Krasimir said:
1. Is it possible to do multicast over the internet? [in general, and in my specific case, I'm on a city LAN, sharing IPs differing by just a digit (192.168.x.xx8 and 192.168.x.xx9 me/my office for instance)].
2. Is it possible to do multicast from a TV tuner over the LAN?
said:
1. No
2. Yes, if your LAN can do it.
1: YES you CAN.... j-b, but not in the general case were your average large world ISP turns off Multicasting at their end by default to and from the end users CPE kit sat on your desk.
2: yes, but again your thinking is wrong, its NOTHING to do with your TV tuner as such, only the output part of any streaming matters.
right, assuming the ISP is one of the MANY antiquated vendors that go out of their way to turn off the multicasting protocol on all thier ISp grade routers and related kit to your end users and back, YOU NEED a simple Multicast tunnel app that you can run at your master server end and and the end user client end.
dont confuse server/client as only meaning ISP end, its NOT, client server as in any two end points, are fine as is your master homePC and your seperate ISP business PC on the other end of the/any ISP WAN wire.
all you need for basic Multicast video is a copy of the really old but very good java "Mtunnel" app
http://www.cdt.luth.se/~peppar/progs/mTunnel/ and VLC to multicast serve it on one end, and a VLC client conected to that multicast IP +port at the other end of the Multicast over the web Mtunnel.
run it on your main master PC thats connected to your home PC Broadband connection and run your VLC on there too to keep it simple for now.
then you need to also run another copy on your client side/office PC thats trying to see and stream that multicast video running on your master home PC/vlc over say a 224.0.0.1:1234 multicast address.
masterhomePC<===>VLC-video-multicastAddress(224.0.0.1:1234)<===>Mtunnel
Mtunnel-server<====>ISPWAnipAddress<===>otherISPWANipAddress<===>Mtunnel-client
Mtunnel-client<===>VLC-video-multicastAddress(224.0.0.1:1234)<===>MtunnelMasterOfficePC
type of basic connection flow,(hope this is clear enough after you read and try it onyour two ISP connections etc ?)
if your master home PC has an IP of say 192.168.0.1 for itsLAn address and also your ISP given IP connected to your BB modem, just tell the client Mtunnel to use the remote master/homePC ISP given IP address as its other ned of the tunnel and all your master/homepC Multicast traffic thats streaming will be availabl to you ober the Mtunnel too.
masterhomePC ISP given ip= 194.168.0.222/LAN ip 192.168.0.1
officePC ISP given ip= 194.168.0.223/192.168.0.22
so all your masterhomePC LAn multicast on say 192.168.0.1:1234 can also be seen on the ISP given 194.168.0.222:1234 IF you have the Mtunnel running (see its simple internel web GUI and readme for how to change the real IP addresses to use etc as its been a while and im going off memory here right now as i cant be bothered to runand walk you through it right now....
so if your runing the second "Mtunnel" on your seperate ISp connected office PC and its pointing to your seperate masterhomePCs ISp given WAN side 194.168.0.222 at port 1234 then your remote VLC udp://224.0.0.1:1234 going through the Mtunnel looking at your 194.168.0.1 master homePC Mtunnel
if that makes sense to you.
the key point is your connecting both ends of your Multicast tunnel and passing your multicast data streams through that over the Mtunnel IPv4/6 UDP unicast web traffic....
without the Mtunnel you cant do any of this OC, and im not sure you can make Mtunnel do point to multipoint multicast so its rather basic, but if you were to try it and give out your Mtunneled Ip and port No's your using we could all try it with our Mtunels and see if we can get your single feed to all our VLC clients, perhaps if you were to fill in the "SAP" we could just use that to connect if we know your ISP given IP OC....
for the TV tunner part, its simple, if you can play it you can clone it and retransmit it over multicast IPs simple enough.
the one BIG problem seems to be V9 VLC your forced to use if you take the front page as gospel (we have droped V8 so use V9 instead etc)seems to be FULL OF basic BUGS that didnt effect the old VLC AND CRASHES and hangs several of my LAN PCs A LOT OF THE TIME, so using the now unsuported V8* would be in everyones basic MMS/UDP/Multicast MTUNNEL testing interests for now. as would a IRC channel for anyone interested to pop into and try this web Multicasting tunneling video streaming AVC/H.264+AAC codecs at 512Kbit/s digital scifi TV would be a very good thing to test stream as everyone likes scifi for testing
OC
its a crazy thing to drop the old working VLC when your new V9* VLC doesnt work right, UDP, MMS: streaming being a case in point.
i keep finding lots of bad MMS and UDP unicast web streams that crash VLC 9.6 /7 when im trying to get it working with Tversity and the xbox 360, crashes all the time from the GUI etc but thats another story....
http://viewmy.tv/view-online-tv.aspx
plays on the PC from tversity, try and take it as a direct input for VLC 9* use and feed that input as a local output for tversity to take as its LAN Ip input and pop it goes.....
VLC 9 NEEDS some serious work to make it as rock solid as VLC 8 used to be for basic UDP/MMS output feeding...
AS a side note J-b, id really like to see a fully working "Mtunnel" type Multicasting tunnel included as standard in say the generic VLM base code, to finally make tunneled Multicasting video streaming a defacto standard for VLC people on any platform to try and use it,if only for simple point to point client/server multicast web streaming...
OC if web servers were to finally take this Multicast Mtunnel standard adn install it there, anyone could then connect to them and finally do away with the antiquated low quality 256kbit Mpeg2 unicast streams that are seen and almost unusable for Tversity to xbox360 HDTV upscaling today....
by far the better option OC is a real point to multipoint mass uptake of single multicast tunneled AVC/AAC 512kbit/s+ DVB-T tunning and streaming for many users to then connect to as a generic option inside a new V9 VLC trial codebase and beyond (the old MBONE school inovation masterclass for the P2p +multicast generations).
the possabilitys for a working Multicast tunnel inside VLC as a generic thing is just so vast, and would potentially save masses of bandwidth on peoples upload streams serving lots of VLC multicast tunneled clients ,please consider putting this basic Multicast tunnel option plus lots more later in there ASAP