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Author Topic: Streaming video to tablet devices?  (Read 10171 times)

6233638

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Streaming video to tablet devices?
« on: September 24, 2013, 03:10:09 pm »

Well, I was all set to sell my iPad 3 and pre-order a Surface Pro 2 this morning, as the hardware seems really nice, but it seems that Media Center just isnʼt built to support touch:


Iʼve spoken with Matt, and it seems that there are no plans to work on this for v19—their attention seems to be focused on porting to Mac and Linux right now.
 
So this leaves me with a problem:
I thought that switching to an x86 tablet would solve all my video streaming woes, as I would be able to just run Media Center as a client on the device, and have native format support for all my video library.
Another benefit of this is that most content would be displayed 1:1 on the Surface Pro, rather than being scaled as it is on the iPad.
Without any support for touch in the Media Center interface though, all I would be doing is trading off one set of problems (format support) for another. (interface)
 
Has anyone figured out a good solution for streaming content to tablets yet?
 
As far as I know, the iPads only have support for hardware accelerated H.264 decoding, which means that MPEG-2 (DVD) and VC-1 content (Blu-ray and HD-DVD) is going to be problematic.
At best you will have poor battery life, at worst, it will not be possible to play this content at all.
 
And while the iPad has H.264 decoding, it only supports this in an MP4 container—it does not support the MKV format.
Audio has similar issues; thereʼs only support for MP3 and AAC—no Dolby or DTS.
 
Iʼve tried a number of players, and nothing seems to work well with Media Center. Either it canʼt see my library at all, or the best I can get is a handful of MP4 files streaming. (which is all web content rather than my film library)
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #1 on: September 24, 2013, 03:27:18 pm »

My "solution" is as follows:

1) I try to chose mp4 for all new downloaded content.
2) I've created "mp4 only" filters for the views displayed by JRemote and I periodically ask the developer to add a global mp4 filter so I can clean up my views.
3) I periodically ask JRiver to add a feature for converting video to mp4 on the fly while streaming.
4) I rip important dvds to mp4 with VidCoder (the best mp4 encoder in my opinion).
5) I transcode important mkv to mp4 with MkvToMp4 (very nice lossless video conversion).
6) I use Air Video HD for everything else.
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Matt

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #2 on: September 24, 2013, 03:46:02 pm »

I think you're being too hard on JRiver.

Theater View works well on touch.

Theater View is to Standard View what Metro is to the Desktop.  In other words, we have about the same model as Microsoft here (although we don't force Theater View on anyone). 

It's not clear to me that customers want a grand unification on the Standard View (ie. Desktop) side.
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jmone

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #3 on: September 24, 2013, 03:54:49 pm »

I have both a series of x86 Tablet (currently a Lenovo Helix but prior to that a Samsung Ativ) and a bunch of Tablets (that I'm using for my Whole House media project).  Each have there +'ve an -'ve:

x86 Tablets:  Relatively expensive but, as you have said, they offer the most flexibility and the highest quality for playback.  The downsides are the complexity still makes them less of plug and play device.  I find that MC in Theatre View and it is OK with Touch (not the best but OK).  You of course need the mouse / keyboard when outside Theatre View

Andriod Tablets:  Relatively cheap and can be OK for flexibility and quality.  I'm using small Nexus 7 (2013) and when Gizmo is set to the highest quality the perceived resolution on the 7" 1080p screen looks OK.  Sure the images are scaled and the refresh rates don't switch but for a small format like this it is fine.  Compatibility is pretty good as MC will transcode on the fly so you don't have to make "compatible" versions.  Gismo does not support streaming either Live TV or some Radio Stations.  Good Touch IF.

iOS Tablets:  You know more that I do but I found this the most restrictive to stream to but did find a combination of one player that worked with MC's DVD profile.
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Hendrik

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2013, 04:06:47 pm »

I am kinda planning to get a Surface Pro 2 at some point, at that point I'll definitely look how a Touch Theater View works, and look into improvements if necessary.
Any of the other views are just not made with Touch in mind, and IMHO thats OK, as they are way too detailed for the usual fat fingers on a small display.

Right now, i use a Android Tablet with Gizmo, and streaming video works just fine that way for me. Granted, it requires scaling and encoding on the server, but the quality over WiFi is pretty OK - but you're not going to get away without re-encoding on such devices. The format support is just too limited, and the CPU too slow or the battery too small to decode in software.
In general though, Gizmo works just fine. Could always use some improvements, but what can't? :)
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2013, 04:37:44 pm »

My "solution" is as follows:

1) I try to chose mp4 for all new downloaded content.
2) I've created "mp4 only" filters for the views displayed by JRemote and I periodically ask the developer to add a global mp4 filter so I can clean up my views.
3) I periodically ask JRiver to add a feature for converting video to mp4 on the fly while streaming.
4) I rip important dvds to mp4 with VidCoder (the best mp4 encoder in my opinion).
5) I transcode important mkv to mp4 with MkvToMp4 (very nice lossless video conversion).
6) I use Air Video HD for everything else.
This is exactly what I am trying to avoid—I don't want to be storing redundant copies of my videos, and MC's DLNA conversion is far too CPU intensive to be usable. (not fast enough for realtime, the quality is poor, and the computer is unusable for other tasks while streaming)

I think you're being too hard on JRiver.
Theater View works well on touch.
Theater View is to Standard View what Metro is to the Desktop.  In other words, we have about the same model as Microsoft here (although we don't force Theater View on anyone). 
It's not clear to me that customers want a grand unification on the Standard View (ie. Desktop) side.
I don't mean to be hard, I understand that Touch is a relatively small market right now, and that your focus is on expanding to Mac and Linux, then presumably to get video working on Mac (and possibly Linux?) in MC20.

