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Ok, this thread is all about using Orb (or possibly other streaming media applications) on your Titan.
I currently use Orb 2.0 to stream all of my media (pictures, music, movies, videos, documents, etc) to my Titan. It works pretty well, but Windows Media player is the default player, and it's somewhat choppy and a resource hog. Some people have reported good results using TCPMP for playing media with Orb. I also use Pocket MVP for movies from my storage card, so I was wondering if that may be a good alternative as well.
My question is...what Codec is used by default to stream media?
What file associations do I need to change in TCPMP (or any other media player)?
What other codecs work, and how well (flash, etc.)
So far I have been unable to get Live TV to work through Orb, but I believe that may be a problem on the desktop app side.
With EVDO and RevA speeds getting better all the time, this is quickly going from a frustrating experiment (try watching a 2 hour movie with it stopping every 3 minutes to cache data)...to a very good replacement for having to store huge amounts of media using precious memory on your device.
I only have experience using TCPMP so I can't comment on Pocket MVP, but it works great and my be able to replace Pocket MVP for your sd card movies.
I use TCPMP v0.72 RC1 (attached below).
I check all the file type associations in TCPMP except picture files.
I set the "Manual A/V offset +/-" to -400 msec to fix A/V sync.
I change the video driver to "GDI".
Orb streams .asf files by default but if you're using WM6 or WM6.1 you'll need to copy the WM5 WMV9 codecs (also attached) to your pda's \Windows directory for Orb's .asf's to play. Be sure to restart TCPMP after this.
When TCPMP is used with the latest FlashVideoBundle (also attached) it also allows the playing of YouTube (and other) videos from pie. Just run the .cab from \My Documents, soft reset, and click a YouTube vid.
Not sure what your Orb live TV issue is, but remember only one application can have control of a capture card at a time.
Cool, thanks. I think that I figured out my TV issue. I set it up to use the ATI MPEG encoder thats built into my All-In-Wonder Video card, and it works. I'll just have to see how that works with Divix and MPEG movies, but I would think that it should be better since its a dedicated hardware encoder vs software.
I just began using Orb yesterday and it is great!!! My car stereo has built in bluetooth, so as long as Im in an EVDO area, I have access to my entire mp3 collection on the road now.
So, how well does the bluetooth work for you for stereo? With all of the bluetooth issues, I had put off buying a pair of stereo headphones....but there have definately been some improvements. At least now I can use Voice Command with some reliability
Well this looks very interesting as a solution. Does anyone have PIE remembering the password for ORB? I can not get my Titan PIE to remember the password no matter what I do, so I was thinking I need to switch to a different browser.
These aren't free, but you can try them and see if you like them:
(These solutions are for if you don't like using PIE to access ORB)
PocketStream Server:
This program comes with a GUI (although a bit choppy) for the phone, so all you need to do is connect to your computer with the app and it lists all your music/video files. It is streamed with TCPMP.
LobsterTunes:
This is what I use. Currently it only supports streaming music. It is a uPnP (Universal Plug&Play) app that can connect to any media server that supports uPnP (Orb, WMP11, TVersity). It auto sets up for you so you don't need to input anything. Just load it up and it will auto search for your computer networked sharing folder. The GUI is a lot faster than PocketStream, but it uses WMP as a backend to stream music (not changable).
Will Lobstertunes support the Internet Radio Stations under my ORB account, and thus stream them? I am all for trying something else that will work more efficiently with ORB (or any other pnp server software - as long as it works with all modalities of the pnp software).
wow... glad I came across this thread... lobster sounds EXACTLY what I was looking for... streaming media in car just isn't viable... the funny thing is, evdo is MUCH faster than streaming bandwidth but you never take advantage of that extra bandwidth when you're streaming...
this looks awesome.. it downloads your songs in the background so no skipping between towers!
Lobstertunes does support radio stations, but I'm not sure if it *sees* the ORB radio stations. Best thing to do would be to create a playlist with the radio station on it. I haven't tried it before because I use TCPMP for radio.
this looks awesome.. it downloads your songs in the background so no skipping between towers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's one thing I like about it. It always downloads half your available storage memory, so when it reaches that threshold, it will just overwrite previous files so you don't have to worry about wasting space.
