LinuxMCE Forums
General => Developers => Topic started by: Matthew on December 11, 2007, 10:01:39 pm
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LMCE supports lots of network Plug & Play. Does it support DLNA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Living_Network_Alliance)? Or even the actual UPNP standard, of which DLNA is a strict implementation?
DLNA support would mean that LMCE would itself become plug & play on networks with other DLNA equipment, whether DLNA clients or servers. LMCE installs could use various DLNA devices without sweating it. Is it already in there, or maybe just a little development away?
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search the forums, eg:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3441.0
search the code:
http://svn.charonmedia.org/trac.cgi/browser/vendor/pluto-lmce-branch/src/UPnP
you are a perl expert. Please extend Net::UPnP to include control point functionality.
best regards, Hari
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search the forums, eg:
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3441.0
search the code:
http://svn.charonmedia.org/trac.cgi/browser/vendor/pluto-lmce-branch/src/UPnP
Thanks for the pointer. Though UPNP isn't quite DLNA, and evidently LMCE UPNP isn't quite UPNP, though it does seem to (http://svn.charonmedia.org/trac.cgi/browser/vendor/pluto-lmce-branch/src/UPnP/src/libupnp/README) support control points. I have asked someone with superior UPNP experience, who seems to be working on that feature in LMCE, to go for full DLNA support.
you are a perl expert. Please extend Net::UPnP to include control point functionality.
OK, done ;) (http://search.cpan.org/~skonno/Net-UPnP-1.2.1/lib/Net/UPnP/ControlPoint.pm).
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Thanks for the pointer. Though UPNP isn't quite DLNA, and evidently LMCE UPNP isn't quite UPNP, though it does seem to (http://svn.charonmedia.org/trac.cgi/browser/vendor/pluto-lmce-branch/src/UPnP/src/libupnp/README) support control points. I have asked someone with superior UPNP experience, who seems to be working on that feature in LMCE, to go for full DLNA support.
you mean RonInSd: "3) Upgrade the UPnP services to support the RemoteUI part of UPnP. I am still doing some research into the UPnP RemoteUI specs. I know that some of the newer Media Extenders have some support for UPnP RemoteUI. "? Circular reference?
OK, done ;) (http://search.cpan.org/~skonno/Net-UPnP-1.2.1/lib/Net/UPnP/ControlPoint.pm).
ok, let me get things straight for you:
1.) the control point in libupnp (the intel library) does only support listing media
2.) Net::UPnP uses libupnp
3.) we need a media controller
4.) please read http://www.cidero.com/mediaController.html first
all clear?
hari
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all clear?
Not really. I never offered to do anything. All I did was ask whether DLNA is supported. You pointed me to a UPNP dependency thread, wherein I found someone better qualified than I to work on it, so I basically asked them the same question, as a means of encouraging them to do what evidently we both want, and what they're already doing. The other specific request that you came up with was that I extend Net::UPnP to support control points, which it already does.
So it's really unclear why you're beating up on me. Especially since you've done the opposite of answer my question of whether LMCE DLNA is "just around the corner", unless you were sending me a coded message that all it requires is fixing Net::UPnP in some way that seems to possibly be adding underlying control point support to libupnp, not the Perl library, or perhaps implement it in Perl. Am I starting to see a glimmer here?
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My system has Ushare http://ushare.geexbox.org/ (http://ushare.geexbox.org/) installed by default (I never added it) which claims to support DLNA. Perhaps making sure its working right would be a priority. And Myth's UPNP is also working. At least my Vista laptop finds it.
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Not really. I never offered to do anything.
sorry, i had the impression you wanted to get involved with developement
The other specific request that you came up with was that I extend Net::UPnP to support control points, which it already does.
not for AV control
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Not really. I never offered to do anything.
sorry, i had the impression you wanted to get involved with developement
I do want to get involved with development. But I never offered to implement DLNA. Perhaps I might have, if I'd gotten an encouraging response to my basic question of whether it was already working or not. But instead of "it needs N" or even a "not yet", or even no one responding because no one has anything constructive to say, I got a snide response that isn't encouraging at all. And it's hard to believe that you're "sorry", when you continued to attack me elsewhere (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3406.msg18014#msg18014) for just asking about status.
If LMCE were well documented, so the wiki or other docs showed the status of promised or useful features, maybe my questions wouldn't be well placed. If it were easier to find which source code supports which semi-documented feature, it might be more productive to look through the source rather than ask in a forum where people are already more familiar with that source. But it's not. So simple answers to my reasonable questions also help inform anyone else who sees the responses (or lack thereof). So I will continue to ask them.
The other specific request that you came up with was that I extend Net::UPnP to support control points, which it already does.
not for AV control
Now that is exactly the kind of answer that is nothing but helpful. Thank you.