Displays are moving towards High DPI now, and that's a problem whether you are using a tablet or not. Any new laptop you buy today will be configured for 150% scaling out of the box, which Media Center does not support at all. Legacy apps with no support for scaling are generally rendered at 100% and then scaled as if they were an image (ugly, but legible) but this doesn't seem to happen with Media Center. I really think it's something that will have to be addressed before MC20. (assuming that will be out a year from now)

Personally, I've never really found Theater View to be useful, because I don't have a remote. (there are no good remote solutions which meet my requirements)
Touch in Theater View is menu based (generally avoided in Touch UIs) and just doesn't seem to take advantage of what makes touch work well. I have attached a couple of quick mockups to illustrate this.

Any of the other views are just not made with Touch in mind, and IMHO thats OK, as they are way too detailed for the usual fat fingers on a small display.
I have used a number of desktop applications at 150% on my iPad via Remote Desktop, and while it may not be ideal, it can work reasonably well if you need access to a more fully-featured interface than one designed exclusively for touch. Not even being able to interact with the program at all via Touch (views don't scroll etc.) is a problem for me.

Right now, i use a Android Tablet with Gizmo, and streaming video works just fine that way for me. Granted, it requires scaling and encoding on the server, but the quality over WiFi is pretty OK - but you're not going to get away without re-encoding on such devices. The format support is just too limited, and the CPU too slow or the battery too small to decode in software.
This is exactly why I was wanting to move over to x86. You should be able to use QuickSync or DXVA decoding on the Surface Pro 2, and won't need any kind of conversion - you would have Blu-ray 1:1 mapped on a very high quality display.

I haven't been able to get any DLNA clients for iOS to connect and work properly with MC, though admittedly I have only tried some of the "big name" apps. It gets expensive to keep trying apps without knowing whether they will work or not.
When I had little success with this on my iPad, I did manage to get that working somewhat with my televisions, but all that showed me was that my CPU is not fast enough to handle the encoding of Blu-ray content in real-time. CPU usage was at 100%, the framerate was clearly less than 24fps, and the computer was unusable while this was happening.
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jmone

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #6 on: September 24, 2013, 04:47:50 pm »

Good point on the WiFi - I too have found that this can be limiting factor to the bitrate you can deliver to tablets unless you can wire them in (which may defeat the purpose).  I've got 2 x new ASUS TR-AC66U and have repositioned the WiFi Access points that have improvised the situation no end but there is still a limit to what you can "reliably" expect and the up to 50Mb/s can be a big challenge in all locations.
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #7 on: September 24, 2013, 05:01:19 pm »

Good point on the WiFi - I too have found that this can be limiting factor to the bitrate you can deliver to tablets unless you can wire them in (which may defeat the purpose).  I've got 2 x new ASUS TR-AC66U and have repositioned the WiFi Access points that have improvised the situation no end but there is still a limit to what you can "reliably" expect and the up to 50Mb/s can be a big challenge in all locations.
On a 5GHz network, there shouldn't be too much difficulty streaming 50mbps to one of these devices. I would likely only be streaming to a single device at a time, and everything else is wired in via gigabit Ethernet.
Presumably you could also have a large local cache to account for slow network speeds. (I was planning on going for the 256GB model)

While it won't be launching with the system, they announced a dock which has an Ethernet port on the back, so you could even use a wired connection if you don't need it to be mobile.
It looks like it could make for quite nice setup once it's no longer being used as a tablet (too slow/outdated etc.) which is better than the iPad which I find is often just sitting unused these days.
I actually loaned it to a friend that's thinking about buying one of the new models next month (their first iPad) and haven't really missed it at all.
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jmone

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #8 on: September 24, 2013, 05:09:05 pm »

I've found with the WiFi (moving around with a signal metre) that it is not the raw figures that are an issue but the throughput over the distance / layout of the house (ours is concrete walls and floors).  The 2.4ghz delivers stronger signals and better throughput over distance than 5hz.  The other things that is annoying, is that many consumer devices don't roam between access points (all with the same SSID/Security settings).
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2013, 05:14:29 pm »

I've found with the WiFi (moving around with a signal metre) that it is not the raw figures that are an issue but the throughput over the distance / layout of the house (ours is concrete walls and floors).  The 2.4ghz delivers stronger signals and better throughput over distance than 5hz.  The other things that is annoying, is that many consumer devices don't roam between access points (all with the same SSID/Security settings).
Yes, the higher the frequency, the shorter the range—but it may be a net gain, as there's typically a lot less interference at 5GHz.
And yes, that's something that drove me mad with the iPad. We had poor coverage in our house when we moved in, and so the iPad would drop its connection when going from one half of the house to the other, switching access points. After upgrading to a more powerful, centrally located access point, it hasn't been much of an issue now. I'm not likely to be moving around much when watching a film or episode of a TV show anyway.
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fitbrit

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #10 on: September 25, 2013, 12:48:58 am »

For video streaming, I have to say that the Air Video experience is fantastic on an iPad or iPhone. If only it would work like that using MC's views, rather than directory structure. I haven't found anything that works as well on an Android (2.2) device though.