I also came across this software:
http://www.pocket-tunes.com/
and it looks pretty slick lol, but I'm not sure if it'll work on the Titan. Maybe I'll give it a try sometime tonight. I'm looking for something to replace LobsterTunes because although it works, it's still a little slow in my opinion.
I've been using ORB since the mogul came out and previously on my Treo 700wx.
I do have to admit my 4 year old has used it more than I have...the quality while traveling on the interstate is quite impressive.
I do have to try the tcpmp, maybe it will put it over the top.
My only failure with ORB 2.0 and the old version is neither will record for me, but I'm sure it's my fault.
orb is good... I like it.. I just wish there was a software front-end for it for the ppc..
I was really excited to get lobstertunes a try but it simply does not work on my device... not quite sure why but it crashes during the login process.
Zenoran said:
orb is good... I like it.. I just wish there was a software front-end for it for the ppc..
I was really excited to get lobstertunes a try but it simply does not work on my device... not quite sure why but it crashes during the login process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I found that error too, one way to fix it is to open up lobsterconfig.txt from within the install directory on your PPC and edit the line from /localtest=false to /localtest=true
Don't have the config file on your phone? There should be one in x:\program files\ElectricPocket\Lobster just edit the line and transfer the file to your PPC.
Only been playing with it for a little bit, but there's a new VLC compatible streaming client available on the Market called VLC Stream & Convert.
It allows you to run VLC on a client on your lan (be sure to add the Web control interface from VIEW/ADD INTERFACE) and connect to it. You can either remote control VLC from the phone....or..you can stream video to your phone from the client side app with a simple filesystem browser.
Though the realtime conversion and streaming isn't the best quality it's most definitely handy and orders of magnitude more seamless than dealing with DLNA.
Maybe everyone else isn't a hardcore media geek with terabytes of video spread about a home lan like me. But this addition to the market makes me happy!
Thought I'd share.
Scott
This looks really cool. Will definitely try this tomorrow after work!
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
masterotaku said:
Only been playing with it for a little bit, but there's a new VLC compatible streaming client available on the Market called VLC Stream & Convert.
It allows you to run VLC on a client on your lan (be sure to add the Web control interface from VIEW/ADD INTERFACE) and connect to it. You can either remote control VLC from the phone....or..you can stream video to your phone from the client side app with a simple filesystem browser.
Though the realtime conversion and streaming isn't the best quality it's most definitely handy and orders of magnitude more seamless than dealing with DLNA.
Maybe everyone else isn't a hardcore media geek with terabytes of video spread about a home lan like me. But this addition to the market makes me happy!
Thought I'd share.
Scott
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may have just solved a problem for me... I am having some issues though.
I have it installed and working. I find my VLC player through the app and can start videos no problem, but there is no audio.
What AAC encoder are you using on your system? Im running on Win7 and cant seem to get it working.
ritalin said:
You may have just solved a problem for me... I am having some issues though.
I have it installed and working. I find my VLC player through the app and can start videos no problem, but there is no audio.
What AAC encoder are you using on your system? Im running on Win7 and cant seem to get it working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On all the PC's on the home lan I now only ever install VLC, Media Player Classic Home Cinema, and FFDSHOW. VLC's built in AAC decoder generally handles things fine, but if it gets confused (in the case of some encodes with weird FOURCC headers) FFDSHOW usually picks up the slack externally.
I'll run through my collection (it's well over 3 terabytes now so it might take a bit) and see if I run across anything with AAC that this stumbles over. I'm running Win7 x64 on this laptop, so it'll be my guinea pig.
I have a good idea of a few known encodes I have with weird AAC audio header info, primarily because they also won't play natively correctly in the phone's built in video player or rock player. I'll let you know what I find out.
EDIT: Well that didn't take long. It seems that the same encodes with .AAC audio that give the built in player grief (as well as Rockplayer) also refuse to have their audio play correctly in this streaming app. Even more interesting, these all play natively within VLC on the desktop. However, VLC, FFDSHOW, and my universal backup plan when encountering weird stuff that won't play (KMPlayer) all use LIBFAAD for .AAC decoding. Upon further investigation it appears that some .AAC profiles (there are actually six baseline types of .AAC audio...go figure) aren't properly supported by Android's native .aac parser (found this info on DoubleTwists support forums).
