mov, mkv/h.264, etc and anything else folks want to send me to try) if that would be helpful (I make a pretty good tester :) ).

I have both an AMD  Phenom 9500 quadcore @ 2.2Ghz running Vista x86 (+ nVidia GeForce 8500GT) and an Intel Core Duo P8800 @ 2.66 running W7 x64 (+ nVidia GeForce GT230) to  test on and my media files reside on a WHS v1.

I could also test to see if it makes the Boxee PC client happier with growing files.

Let me know!

Cheers,
Darci

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[Tom Miranda]

We really appreciate all your support Darci.  Bartsidee and xmcnuggetx have also been very helpful. :)

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[Darci Hanning]

Literally anything I can do to help (besides write code, I tried to play with Boxee's "API" once but ugh!)  So... is that a "yes" to testing (so I can plan my day)? Or a thanks, but we'll not use BMM? ;)

Cheers,
D

[Karl Ricker]

I think the main thing with that announcement is Boxee having better support for files that are "in use", either being recorded or transcoded on the fly. I don't think we need to deal with the BMM. At least I hope not.

[Darci Hanning]

I'm hoping against hope that when v1.x is released for computers that the "play live files" issue goes away for them. A lot changed under the hood for 1.x for the Box, including I'm sure, the internal player...

On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 8:22 AM, Karl Ricker <kjri...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think the main thing with that announcement is Boxee having better support for files that are "in use", either being recorded or transcoded on the fly. I don't think we need to deal with the BMM. At least I hope not.

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[Brian Schneider]

Per my previous post, I just checked in r108 where I added "watch now" functionality to the EPG (I haven't been able to confirm though as I don't have a boxee box, but in reading the logs, things seem to work OK)

Can someone with a Boxee Box try this out and see if it works?  Download r108, then simply click an airing on the EPG that is not yet recording and click Watch Now.  It should start the recording, then play the media file in the Boxee Player.  I'll need to clean some things up but let me know what happens.

[Tom Miranda]

Brian,

I just uploaded a modified version.  I streamlined a few things, take a look at the diff for details.

I can't get it to work and I'm not sure why.  The recording starts but then Boxee can't open the file.  My testing has been on a PC client, I'll check later if it works on the Box.


18:03:05 T:5012 M:747028480  NOTICE: Creating InputStream
18:03:06 T:5012 M:747286528   ERROR: CWINFileSMB: Unable to open file '\' Error '32
18:03:06 T:5012 M:747286528   ERROR: CDVDPlayer::OpenInputStream - error opening>>> [smb://192.168.1.104/f/Sage1/WESH2Newsat6PM-12623188-1.mpg]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 2:04 PM, Brian Schneider <lehi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Per my previous post, I just checked in r108 where I added "watch now" functionality to the EPG (I haven't been able to confirm though as I don't have a boxee box, but in reading the logs, things seem to work OK)

Can someone with a Boxee Box try this out and see if it works?  Download r108, then simply click an airing on the EPG that is not yet recording and click Watch Now.  It should start the recording, then play the media file in the Boxee Player.  I'll need to clean some things up but let me know what happens.

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[Darci Hanning]

It's a known issue that the PC version can not play open / growing files.

http://jira.boxee.tv/browse/BOXEE-10990

Cheers,
Darci

[Tom Miranda]

OK.  The kids are on the Box so I'll have to wait to test :)

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[Brian Schneider]

Yes keep us posted... we all know the boxee client won't work, thus my ask for someone to test on the Box.

Darci - want to give it a try with r109?

[Darci Hanning]

Yeah, I'm going to try a little later tonight (I'm out on the west coast) though Tom isn't having much luck so far...

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Brian Schneider <lehi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes keep us posted... we all know the boxee client won't work, thus my ask for someone to test on the Box.

Darci - want to give it a try with r109?

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[Tom Miranda]

Breakthrough!  I can now select a show from the EPG and play it "live".  This is done using Brian's very clever idea of creating a manual recording and then playing back the in-progress recording.

We're not out of the woods yet, we still need to figure out a way to handle conflicts that may be generated when the user plays something from the EPG.  I also need to add some cleanup code so wehn a user stops watching the manual recording is cancelled and the residual file is removed.

[Michael Reid]

No my name is Mike not Dave   :-)

glad it works.  now if i can get over this hurdle with the favorites...i should be able to get it working tonight Tom using your idea of window properties rather than getting focused items on windows that are in the background..

ill update ya at the end of the night

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~Mike

[Michael Reid]

Hey everyone!  I just got something working using a method i discovered buried in the boxee forums.  bascially what you can do is you can setup a list of items to pass from one window to another.  these items can be whatever you want.  This seems to be the correct way to handle the favorites, but i wanted to make everyone aware of it in case you haven't used it yet.  It may make your lives easier.  what you do is this:

//Calling Window

params = mc.Parameters()

params['FavoriteID'] = FavID

mc.GetApp().ActivateWindow(14031, params)

//code in window 14031 in my case to retrieve parms

params = mc.GetApp().GetLaunchedWindowParameters()

mc.LogDebug("SageBoxee: Favorite ID = " + params['FavoriteID'])

Thats it..I can now pass an entire array of objects from one window to another....hopefully someone else find this useful as well

[Brian Schneider]

Great find Michael... that makes my life so much easier.  I used in the new r111 I just checked in to display future and past airings.

[Michael Reid]

Awesome!  glad someone else found it useful as well.  It certianly made mine easier.  I was having a heck of a time trying to get the mc.getfocuseditem to work from the favorites screen after leaving the initial screen and doing to the edit screen...this way just seems cleaner to me.

Hopefully we won't run into any gotchas down the road.

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Brian Schneider <lehi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Great find Michael... that makes my life so much easier.  I used in the new r111 I just checked in to display future and past airings.

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~Mike

[Tom Miranda]

Yes, very nifty.  Can you post it in the "Tips and Tricks" thread so we have all of these things in one place?

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[Michael Reid]

yup i will do that first thing tonight before working on the favorites.

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