I have a couple of 23" 1080p touchscreens connected to Win7 machines around the house. I must agree that Theater View works ok with the touchscreen, but could be better. I really wish that some standard controls would be utilised, such as two finger scrolling rather than the 'flick' which offers poor control - especially if thumbnails are being filled in. Pinch-Zooming is another example that wasn't supported last time I checked.
To be sure you're getting the best experience, I assume you're using the Noire Touchscreen skin? (I just saw from you mockup Vs current, that you probably are). I agree that with all the choices on the right, there's does seem to be a lot of wasted real estate that could make making one's menu selection easier.
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Hendrik

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #11 on: September 25, 2013, 01:09:50 am »

This is exactly why I was wanting to move over to x86. You should be able to use QuickSync or DXVA decoding on the Surface Pro 2, and won't need any kind of conversion - you would have Blu-ray 1:1 mapped on a very high quality display.

There is still many formats that would require conversion, so the infrastructure would be in place for this at the very least, because its unacceptable to be able to play some movies, but not others without draining the battery, for example. Hard to explain why a cheap MPEG-4 ASP clip drains the battery and a H.264 Blu-ray rip does not. An untouched Blu-ray rip may even exceed the bandwidth limits of a typical 54mbit WiFi, so you may want these to be recoded as well in some setups - its just not so easy to find a solution that "just works". A quick and dirty solution that works for only very few people is not going to fly really well and cause more questions and complaints then it actually solves.

If you want to limit yourself to Blu-ray compatible clips, most of the (newer) Android devices can actually decode all the required formats as well.
The problem is knowing which are supported and which need conversion, because the support is not unified on Android, but in general x86 doesn't actually give any bonus here, except that on the Surface Pro the CPU would be fast enough to take over the decoding, at the expense of battery of course (but the Surface Pro is special there, Atom-based tablets wouldn't have that power either)

Regarding the touch screen interface, I'm not deep into the possibilities of the theater view skins yet, but I'm sure some improvements can be made to better use all the screen real-estate.
Although one has to wonder that on the one hand you want to use standard view with its tiny controls, and on the other you complain that Theater View doesn't have big enough buttons. :)

PS:
I just increased the DPI to 125% in Windows 7 and MC19 texts did get bigger.
Also looks relatively sharp, not as if its scaled like an image.

High DPI is also important for Macs with their Retina push, so if there are improvements to be made, i'm sure they will come eventually.
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #12 on: September 25, 2013, 02:08:01 am »

Air Video HD can convert just about any format in real time to an IOS friendly format that looks great on my iPad, while putting very modest load on my server including my old AMD4800 XP system.

As far as I can tell no one else does this anywhere near as well. So its probably a hard problem, but also feasible.

I believe the JRiver developers are stronger than Air Video's and should be able to match or exceed Air Video's capabilities.

This would be a killer addition to MC and probably could be sold as a paid option.

I'm sure more of the ios crowd would become JRiver customers because everyone hates the video restrictions imposed by Apple.

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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #13 on: September 25, 2013, 03:48:39 am »

There is still many formats that would require conversion, so the infrastructure would be in place for this at the very least, because its unacceptable to be able to play some movies, but not others without draining the battery, for example. Hard to explain why a cheap MPEG-4 ASP clip drains the battery and a H.264 Blu-ray rip does not.
This is true, but I don't know that I have anything which is MPEG-4 ASP. The majority of my library is either Blu-ray or DVD rips, with a handful of my old HD-DVDs, and MP4 web content (downloaded off YouTube etc.) which should also be H.264.

An untouched Blu-ray rip may even exceed the bandwidth limits of a typical 54mbit WiFi, so you may want these to be recoded as well in some setups - its just not so easy to find a solution that "just works".
Also true, but I have a 5GHz N network (600mbps) and 802.11ac is becoming common. (though I see the Surface lacks it)
I may not be getting 600mbps, but it should be able to handle up to 50mbps streaming without too much trouble. (and most Blu-ray is not 50mbps CBR)

A quick and dirty solution that works for only very few people is not going to fly really well and cause more questions and complaints then it actually solves.
If Media Center could at least transcode MKV to MP4 for H.264 encoded files, which I think should not require much CPU power? That would help dramatically. There would need to be some way of identifying what content is H.264 encoded and what is MPEG-2/VC-1 though.
Audio would have to be decoded server-side and converted to AAC though, but again I wouldn't expect that to require too much CPU.