Looks like this is a native flaw in Android itself at this point. Going to investigate further. Thank god that there are literally only a handful of encodes in my collection that have this problem or I'd be pulling my hair out.
Can someone show me how to use this to stream over 3G??
I opened ports on my router and got my WAN IP entered but it won't let me connect.
Did you enable the Web Interface in VLC on the client PC? It is not on by defaut.
Start VLC on a PC on your lan, go to the VIEW menu....ADD INTERFACE...WEB INTERFACE. With that selected the android client should automatically find the VLC instance running on your lan connected PC. This assumes no additional firewall is blocking the app on the PC.
I got it working pretty good using wifi inside my network, so I think VLC is setup properly.
What I'm trying to do is to stream through t-mobile 3G.
I did the port forwarding in my router, but couldn't get the app to connect my home PC via 3G.
I've been able to get it to connect via 3G here, though only HTTP audio streaming seems to work. RTSP video streaming seems to be broken via 3g, and again this appears to be an Android issue from what I'm reading.
vcxzfdsa said:
I got it working pretty good using wifi inside my network, so I think VLC is setup properly.
What I'm trying to do is to stream through t-mobile 3G.
I did the port forwarding in my router, but couldn't get the app to connect my home PC via 3G.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
masterotaku said:
I've been able to get it to connect via 3G here, though only HTTP audio streaming seems to work. RTSP video streaming seems to be broken via 3g, and again this appears to be an Android issue from what I'm reading.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From the dev's site, found here
"Why does rtsp streaming not work over 3G?
Some operators don't allow rtsp on their network. Http streaming should work instead but for videos you can only stream the audio track."
If its true that t-mobile is blocking RTSP then that sucks. Im going to play with it tomorrow and see for myself.
If this doesnt work then Im back to square one. I really wanted to find a way to use the Twonky media server I already have setup and streaming. I have been streaming videos to friends and family for about half a year now. My Fios 30mb up 30mb down even allows me to stream 720p content over UPNP without so much as a hiccup.
First person that can manage to remove the wifi only option in AllShare gets access to my collection. . I have been trying to find it but im not really sure what im looking for in the code.
First question:
does Android support video playback of multicast UDP streams?
Second:
I am in need of a streaming video player for Android. I need it to do one or all of the following:
1. enter a URL/MRL to connect to
2. support UDP video streams (especially multicast)
3. support rtsp streams
The setup is this: I have a H.264 video encoder outputting UDP unicast and/or multicast video to a LAN. I have X number of android handsets connecting via wifi to the LAN to receive the streaming video.
However, I am unable to find any player that will receive the UDP multicast or unicast video. The current undesirable workaround is to use something like VLC to "re-stream" the UDP stream in an RTSP format. RTSP is the only format that I have been able to achieve playback success with.
The only two players I have been able to get working with rtsp streams (manually entered URL/MRL) is vPlayer and VLC stream and Convert. I don't want to use VLC stream and Convert as it's tied to VLC.
vPlayer's video playback is poor, no matter what the settings are. it glitches/pixelates, even with buffering enabled, whereas VLC S&C works quite well.
I have searched the market, xda, app brain, etc... without finding much. I have tried:
yxplayer, androstream, stream player, etc... only the two above got me anywhere.
Any suggestions on apps? And I don't mind if there is a server component that must be installed, but I prefer it to be a linux application.
The only other alternative is to roll my own video player, which I intend on doing, but I need to do an early proof of concept before going that route.
Thanks for any input.
bump...
can anyone at least answer the question about multicast UDP video?
did you ever find a solution for this? I am in the same boat.
no sorry, I have not found an answer.
This is for those of us that are like me and don't have a server deicated to there movies, music, tv shows, etc.
I was looking for a way to stream all the movies that I have on my desktop to my Prime when I am either home or away. I stumbled upon Skifta. Skifta is a program you run on your computer that will let you stream movies to/from any upnp/dlna device. Worked really well last night when I was testing it. I streamed day breakers from my computer to the Prime and played it in Dice Player. The picture quality was perfect. Like I was watching it on my computer. Sound was typical Prime sound. What really surprised me was how long it took to start the movie with load times and such, it was fast as hell. I click got a little buffering icon for about 30 seconds and then it was playing. Granted this was on my own wifi and I haven't tested elsewhere yet but it seems promising so far
Links:
Skifta For your phone
Skifta For your computer
Is it Free?