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And it's hard to believe that you're "sorry", when you continued to attack me elsewhere (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3406.msg18014#msg18014) for just asking about status.
so this is no attack. You simply ignore facts and documentation (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2973.0, http://www.charonmedia.org/pipermail/lmce-dev/2007-December/000153.html). You don't care to research and simply spam in the developers forum. Do you think some big map or documentation fell onto our head? We are in the code and document our progress.
So, please with sugar and cherry on top: if you want to get involved start with _anything_ now. Maybe you want to do a schema map of the pluto_main database with dia, visio or such? (please, please please?)
So you can say then: i did some of the documentation instead of simply wheening for it. I have no problem researching the upnp stuff in the codebase for you, but you have to involve, too. And asking for things that are documented is not really helpful.
hari
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And it's hard to believe that you're "sorry", when you continued to attack me elsewhere (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3406.msg18014#msg18014) for just asking about status.
so this is no attack. You simply ignore facts and documentation (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2973.0, http://www.charonmedia.org/pipermail/lmce-dev/2007-December/000153.html). You don't care to research and simply spam in the developers forum. Do you think some big map or documentation fell onto our head? We are in the code and document our progress.
So, please with sugar and cherry on top: if you want to get involved start with _anything_ now. Maybe you want to do a schema map of the pluto_main database with dia, visio or such? (please, please please?)
So you can say then: i did some of the documentation instead of simply wheening for it. I have no problem researching the upnp stuff in the codebase for you, but you have to involve, too. And asking for things that are documented is not really helpful.
What I resent is your implication that I'm doing nothing and asking for everything from people who are doing everything and asking for nothing. All I asked for was whether DLNA was supported, when UPNP seems to be (though it turns out that it's incomplete). You replied with a smiley asking vaguely to add contact point support to a Perl module that already has it, - how was I to guess that the underlying library doesn't support the Perl module? When you could have told me that directly, instead of wasting my time with (invisible) sarcasm. On sqlCVS, the page to which I linked about the "new collaborative development method" (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/A_new_concept_in_collaborative_development) describes the GSD wizard and sqlCVS as if they're working. The forum thread that I did read showed that it might be working, but not in conclusive terms. So I asked. What's the harm in replying "looks like it, we're not done testing", instead of slamming me?
And yes, you certainly did attack me in these posts, with insults and demands that I implement systems just because I asked, citing references indicating they exist, whether in fact they do or not. As you just did again with your sarcasm.
I don't need begging to participate. I already do participate, as I just explained, in the wiki (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Special:Contributions/Matthew), in Mantis, and in the forums (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?action=profile;u=40183;sa=showPosts) - in just a month and a half (including a 2 week vacation), on a system that still isn't working well enough for me to use. What helps me, and anyone else, participate more is better answers to project navigation questions, and better docs so those questions can in fact be answered with some reasearch. What LMCE needs is some developer help. I'd say that my questions and participation are helping get that developer help, including from me. I'm going to continue - for my own reasons, not because you're sarcastically asking me "nicely". Maybe once my contributions come in a form you more easily recognize - like if I work on your pet project - we'll get along better. I'm looking forward to that.
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im sorry if you feel insulted. Thank you for your contributions. We are all here to improve our world with free software.
regards,
Hari
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im sorry if you feel insulted. Thank you for your contributions. We are all here to improve our world with free software.
regards,
Hari
OK, and I'm sorry for making this conflict any worse. I'm glad we're working together, because LMCE deserves our good work as much as we deserve a good LMCE :).
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oh the zumanity.
(not zoomanity, sorry)
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oh the zoomanity.
whats zoomanity?
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obviously you are not a golfer.
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obviously you are not a golfer.
And obviously you have nothing useful to contribute, as usual.
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no. just watching everyone bitch and whine, like you. as usual.
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I just tested a PS3 with firmware v1.80, and its GameOS shows the LMCE as"dcerouter: MythTV AV Media Server" on the network (automatically, on PS3 startup), like a DLNA server (or maybe a UPnP server, which MythTV supports (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/UPnP) since v0.20). But the Pictures/Music/Video sections under the LMCE server icon are empty ("There are no images/titles/tracks.") I upgraded the PS3 to firmware v2.01 and still the same status.
I can't get the media files on LMCE to show up, or any other indication that the PS3 sees the LMCE server except its icon under each GameOS media type and an empty folder tree under those LMCE icons. I have the LMCE MythTV configured as the default, which puts video files in /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1 , and I put some MPG video, some AVI video and some WMV video files in there, but I can't find them in the GameOS. However, when I run the ushare that's part of LMCE (ushare -i eth0 -c /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1) , ushare reports
1# ushare -i eth0 -c /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1
uShare (version 0.9.6), a lightweight UPnP Media Server.