I suspect my system could maybe handle DVD to MP4 encoding, but it cannot handle Blu-ray at all.
I wonder if it would be possible to use QuickSync, CUDA, or NVENC for low-CPU MP4 encoding when streaming to other devices. (though my system currently only supports CUDA)

If you want to limit yourself to Blu-ray compatible clips, most of the (newer) Android devices can actually decode all the required formats as well.
Do they actually support MPEG-2 and VC-1 in hardware, or just software decoders? And frankly, I've yet to find an Android device that I would consider purchasing. They're all cheap plastic units aimed at the lower end of the market, rather than trying to compete with the iPad like the Surface is.

The problem is knowing which are supported and which need conversion, because the support is not unified on Android, but in general x86 doesn't actually give any bonus here, except that on the Surface Pro the CPU would be fast enough to take over the decoding, at the expense of battery of course (but the Surface Pro is special there, Atom-based tablets wouldn't have that power either)
Well this is why I'm leaning towards x86 rather than ARM. I would rather stick with the iPad I already have, than replace it with another ARM device.

Regarding the touch screen interface, I'm not deep into the possibilities of the theater view skins yet, but I'm sure some improvements can be made to better use all the screen real-estate.
Although one has to wonder that on the one hand you want to use standard view with its tiny controls, and on the other you complain that Theater View doesn't have big enough buttons. :)
Well it's different use cases. Sometimes Theater View just doesn't offer all the controls necessary, and I just don't like most of the UI there. (touch-based or not)
It's not so much that I want to be using the standard view all the time with touch, but I would like it to be an option rather than sitting at a desk and using a trackpad—though I was not planning on buying one of those keyboard covers at all. I hated using the iPad when I had a cover on it.

PS:
I just increased the DPI to 125% in Windows 7 and MC19 texts did get bigger.
Also looks relatively sharp, not as if its scaled like an image.
Windows 7 uses the old broken method of scaling windows, where it will force the changes even if the application does not support it. This often results in completely broken UI, because parts of some applications will scale and others will not.
Windows 8 should be scaling applications similar to the way that OS X handles it, where legacy applications are rendered at 100% and scaled up using, I assume, bilinear filtering.
Media Center does not seem to scale at all. (note: I am running Windows 8.1)

One thing OS X does handle differently, is that the UI is always rendered at 2× now. So if you have a MacBook Pro with its 2880x1800 native display, and use the options which give you an equivalent workspace of 1920x1200, it renders 3840x2400 and scales it down to 2880x1800.
As you might expect, this means that the expanded workspace options look blurred, so “native” is your only option. This means the 15″ model with a 2880x1800 display has an effective workspace of 1440x900, less than the 1680x1050 model it replaced. (I have the 13″ 2560x1600 model though—15″ is too large these days)
Unlike OS X, Windows actually renders at 125% or 150% when applications support it, so the UI is rendered “natively” whether you are at 100%, 125%, or 150%, rather than 2× scaled down.

High DPI is also important for Macs with their Retina push, so if there are improvements to be made, i'm sure they will come eventually.
Considering that the Noire theme is being reworked for MC19, I really think it's critical to move towards using retina-quality assets sooner rather than later.
Media Center is going to be unusable on any display that requires 150% scaling on Windows, and while it works, it looks extremely bad on OS X.
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rossp

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #14 on: September 25, 2013, 03:50:25 am »

I totally agree with rjm, Airvideo HD is a killer app. I have been using it and it's predecessor for several years (even a server port for my NAS) and it is great. I also wish J River devs would look at doing something like this. Would bring a lot of other customers to the table IMHO.

Ross
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Hendrik

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #15 on: September 25, 2013, 03:52:19 am »

Video Conversion itself is a big topic, and especially for Streaming its a bit more limited still then i would hope for, and definitely something on my own mid-term plans to investigate and improve.
More flexible speed presets (maybe auto-tuning for hardware capabilities?), using hardware encoders if available (Intel QuickSync, for example), and of course general improvements in performance, the workflow and configurations.

There are no promises that these features will happen, or when they will happen, but its running around in my mind to see what can be done, once I officially dig in next year.

And then there is Air Video.
Sadly its not only required to encode to the right format, if you want to really do Air Video you also need to support the proprietary Air Video protocol, and to be honest I'm not sure if this is documented anywhere, or if they would even "allow" someone to implement it without involving the lawyers.

Of course we could try to coordinate with the JRemote developer to allow playing streaming video like Gizmo does, but it wouldn't be native Air Video, which some people seem to prefer.
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jmone

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #16 on: September 25, 2013, 04:29:20 am »

Hendrik - I can not wait till you are onboard!  Heaps of good stuff to do  ;D
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Hendrik

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #17 on: September 25, 2013, 05:58:44 am »

You just have to copy paste my name from my post, and you still mess it up? :D
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jmone

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #18 on: September 25, 2013, 06:00:41 am »

What mess up  ;D
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #19 on: September 25, 2013, 11:26:05 am »

And then there is Air Video.
Sadly its not only required to encode to the right format, if you want to really do Air Video you also need to support the proprietary Air Video protocol, and to be honest I'm not sure if this is documented anywhere, or if they would even "allow" someone to implement it without involving the lawyers.

Of course we could try to coordinate with the JRemote developer to allow playing streaming video like Gizmo does, but it wouldn't be native Air Video, which some people seem to prefer.
I think you may be confusing Air Play with Air Video.

