Playing a stream from a tuner, without 7MC?

[foxwood]

I came across this thread recently, that documents a application that XBMC users can use to access unprotected TV channels from a ceton tuner - http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=119865.

I was curious - I don't use XBMC, but I can think of a few cases where being able to pull a stream direclty into VLC might be interesting (transcoding for streaming to a remote device comes to mind).

From a quick perusal of that thread, it seems that the streams from the tuners are available at rtsp://192.168.200.1:8554/cetonmpeg0. If I try to open that stream in VLC when Windows Media Center is showing Live TV (on Tuner 1 - it's cetonmpeg1 for Tuner 2, etc) the Live TV signal stops with a "Weak Signal" error message, suggesting that there really is something there (the stream doesn't show up in VLC either, but that might just be because 7MC has already captured that stream).

If I close Windows Media Center, the web interface on the Ceton card shows that playback has stopped, even if the tuner is tuned to a particular channel. The web interface provides a mechanism for changing the channel a tuner is tuned to, but there isn't an obvious way to set the status to Playing.

Am I missing something - should VLC be able to the see the stream from a Ceton tuner, if it's tuned to a channel that doesn't have Copy-protection set? Is the "Playing" status that shows on the Ceton web page an indication that the tuner is active, in which case I need to "turn on" the stream before VLC will see it, or is the stream always there if a tuner is tuned to a channel, and "Playing" is just an indication that some application has connected to the tuner and is playing the stream.

There is an application listed in that XMBC forum thread that apparently get's all this working, but I don't like to mess with my working system, so I'm not inclined to install the application, I'm just curious to know if there's a possibility that VLC can access the video stream that the ceton Tuners provides.

[richard1980]

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 679#p18679

[foxwood]

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 679#p18679

I guess that's a No then. While it's technically possible, and there is a simple way to select the channel, there aren't any easily accessible ways to stop and start the actual streaming on Windows.

[richard1980]

That's what I gather from Eric's post. It looks like Ceton developed something for Linux, but not for Windows. I guess for Windows you'd need to go with something like whatever tool is posted on the XBMC forum. I don't have any experience with it, so I don't know how well it works (or if it even does what you are wanting). Perhaps someone else knows.

[foxwood]

It's not something I need to do, I just stumbled across the possibility and wondered if there was an easy way to play with it without breaking anything. (I only have 1 InfiniTV, and I don't want to jeopardize the excellent WAF it has established).

VLC has an "Open Capture Device" dialog that can control a TV tuner, but I don't think it will work with the InfiniTV, which presents itself as a network device.

One less excuse to avoid cutting the grass on Saturday