Benjamin Zores (C) 2005-2006, for GeeXboX Team.
See http://ushare.geexbox.org/ for updates.
Initializing UPnP subsystem ...
UPnP MediaServer listening on 192.168.0.10:49153
Sending UPnP advertisement for device ...
Listening for control point connections ...
Building Metadata List ...
Looking for files in content directory : /home/public/data
Looking for files in content directory : /home/public/data/videos/tv_shows_1
Found 2808 files and subdirectories.
A new Media Server (in addition to the default one) shows up in GameOS called "LinuxMCE". In it are "data" and "tv_shows_1" folders. And now the MPG video files actually show up inside the PS3 GameOS Video:LinuxMCE:tv_shows_1 folder, which the PS3 can then play. The video quality is kinda jerky, even though I reencoded with (ffmpeg -i test.mpg -acodec copy -vcodec copy test.fixed.mpg) . Other files in the other formats (AVI/WMV/MP3) show in their appropriate GameOS Music/Video folder, but as "Unsupported Data" which won't play (they don't show at all in the wrong media type's GameOS folder).
But this shows that PS3 can play content stored on an LMCE core, probably using the DLNA protocol out of the box. If we can get the MythTV server to be fully recognized by the PS3 GameOS, the way the ushare server is, then all we have to do is point that server at the media stored on the core, and PS3s can be rudimentary "MDs", even using GameOS. Which is pretty snazzy, considering PS3 is a $500 HDMI HD videoplayer with a BluRay drive (etc). If LMCE could control the PS3 with Bluetooth the way the PS3 BT remote works, then it might be a more than rudimentary MD. And if Ubuntu on PS3 with its new RSX-accelerated X and SPU-accelerated MPlayer can run a real LMCE MD, then this might be an excellent MD.
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Mythtv SVN has support already for DLNA. I've used it on my PS3.
The playback has some issues, ffwd, rew, etc... but there are patches available for it.
My suggestion: Mythtv is NOT the answer.. as you will only get mythtv recordings, etc... I don't think you'll get linuxmce's media lib..
the current SVN of mythtv has support for audio/video files..
we could always wait until myth's 0.21 release.. when all the svn commits are in...
Just adding my $.00002
Dan
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Mythtv SVN has support already for DLNA. I've used it on my PS3.
The playback has some issues, ffwd, rew, etc... but there are patches available for it.
My suggestion: Mythtv is NOT the answer.. as you will only get mythtv recordings, etc... I don't think you'll get linuxmce's media lib..
the current SVN of mythtv has support for audio/video files..
we could always wait until myth's 0.21 release.. when all the svn commits are in...
Probably the way to go is to target using MythTV v0.21. In the meantime, we can work on getting MythTV to serve all of LMCE's media, as a DLNA gateway. DLNA uses a GUI paradigm somewhat different from LMCE's Orbiter, but which could use the Orbiter, called Web4CE (http://www.ra.ethz.ch/CDstore/www2007/www2007.org/htmlposters/poster1017/index.html). Maybe by the time MythTV 0.21 is ready, Web4CE could also be stable (its CEA 2014-A errata might be complete already (http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:rWgFx86pSo0J:www.ce.org/Resource.aspx%3FID%3D2555+%22cea+2014-a%22+errata&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us)) - the default DLNA mediatype/folders GUI is unusable for any reasonable amount of content. LMCE might just deliver content to MythTV as its DLNA gateway. And if patches make MythTV ready, even before its formal v0.21 release, then we can bundle it with the patches in the .deb .
Or maybe use the ushare server that's already installed with LMCE, but not running by default (GeeXBox uses ushare for UPnP, too). ushare seems to find local content in directories and serve it a lot better than current MythTV support, and serves a web interface. Maybe that Web interface could be hacked to be the Web Orbiter. And maybe ushare can be pointed at a virtual directory that is really all the LMCE content, with that directory as the interface between LMCE and ushare.
FILE TYPES
The following file formats (extensions) are supported :
Video asf, avi, dv, divx, wmv, mjpg, mjpeg, mpeg, mpg, mpe, mp2p, vob,
mp2t, m1v, m2v, m4v, m4p, mp4ps, ts, ogm, mkv, rmvb, mov, qt
Audio aac, ac3, aif, aiff, at3p, au, snd, dts, rmi, mp1, mp2, mp3,
mp4, mpa, ogg, wav, pcm, lpcm, l16, wma, mka, ra, rm, ram
Images bmp, ico, gif, jpeg, jpg, jpe, pcd, png, pnm, ppm, qti, qtf,
qtif, tif, tiff
Playlist
pls, m3u, asx
Subtitles
dks, idx, mpl, pjs, psb, scr, srt, ssa, stl, sub, tts, vsf, zeg
Miscellaneous files
bup, ifo
I'll be looking into these interfaces and updates. Anyone who actually knows what they're doing with these subsystems is heartily invited to comment.