Air Play is Apple's proprietary protocol for streaming video to an ios device. We don't need it for an MC solution because you already have a good means of delivering video to JRemote.

Air Video HD is a 3rd party app that converts any video format to streaming mp4 on the fly for display on an ios device. We definitely need this functionality built into MC. If you want to make a really big splash this is what you should focus on. Air Video HD is only a few dollars, suggest you buy it and try it if you have not done so already.
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MrC

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #20 on: September 25, 2013, 11:30:17 am »

You just have to copy paste my name from my post, and you still mess it up? :D

Cut jmone some slack.  If it isn't spellled M • A • T • E, Aussies have trouble.  But you couldn't find friendlier mates anywhere.
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Matt

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #21 on: September 25, 2013, 11:30:19 am »

Air Video HD is a 3rd party app that converts any video format to streaming mp4 on the fly for display on an ios device. We definitely need this functionality built into MC. If you want to make a really big splash this is what you should focus on. Air Video HD is only a few dollars, suggest you buy it and try it if you have not done so already.

We're hoping Robert will add video support to JRemote.  

The server side (MC) may be ready already, but we're happy to add functionality if necessary.

We just need users to nag Robert until he caves in ;)
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #22 on: September 25, 2013, 11:37:28 am »

We're hoping Robert will add video support to JRemote.  

The server side (MC) may be ready already, but we're happy to add functionality if necessary.

We just need users to nag Robert until he caves in ;)

Pardon my stupidity, but I assume Robert is the JRemote developer.

Are you saying that MC can already real-time convert any video format to streaming mp4? If yes, then shouldn't we be able to quickly test this with your (I forget what you call it because I don't use it) web client? If it works we can all pile on Robert until he has no choice but to submit.

This really is a huge opportunity for MC and JRemote.
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Matt

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #23 on: September 25, 2013, 11:43:32 am »

Are you saying that MC can already real-time convert any video format to streaming mp4?

Yes.  It's not new.

Gizmo, our Android app, can play any video because of this.
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #24 on: September 25, 2013, 11:45:22 am »

I remember using a web client on my iPad with MC before JRemote took over the world. Lets try it with that to prove it works. Then we can go after Robert.
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Matt

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #25 on: September 25, 2013, 11:47:39 am »

I remember using a web client on my iPad with MC before JRemote took over the world. Lets try it with that to prove it works. Then we can go after Robert.

It's not quite that easy.  You may need to build m3u8 files, and probably do custom seek handling.

But I've offered Robert any help we can give should he decide to pursue this.  I wouldn't expect it to be a big project, but he would know better than me.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #26 on: September 25, 2013, 12:06:39 pm »

Air Video HD can convert just about any format in real time to an IOS friendly format that looks great on my iPad, while putting very modest load on my server including my old AMD4800 XP system.

I used to use air video but now use plex media server with the plex ios client. The server picks up anything I add to jriver and adds all metadata en artwork in the background. This gives me a rich client on the iPad that can stream anything in my library to my iPad. As with air video it transcodes mkv's without touching the video, those get transcoded with barely any load on the server. I also use it now instead of a jriver htpc  to play content on our tv in the living room with AirPlay. Plex reroutes the video stream directly to the Apple TV with AirPlay. So I can lock it or even surf the internet on the iPad while the video streams to the Apple TV.
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Hendrik

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #27 on: September 25, 2013, 12:07:42 pm »

Sadly there is a bit confusion around which formats it converts to, or the naming of those.

Gizmo gets a MPEG-TS Stream with H.264 video and AAC audio, which works on most newer Android devices, and since MPEG-TS is designed for streaming, also works without much effort.
Its mistakenly called MP4 in some places, which is not accurate at all, and should not be confused with the MP4 container format popular on Apple platforms. Sadly MP4 itself is not streaming capable.

Apple uses a format called HLS or HTTP Live Streaming for streaming content to their devices.
HLS is basically also MPEG-TS with H.264 and AAC, however the big difference is that HLS requires segmenting, and the m3u8 playlist file. Typically the stream is split in small 10s long segments, and served individually, and this information is then carried in the m3u8 playlist file.

The base tech for this is already present, its just not all put together. MC needs a way to provide these playlists, and a segmenter for the output stream.
Its something we can investigate for the future, to support native HLS protocol support. Sadly Android doesn't support HLS properly, so there is no one solution, but it may still be a good step into the right direction, since it doesn't really need much new things, and should be playable with the on-board iOS media player.
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #28 on: September 25, 2013, 12:11:39 pm »

It's not quite that easy.  You may need to build m3u8 files, and probably do custom seek handling.

But I've offered Robert any help we can give should he decide to pursue this.  I wouldn't expect it to be a big project, but he would know better than me.

Two thoughts....

1) Based on my observations of the market and my trials with competing products it is a hard problem. You think MC works now. Why not let us test it with JRiver's web client. Then either we would have ammunition to persuade Robert, or you might learn that more work is required by JRiver.

2) Couldn't JRiver make this work with JRemote without any cooperation from Robert?

It appears to me that JRemote does not care what the video format is. If I play an mp4 it plays as expected. If I play an mkv or avi, JRemote appears to try to play it then reports an error that the video is not compatible with ios.

