HOWTO Stream TV tuner card, watch TV at work, channel change

[batch]

First of all, I am grateful to you people who answer questions on forums like this, without knowledgeable folks helping newbies out, we'd probably all be newbies, hehe. Once I found VLC and realized it was the greatest program ever created, I had to figure out how to use it to watch TV while at work, and I was successful. Thanks to all you who have posted information on this already. I'm an MCSE, CCNA, A+ certified networking support technician, and I couldn't understand much of the information posted on this topic, so I decided if I ever got it working, I would share the wealth...

First you need a capture card, I bought an ALL-IN-WONDER PCI card from Best Buy for ~$80 with a $20 mail in rebate. I had a VideoHighwayXtreme TV card, but due to lack of current drivers, it would not work correctly. I have a SB Live! soundcard. The ALL-IN-WONDER has a line out on the back of the card, which you need to run to the line-in on your soundcard. Once you do that, you need to open volume control (Start, Run, sndvol32), change to the recording controls, Select Line-In, and set the volume for full. This will get the TV audio working for you.

I have Road Runner at home with about a 45kbytes upload speed. I decided I would settle on a 200k video stream, and a 64k audio stream. I could have gone higher, but I had buffering issues at work, until I lowered it. I chose DIV3 for my video codec, and MP3 for audio.

My main reason for wanting to do this was to watch TV on my pocket PC. I got video working right away, but no audio with the windows media player 9 that came on my pocket pc. After a lot of research, I learned that WMP doesn't support streaming MP3. You can play an MP3 locally, but you can't stream one. Thankfully to someone else's posting on this site, I discovered 'The Core Pocket Media Player' or TCPMP. Google that and download it. I found version 0.66. It works FLAWLESSLY, I am SO PLEASED! Video looks super clear and audio is great too. In the TCPMP player, go to File, Open File, and put in 'mms://your.ip.address.athome:80' and hit 'go'. I'm getting ahead of myself, sorry.

Running audio/video on port 80 is great because lots of corporate firewalls block other ports, but almost all of them allow you to browse the internet. By running on port 80, you will be able to watch TV with no trouble if you can browse websites.

For several days I opened VLC, File, Open Capture Device, Refresh, Refresh, Configure, Stream Output, Settings, blah blah blah... and then I found out about .m3u files, which are playlists.

Here is what my playlist looks like: (with 3 channels listed for example)

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:0,7 - ABC
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-vdev=ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Capture
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-adev=SB Live! Audio [D400]
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-size=
#EXTVLCOPT:no-dshow-config
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-channel=7
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-country=1
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-input=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sout=#transcode{vcodec=DIV3,vb=200,scale=1,acodec=mp3,ab=64,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,url=:80}}
dshow://
#EXTINF:0,8 - TCT
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-vdev=ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Capture
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-adev=SB Live! Audio [D400]
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-size=
#EXTVLCOPT:no-dshow-config
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-channel=8
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-country=1
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-input=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sout=#transcode{vcodec=DIV3,vb=200,scale=1,acodec=mp3,ab=64,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,url=:80}}
dshow://
#EXTINF:0,10 - Fox
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-vdev=ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Capture
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-adev=SB Live! Audio [D400]
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-size=
#EXTVLCOPT:no-dshow-config
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-channel=10
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-country=1
#EXTVLCOPT:dshow-tuner-input=1
#EXTVLCOPT:sout=#transcode{vcodec=DIV3,vb=200,scale=1,acodec=mp3,ab=64,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=mmsh,mux=asfh,url=:80}}
dshow://

You need to Settings, Add Interface, Web Interface on your server to turn on the web interface. You can set this permanently by going to Settings, Preferences, Interface, General, and checking the 'HTTP remote control interface' box (do that). Under General, HTTP, with advanced options box checked, you can set the host address to be on a certain port. I put my home computers IP address 192.168.1.100:9000. The ":9000" is the port number. It defaults to :8080, but my router's remote access is on that port, so I needed to change it.

As of now, if I open the .m3u file I created with VLC with Remote Desktop (xp @ home) I can go to the Internet at work and put in my cable modem IP address:9000 and I have a list of these 3 stations that I can click on. once I click a station and then use TCPMP on my Pocket PC or Windows Media Player on my desktop, I can watch that channel, and by just clicking on another channel in the playlist, it will change on the fly.

Thank you whoever the author of this wonderful program is, I am REALLY happy to be able to do this, all my tech buddies are so impressed, hehe. Thanks to all those who take the time to answer stupid questions from newbies. I've seen a lot of folks with the same problems I've had, and they didn't get any answer, but honestly they probably didn't do a lot of looking on their own. I was so determined to get this to work that I didn't quit until I got it, and it only took a few days anyway

I'll try and check this post and see if anyone has any trouble/questions. Thanks again and God bless!

[Guest]

Does anyone know if this might work with a Hauppauge 250?

[tsugantino]

batch,

Thank you for the write up!

I find everything works pretty good minus the fact that our capture card doesn't stream with version 8.2. I find I can only do it w/ v8.1. Did you run into this problem, too?