MrCapcom said:
Is it Free?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Can you play mkv and avi files from it? If so im downloading now!
MrCapcom said:
Can you play mkv and avi files from it? If so im downloading now!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The movie I watched was mkv with subs. Works flawlessly.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
I haven't tried an avi yet.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
The best app for streaming is PLEX hands down, streams anything you throw at it, wifi or 3g. great interface and pretty easy to setup. Android app costs $5 but definately worth it. Nothing else compares. I tried Skifta myself in the past but could never get it to work consistently outside my own wifi network.
i prefer VLC pro myself. plays anything and everything, and all you have to do is enable the Web Interface setting on VLC on your PC.
highly suggested to anyone who actually uses VLC on their PC.
Using windows media player to share your files, combined with "mynet" or whatever app it is that comes with the prime is all you need.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
Plex without a doubt
chrisaba1 said:
The best app for streaming is PLEX hands down, streams anything you throw at it, wifi or 3g. great interface and pretty easy to setup. Android app costs $5 but definately worth it. Nothing else compares. I tried Skifta myself in the past but could never get it to work consistently outside my own wifi network.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Plex is the best option. It is worth the $4.99 investment. You can use it for all forms of media and file types.
PLEX.......
Definitely looking for something like this. I have a WHS that is loaded with blu-ray movies. Will either of these play ISO files? I have My Movies installed on my home server so the files are ripped into iso.
smashingtool said:
Using windows media player to share your files, combined with "mynet" or whatever app it is that comes with the prime is all you need.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does mynet work outside of your wifi?
Any recommendations for streaming (off network) Video_TS/VOD movies? It looks like plex does not support it...
+ 1 for plex
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
When I get a chance I'll post my round up of over 20 applications I've tested for this purpose. Plex is towards the bottom of the list.
As a quick summary the two best are :
Qloud Media (free version also available, ad supported)
Lightweight/simple to use server
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (choose before video playback)
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Remembers last folder browsed
Remembers last video location
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Video quality is very good at higher bitrates. Bitrates are customizable (I recommend 3072 for WiFi Connections).
Very stable over low bandwidth 3G, streamed an entire 1080p movie over a ****ty Sprint connection that topped out at 350 k/b (player set for 250/kb streaming) with no problem.
Includes photo and mp3 streaming, both work great
Has a weird quirk that requires you to press the "play" button after using the seek bar on the video client.
Ability to setup multiple users/allowable shared folders
Only requires one TCP port forward for direct remote connection
Server component available only for Windows
Emit (free version also available, ad supported)
I actually found out about Emit after evaluating Qloud, it's probably my #2 choice under Qloud Media. Their featuresets are very similar and I'm betting they're based on similar technologies. I actually bought Emit too because I like the ability to stream via a PC web browser via the Emit web app. On higher end devices capable of high bitrates/resolutions Emit can produce better video quality than Qloud.
If I could only pick one video streamer to purchase I would still pick Qloud Media, the server and client are simply more stable (especially over 3G) and mature (Qloud client shows video thumbnails in the file browser and remembers last folder/video location between restarts). The Qloud photo viewer is a nice added bonus I actually use. On Emit one video I tested had no audio, restarting playback seemed to fix it, starting it again later had the same issue (may be a tablet issue). So if you get no audio try restarting playback.
Lightweight/simple to use server component
Capable of producing best video quality of all streamers tested
Video frame rate seemed a bit choppier when compared to Qloud
Can be very CPU intensive on the server side
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (single button switcher in video player)
Video quality is excellent at higher bitrates. Bitrates and resolution are customizable.
Includes MP3 streaming capability
Playback on PC via web client/Flash
Ability to pre encode video files for later download
Remote direct connection requires one TCP port (http streaming), UDP port range forward for RTSP fallback support (port numbers not customizable, what If I want to run multiple Emit servers?)
Server component available for Windows, MAC and Linux
Awesome info TalynOne, thanks! I tried Plex and since the folder I want to stream has many subfolders that change often it doesn't seem to be the app for me.
TalynOne said:
When I get a chance I'll post my round up of over 20 applications I've tested for this purpose. Plex is towards the bottom of the list.