So couldn't JRiver automatically do the conversion for all video that is not mp4. JRemote would not know the difference. When it tried to play an avi or mkv it would magically play.

No changes whatsoever required to JRemote.
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #29 on: September 25, 2013, 12:15:07 pm »

Are you saying that MC can already real-time convert any video format to streaming mp4? If yes, then shouldn't we be able to quickly test this with your (I forget what you call it because I don't use it) web client? If it works we can all pile on Robert until he has no choice but to submit.
There is H.264 encoding, but it's too CPU intensive for my 4.5GHz 2500K to handle—and that should be a fairly capable machine.
This means that the computer is rendered unusable while streaming content (unacceptable) video stutters on the playback device, and image quality is significantly reduced.

In theory, with MKVs that contain H.264 video, it just needs to be put into an MP4 container rather than re-encoded. This should be far less CPU intensive, and retain the original quality - but it only works for H.264. I would estimate that 50% of my library is MPEG-2 and VC-1 content, which the iPad does not natively support.

If Media Center had support for hardware encoders, that should considerably reduce the CPU requirements, but it's still reduced quality, and I don't have any experience with how that affects someone else gaming on the PC while video is being streamed, for example. This is why the best solution seems to be using a device which can play everything natively as a Media Center client. (an x86 tablet)

Part of the problem is that not all systems have hardware encoders. Modern Intel CPUs all have QuickSync, but only some systems actually provide access to the encoder. You need to be using the on-board graphics, or a system with Lucid Virtu.
With Nvidia you have CUDA and NVENC, though only 600-series and above support NVENC.
I don't know what your options are with AMD.
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rjm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #30 on: September 25, 2013, 12:17:11 pm »

I used to use air video but now use plex media server with the plex ios client. The server picks up anything I add to jriver and adds all metadata en artwork in the background. This gives me a rich client on the iPad that can stream anything in my library to my iPad. As with air video it transcodes mkv's without touching the video, those get transcoded with barely any load on the server. I also use it now instead of a jriver htpc  to play content on our tv in the living room with AirPlay. Plex reroutes the video stream directly to the Apple TV with AirPlay. So I can lock it or even surf the internet on the iPad while the video streams to the Apple TV.
Interesting. Are you saying plex makes use of JRiver tags? That would be huge.
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Hendrik

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #31 on: September 25, 2013, 12:28:58 pm »

Image quality is significantly reduced.

Did you watch the lowest quality preset? :)
I would argue that on a 10" tablet, the high quality preset is pretty good quality, at least on my tablet i cannot see anything obviously wrong with the stream.

Of course on my tablet i cannot compare to the untouched stream, because it doesn't even play typical Blu-ray streams, the hardware decoder in it only supports H.264 baseline.
Like i mentioned earlier, trying to find one big compromise for these presets is impossible, so people with no bandwidth or hardware limitations may end up with a lot of unused potential.

I already outlined a lot of options that can be investigated regarding encoding, and a lot of potential can still be used. It would also be a possibility to remux the video if its deemed to be within certain profile and level limits, if so desired, and bandwidth allows.
Even if its usually a good idea to find working defaults, i think this whole video conversion thing needs an advanced options area with at least the few basic knobs to adjust the conversion profiles for everyones use-case. Something to ponder and discuss on, I imagine.

Just don't expect things to change over night. I only start officially working for JRiver in January. ;)
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Matt

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #32 on: September 25, 2013, 12:31:02 pm »

Apple uses a format called HLS or HTTP Live Streaming for streaming content to their devices.
HLS is basically also MPEG-TS with H.264 and AAC, however the big difference is that HLS requires segmenting, and the m3u8 playlist file. Typically the stream is split in small 10s long segments, and served individually, and this information is then carried in the m3u8 playlist file.

It's a question mark as to whether we really need to do segments.

We might be able to do one huge segment, so long as we can do a custom seek handler that makes a new request (like Gizmo).
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #33 on: September 26, 2013, 07:28:54 am »

I split some Tastes Great, Less Filling discussion here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=83875.0

Please try to stay on topic. 
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #34 on: September 27, 2013, 01:45:26 pm »

High DPI is also important for Macs with their Retina push, so if there are improvements to be made, i'm sure they will come eventually.
High DPI is important everywhere now. Unless you are buying the cheapest machines, just about everything has a high DPI display now. Most new PCs are coming with 13" 3200x1800 panels.
Now that MC19 is available for OS X, I gave it a try on my MacBook Pro—it's looking really rough.
 
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #35 on: March 31, 2014, 07:38:08 pm »

Well, I was all set to sell my iPad 3 and pre-order a Surface Pro 2 this morning, as the hardware seems really nice, but it seems that Media Center just isnʼt built to support touch:

Well as an update on this topic, I ended up buying a Surface Pro 2 this weekend, thinking it might be the right device for what I needed.
The short version is that I won't be keeping it, but I thought I would return to this topic and give some feedback.

1. UI scaling has been in Media Center for a while now - this was very important, as the standard UI was too small to control via touch.
However, simply scaling things up doesn't really fix the issues with trying to use the Standard View on a touchscreen. It makes things like the playback controls large enough to work well, but gives you a very limited amount of space to actually browse content.
Much of the UI scales correctly, but there is still a lot that does not (e.g. the dividers) which makes control via the touchscreen quite difficult.