[tsugantino]

batch,

Ok, I figured out alot of where I was going wrong. After closer reading I found that you were using mms and I kept referring to http. Plus, to get that pocket media player to work you need to use mms.

I finally got my capture card to stream w/ 8.2, most of my issues were getting familiar with the settings and swapping between 8.1 and 8.2 on both the server and client sides. Removing 8.1 (to only use 8.2) should've been done a long time ago.

I find though that VideoLan 8.2 doesn't work with mms using asf, but Windows Media Player does. Using http ts worked fine with VideoLan 8.2.

Now I just have to figure where I'm going wrong with the RC interface.

[batch]

Tsugantino, interesting, I had no trouble with 8.2 using mms + asf. I tested it because I'm having periodic problems getting sound from the line in. I've tried multiple capture cards and sound cards, so I think it's in the software, but it usually works.

RC is great, being able to change channels is real nice.

This should work with any capture card, guest, I don't think which one matters.

[batch]

Disregard my previous comment about the software being at fault regarding my sound problems, that was my dumb mistake. I realize that after reloading windows thinking something was wrong with my xp load, my Sound Blaster Live! soundcard was redetected under a slightly different name. I was using my playlist to get it started. When I manually opened my capture device, did a refresh, I notice that was showed up as my audio device had a different name. As soon as I changed that, audio came right back. I will say that I never got audio to work with my Santa Cruz sound card, which I like much better than the old SB Live!

[Guest]

Did you use a router at home? If so did you have to open ports 80 and 9000 on your router?

[Helmut Forren]

Batch,

Your watching TV from work is very close to what I would like to do, including doing so from my Pocket PC. You answered most questions, but I still have one more. What kind of server are you running at home, with the capture card plugged into it? More correctly, what kind of server can *I* run? I would like to do it with *both* a WinXP machine and an Unknown/Linux machine. However, poking around in the manual for VLC, it seems that capturing live video only works with GNU/Linux. Of course, that same manual said it only forks for particular cards, not "almost any" as in your experience.

FYI, here's what I'm up to.

A) I would like to *test* using a WinXP machine. I would like to *implement* using a DigitalAvnew NetPlace server (http://www.digitalavnew.com/UPBprodn107.htm), which runs some flavor of Linux, perhaps a customized GNU/Linux.

B) I'm really looking to watch my TiVo, not my TV. I want to see the various TiVo menus and screens that one sees while programming a TiVo to record, or searching a TiVo to play something previously recorded. Now, this "watching" refers to the direction from TiVo-to-web. In the reverse direction, from web-to-TiVo, I plan on using the NetPlace server, a part of my upcoming home automation system, to blast IR commands to control those various TiVo menus and screens. Thus, with the two directions together, I'll be able to program my TiVo from the office. (Well, actually, the [home] office is downstairs from the TiVo. What I really want to be able to do is program the TiVo while on vacation in Europe.

This and any other advice you (or others) can give is GREATLY appreciated.

-Helmut

[Guest]

Helmut Forren,

In response to some questions you had:

What kind of server are you running at home, with the capture card plugged into it? More correctly, what kind of server can *I* run? I would like to do it with *both* a WinXP machine and an Unknown/Linux machine. However, poking around in the manual for VLC, it seems that capturing live video only works with GNU/Linux. Of course, that same manual said it only forks for particular cards, not "almost any" as in your experience.

The setup I currently use:
Dell Dimension Pentium 3 1ghz w/ 512mb memory
ATI Radeon 9200 PCI w/ 128mb memory
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
40gb EIDE Hard Drive
Generic DVD-ROM Drive
Linksys 10/100 Fast Ethernet v5.1
Windows XP Professional w/ Service Pack 2

I've found I'm capable of having two people comfortably view the broadcast w/o buffering, three with buffering. I think my biggest bottle neck is the internet connection. Sometimes during the day and evening performance varies, that's why I think a faster machine wouldn't do me much good. My cable provider is generally best in the late evening.

To get normal cable tv broadcasted over the web (and to change channels) I setup IIS and made a simple web page that manages playlists. If you want to schedule recording, I would suggest adding functionality to the playlist file to also output to a file (I haven't gotten that far yet, but plan to).

You should be able to broadcast the current channel from your TiVo, but changing the channels might also involve managing an IR Blaster which I hear isn't so bad, but involves additional coding.

[Helmut Forren]

Guest,

Thanks for the response.

FYI, I already plan to do the ir blasting. That's built into the NetPlace server.

Also, funny... I re-read my post where you quoted it. I wrote "it only forks for particular cards". Obviously, I meant 'works', but with the typo 'forks' it brings in a wealth of new meaning!

-Helmut

[ScottKin]

Batch...

Thanks for the post you made here! I've been trying to get a similar situation going for my home, but have minimal success.

To Everyone: I'm using an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9000PRO Card, and I seem to be having troubles in getting VLC configured to use this card. I seem to be lost in configuring the Stream Output. When looking at the messages, the only things that are being enumerated are my WebCam and my SBLive soundcard.

If *anyone* could be of any help or assistance, please let me know by responding here or emailing me.

Thanks!

--ScottKin