As a quick summary the two best are :
Qloud Media (free version also available, ad supported)
Lightweight/simple to use server
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (choose before video playback)
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Remembers last folder browsed
Remembers last video location
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Video quality is very good at higher bitrates. Bitrates are customizable (I recommend 3072 for WiFi Connections).
Very stable over low bandwidth 3G, streamed an entire 1080p movie over a ****ty Sprint connection that topped out at 350 k/b (player set for 250/kb streaming) with no problem.
Includes photo and mp3 streaming, both work great
Has a weird quirk that requires you to press the "play" button after using the seek bar on the video client.
Ability to setup multiple users/allowable shared folders
Only requires one TCP port forward for direct remote connection
Server component available only for Windows
Emit (free version also available, ad supported)
I actually found out about Emit after evaluating Qloud, it's probably my #2 choice under Qloud Media. Their featuresets are very similar and I'm betting they're based on similar technologies. I actually bought Emit too because I like the ability to stream via a PC web browser via the Emit web app. On higher end devices capable of high bitrates/resolutions Emit can produce better video quality than Qloud.
If I could only pick one video streamer to purchase I would still pick Qloud Media, the server and client are simply more stable (especially over 3G) and mature (Qloud client shows video thumbnails in the file browser and remembers last folder/video location between restarts). The Qloud photo viewer is a nice added bonus I actually use. On Emit one video I tested had no audio, restarting playback seemed to fix it, starting it again later had the same issue (may be a tablet issue). So if you get no audio try restarting playback.
Lightweight/simple to use server component
Capable of producing best video quality of all streamers tested
Video frame rate seemed a bit choppier when compared to Qloud
Can be very CPU intensive on the server side
Works with every video I've thrown at it
Works with MKV embedded subtitles and SRT subtitles
Supports multiple MKV audio tracks (single button switcher in video player)
Video quality is excellent at higher bitrates. Bitrates and resolution are customizable.
Includes MP3 streaming capability
Playback on PC via web client/Flash
Ability to pre encode video files for later download
Remote direct connection requires one TCP port (http streaming), UDP port range forward for RTSP fallback support (port numbers not customizable, what If I want to run multiple Emit servers?)
Server component available for Windows, MAC and Linux
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would you mind if I put this in the OP?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Haro912 said:
Would you mind if I put this in the OP?
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure, go ahead.
What does it mean to "stream"? I have a server in my home that holds all my media, pictures, movies, documents, ya know everything. I downloaded the app ES File Explorer (free) and used the LAN mode to find my server, which listed all my shares. Navigate through the folders, find a movie I want to watch (AVI, MKV, WMV, MP4, WMV, etc) and click on it. Plays fine with MX Player. I didn't need any "streamer" software running on my PC or anything else running or to install. Why doesn't everyone use a method similar to this? I don't see the advantage to have to install additional streaming software on a PC to access media. Anyway, just curious.
When the MHL cable is used, are you able to view anything, or are you restricted to certain services?
For example, can you watch a program you are streaming, or can you only watch something stored on your device?
Also can the Media Link DLNA streamer be used in the same way?
Thanks.
the MHL box/cable will mirror your device display onto a tv - as in EVERYTHING. whereas DLNA will push only media files: specifically photos, music & supported video formats.
unfortunately, despite average reviews i took the plunge on the now relatively inexpensive HTC Media Link which has proven to dislike more standard video formats than it likes ... i seriously wish someone would build a working rom. such a good idea, so poorly implemented. i cannot comment on other dlna devices as i haven't used any, but it is a fantastic feature i hope develops into a standard.
HTC's implementation of DLNA is better than most, but its not HTC's problem, DLNA is the problem.
DLNAis a sorry attempt at normalizing UPNP. dlna is upnp with tons of restrictions. upnp showed some decent promise but dlna cuts through it with a meat cleaver in a bad attempt at specializing it for audio/video. because a/v manufacturers are backing DLNA it is getting more PR but IMO they should use upnp directly.
The issue with DLNA is that it is a limitted standard (doesn't support many codecs for example) and only works for content that is in the clear (i.e. not encyrpted). And the other is that the user interface for browsing is that of the client (TV for instance), which may be a sorry affair with a case of poorly implemented user interfaces