2. This is a lot worse than I had expected. Some people had suggested that the standard view was at least workable with a touchscreen, but I really did not find that to be the case.
Unless you plan on using 100% size with a keyboard and mouse, Standard View is not a good experience on the tablet at all. You can't even scroll the view without dragging the scroll-bars at the side. Trying to scroll a list by flicking as you would in any other application on the device results in you dragging files and re-ordering the list.

3. Theater View via touch is very slow to navigate. There's no quick way to go "home" if you are five levels deep into a view, you have to hit back, wait for the animation, hit back again, wait, and so on.
Scrolling is very slow as well - not the performance, just the actual speed at which the view scrolls.
You can grab the scrollbars at the side again, but this is difficult due to touch inaccuracy.



After figuring out how to disable all the image processing that Intel's drivers were doing, I was very impressed with video playback using madVR on the device.
With a 1080p native screen that size, and the ClearType Display panel, the image with 1080p Blu-ray is very nice. Absolutely razor sharp - much better than the situation with an iPad where video has to be transcoded and upscaled.
Using DXVA2 scaling and a couple of other tweaks to reduce the GPU load, after about an hour or so of DVD and Blu-ray playback, the tablet was reporting 6 hours of battery life remaining. Not quite as good as an ARM device, but very impressive considering it's a full-blown PC playing back Blu-rays.

As long as I stuck to DXVA scaling (which should be Lanczos 4 with Intel hardware) and hardware accelerated decoding the device remained cool to the touch, and while there is a fan in there, it was low enough to be inaudible.
Trying to use any of the more demanding scaling options would cause it to quickly heat up and get quite loud though.


I ran into another problem I was not anticipating:
Blu-ray discs contain a lot of data, and on the discs which were approaching 50mbps I would run into issues with the video pausing to buffer every few minutes.
I was only able to get smooth playback of these discs when I was in the same room as the router itself, where the connection would max out at about 75mbps. In the room where I mostly planned on using the device, it would fluctuate between 20-40mbps, which was fine for some discs but not others.
The Retina MacBook Pro here connects to the same network at 270mbps when it's near the router, and about 130mbps in the other room. (I seem to remember my router advertising "600mbps" but I guess that was just marketing and it's really only doing 300mbps)


I have been unable to get 48Hz playback working on the device at all.
The drivers are only reporting 60Hz as a valid refresh rate, and Intel's custom resolution utility says there is "insufficient bandwidth" for 48Hz. (or 24Hz for that matter)
While there is madVR's Smooth Motion frame blending option, I did not spend all this money to watch videos at 60Hz.


More generally, outside of Media Center's use, I was unimpressed with the performance.
General desktop performance felt quite a bit slower than the Ivy Bridge MacBook Pro we have here (a "2.5GHz" dual-core i5) even for things like browsing the web in Firefox. Unfortunately I forgot to run JRmark, and I've now wiped the system. The fans did spin up when playing back stereo SACDs, so it was definitely struggling a bit.
And performance in many areas is worse than you would see on an iPad. Scrolling pages in the browser is choppy - especially in Firefox - and things like screen rotation are not exactly a smooth transition.


Touch accuracy on the device is terrible. Even after running the calibration, I would constantly have to tap things three or four times before they would work correctly.
I had no such problems when I was connecting to my PC via Remote Desktop or VNC with the Jump Desktop app on my iPad. Apple have always done a much better job with touch than anyone else, whether it's their iOS hardware or the trackpads on their notebooks.
And on the subject of trackpads, the one on the touch cover is a real piece of crap. It's tiny, unresponsive, and there's a lot of friction on the surface of it. Almost entirely worthless.
Even after performing the 100 point calibration, pen accuracy was extremely bad, especially at the edges of the display.


Generally, a lot of things just seemed to stop working for no apparent reason. Rotation would randomly stop working even though I checked that it was unlocked. Sometimes rotating the device a few more times worked, sometimes I would have to reset the device.
A lot of the time pressing the capacitive Windows key on the front would activate (there's a small vibration motor in the device) but do nothing - the Start Menu wouldn't show up.
Similarly, when you swipe in from the sides or the top of the screen, it would only work some of the time. This aspect of Touch worked better without using any calibration, but then touch in the center of the screen was less accurate than after going through the calibration process.
Volume control in Media Center worked fine to begin with, and then for some reason, System Volume would just suddenly stop working. The slider would move, but the volume would not change. Media Center's Internal Volume worked, but I'd rather control the hardware volume.
The caps lock LED on the touch keyboard would sometimes just flash a couple of times rather than staying lit. Sometimes you would have to press quite a few keys or play about with the trackpad before it would start responding to inputs again.

This actually caused me some real problems when I first took it out of the box and did the initial setup.
I entered my WiFi password (64 characters) which worked perfectly, entered my username, and created a password for the account. Everything seemed to go fine.
About five minutes after using the device I locked it... and when I went to unlock it, I was unable to login.
The only thing I can think that could have possibly happened is that it either did not register some of my keystrokes, or registered the wrong ones - and managed to do it twice - when I created the initial account.
So five minutes after having the device, I needed to do a complete wipe of the system. After finding out how to do this, it was not a big deal - all I had to do was create a USB recovery key (about 700MB) from my other PC and boot from it, and then it only took about three minutes to wipe the drive, but I couldn't believe what had happened - frankly, I'm still amazed that it did.
I really think Microsoft should have included a recovery key inside the box too - how much does a 1GB thumb drive cost these days?