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Out of curiosity I fired up Ushare (ushare -c /home/public/data) and it started and found 2600 files to share. My Vista laptop doesn't know how to play them yet. PowerDVD seems to find the content. Playing HD over wireless is still troublesome (no surprise). Perhaps the fast fix is to figure out how to optimize Ushare to work in the system, and disable MythTV's server. Two servers may just make for confusion.
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i would vote for mediatomb. Supports transcoding in the svn version. Works fine with my PS3, too.
http://mediatomb.cc/news
Matthew: the bluetooth remote control would only work for the ps3. A generic UPnP AV-Control implementation would allow us to controll all Media Renderers.
best regards,
Hari
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Honestly, I had some stability issues with MediaTomb (it would crash often after playing a few mp3's, or running for a day straight), when I tested it with my PS3... but to be fair that was about 6 months ago and those issues could have been resolved since then...
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Matthew: the bluetooth remote control would only work for the ps3. A generic UPnP AV-Control implementation would allow us to controll all Media Renderers.
The PS3 remote is pretty featureful, in terms of buttons. It does lack motion-sense and display. But it also has the advantage of being included with the PS3. Mine works (through several brick/etc walls) across about 70' from the PS3. If it could connect to multiple BT hosts, each MD could have a BT dongle, and control the entire LMCE network.
Wii remotes (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2411.30) are also Bluetooth, and of course many mobile phones (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Mobile_Orbiter), as well as probably webpads and dedicated remotes. The DLNA GUI paradigm is to display a control GUI, like an Orbiter, on whichever display is best, determined by proximity to the control input device (eg. the PS3 remote) and size/quality of display area (eg. a TV in the room, or a BT phone in your pocket, etc). Implementing that function in LMCE would probably require more than the DLNA layer itself, but LMCE's GUI is flexible enough to probably map closely.
As of right now, it looks like "DLNA Support" is actually 3 DLNA tiers to support: data, protocol and GUI.
- The data is just the mediatypes and actual stored content accessible to the DLNA subsystem. MythTV exposes its own data. ushare can expose more data as a separate server.
- The protocol is served by MythTV and ushare as separate servers.
- The GUI defaults to a folder tree (with some virtual/views by metadata, like "By Title" / "By Artist") over DLNA in clients like PS3 GameOS. ushare also exposes a Web interface.
As of now, I see no missing features from the DLNA protocol support in either MythTV or ushare. ushare seems to find and deliver more data than MythTV does, but maybe MythTV's configs can be changed to support it all. Neither seems to support LMCE mediatypes like streaming audio or video (though that support might just be more obscure, but present), or "unconventional" types like messaging (eg. IM, email), web pages, videogames, etc (maybe somehow - no idea). I haven't explored either MythTV or ushare web interfaces for controlling media accessed over DLNA. Both MythTV and ushare default DLNA GUI, at least as it shows on the PS3 GameOS client, are barely adequate, especially for navigating media collections of any real size (nested folders don't cut it).
The main DLNA feature to ensure is supported is a unified collection of all media content, a single data collection, regardless of how it's presented in the GUI. Right now it's barely adequate, probably requiring two separate servers (MythTV and ushare). The question is whether to turn off MythTV DLNA and let ushare do it all, or get MythTV to do it all instead of ushare. I'll be looking into MythTV's configs for improving current function, and its improvement in v0.21 (which looks like it could be released sometime soon). Perhaps the LMCE v0710 bundled MythTV will support DLNA better.
After that I'll be looking at making the LMCE Orbiter GUIs work integrated with DLNA, if someone else doesn't beat me to that ;).
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As of now, I see no missing features from the DLNA protocol support in either MythTV or ushare.
you know what upnp av control is? I really suggest to try the free java software cideo.com.
best regards,
Hari
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But this shows that PS3 can play agreeable stored on an LinuxMCE core, apparently application the DLNA agreement out of the box. If we can get the MythTV server to be absolutely accustomed by the PS3 GameOS, the way the ushare server is, again all we accept to do is point that server at the media stored on the core, and PS3s can be abecedarian "MDs", even application GameOS. Which is appealing snazzy, because PS3 is a $500 HDMI HD videoplayer with a BluRay drive (etc). If LinuxMCE could ascendancy the PS3 with Bluetooth the way the PS3 BT limited works, again it ability be a added than abecedarian MD. And if Ubuntu on PS3 with its new RSX-accelerated X and SPU-accelerated MPlayer can run a absolute LinuxMCE MD, again this ability be an accomplished MD, ip pbx (http://www.inin.com/productsolutions/pages/enterprise-ip-telephony.aspx)!!!