[mythtv] Possible playback scenarios for the iPhone

Kyle Walker kylehwalker at gmail.com
Mon Jul 21 21:52:30 UTC 2008


> but there's no support for streaming mutable content like an rtsp:// stream.

This is the part people are missing that Chase is having a problem
with.  I was trying to get some basic live streaming to watch
basketball games while on the road a few months ago and I ran into
this problem.  It is trivial to pipe from /dev/video0 through ffmpeg
to a iPhone compatible format, and then save this to a file that can
be accessed over http.  The problem is that ffmpeg doesn't write the
header until then end of the transcode, so the media player on the
phone doesn't know how to seek.  You have to transcode the entire file
before you can begin streaming.

You might be able to use a seamless playlist alternating between two
~10 second files... stream to the phone from one file while you are
saving to the other, and then alternate.  That is pretty hackish
though.  Everything would be delayed 10 seconds, and I don't know if
you can even do seamless playlists for video.

Apple probably left rtsp out intentionally.  It makes it too easy to
stream stuff off of your home machine, so won't need more storage on
your phone.  It makes watching DVR'd TV shows less convenient than
iTunes... same reason AppleTV isnt a DVR.  It might be the reason your
remote still is not in the app store :)


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