It's a minor thing, but I now understand why Apple only let iOS devices turn the screen brightness up when they are in use, and never turn it down.
Far more frequently than I expected, I somehow covered or obscured the light sensor in the Surface which caused the screen to dim while I was using it, and that was very frustrating.


The headphone output is terrible. Lots of hiss, and it only seems to be a headphone jack.
On the MacBook, it's a combined headphone jack, headset port (mic/remote functions) and a 3.5mm optical output. The MacBook port is not the best quality either though - there's still a noticeable hiss from it.
The iPad was much better than either of the two devices in that regard, but it still wasn't silent, and doesn't have an optical output like the MacBook. (which would be really nice)


On a more positive note, I really like having a stand built into the device. Yes, you can get covers for an iPad with a stand built in, but they are nothing like this. It's a good rigid stand and is never going to fold in on itself and fall over, like so many iPad covers with built-in stands.
The two levels of operation in this revision seem like a very important change - I don't think I would have liked it nearly as much if the stand was only fixed to the more upright position. Most of the time I used it in the lower position.


If I only wanted this as a media playback device to stream Blu-ray quality video around the house (no, transcoded video is not blu-ray quality, even on a 10" display) then I think I would be reasonably happy using this with Theater View if I could sort out the wireless speed. I especially liked the idea of buying the Surface dock so that it could use a wired connection and then I would essentially use it as a small television (it's about the same size as an old 13" CRT displaying 16:9 content) once it was no longer useful as a computer, but I was expecting that to be a few years from now when I would no longer want to use it as a computer/tablet because better hardware existed.
Right now, that is the only thing I would want to use it for, and I'm not paying ~$1700 for that. (I bought the 256GB model for the extra 4GB RAM)
I see that the US price for the original Surface Pro has dropped to $600 now on the Microsoft store, which probably means you can get it for even less elsewhere. At $500-600 I would be happy with the device for this purpose. The amount of RAM or internal storage would be far less important if it's only being used as a playback device too.


As a tablet, or a notebook however, there are much better options.
I'm now unconvinced that anyone knows how to do touch properly other than Apple, and if this is Microsoft's flagship product to show off Windows 8's touch capabilities, then it's no surprise to me that it has not been well received.
Aside from the image quality and latency issues inherent to remote connections, I had a much better experience using Windows on my iPad than this.

I was expecting it to be a lot better.
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fitbrit

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #36 on: March 31, 2014, 09:39:12 pm »

Thanks for the thorough review. I agree with your opinion on the touch experience in iOS vs. W8.
So far for streaming video to a tablet, I have not seen anything better than Air Video. I haven't tried Plex, however. For the time being, I shall be sticking to iPads.
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #37 on: March 31, 2014, 10:45:20 pm »

Thanks for the thorough review. I agree with your opinion on the touch experience in iOS vs. W8.
From what I have heard, Apple compensates for the angle that you are likely to be using the device at (possibly even using the sensors in the device?) rather than registering the exact location that the touch sensors picked up.
This report claims that Apple devices have poor touch accuracy, but if you look at the section concerning accuracy of the QWERTY row, there's a clear pattern in the "error", which suggests that it's intentional.
Certainly, I have never felt there to be a problem with inaccuracy when using an iPad - at least nothing close to the level of inaccuracy with the Surface Pro. It's not perfect, but it's not frustrating to use either.

As it actually got worse in many ways after calibration, I suspect that the Surface may actually be a fairly accurate device, but that accuracy does not account for the fact that it's being used at an angle with a finger as the input device.

So far for streaming video to a tablet, I have not seen anything better than Air Video. I haven't tried Plex, however. For the time being, I shall be sticking to iPads.
As long as you have the wireless capability for it (and I thought I did, as my WNDR3700 was one of the top-rated N routers when it was released - though it was quite a few years ago now) I would say that the Surface is by far the best option for streaming video, as it will play anything (MPEG2, VC-1, TrueHD, DTS-HD audio etc.) without transcoding or conversion.
I know that it could be argued that it doesn't matter on a screen that size, or that you won't notice, but it surprised me just how much nicer it looked than anything I had seen on the iPad. (I did some test conversions to ~10GB MP4 files a while back)
 
If the 64GB Pro 2 drops to $500-600 this time next year, assuming there's nothing better in that price range, there's a chance that I would pick one up just for video playback and as a control device for audio. (though I suppose you could probably add on a USB DAC like the DragonFly if you're using it in a dock)
While there were some annoyances with Theater View, none of them were deal-breakers.
I'd have to see if there's a way to get 48Hz working on it though - Microsoft made a point of mentioning how it can seamlessly switch between 60Hz and 48Hz, but I wonder if it has to be done through a special API?

My main problems were with everything else about the device though. It's too expensive to only use for video playback.
But yes, other than the Surface Pro or another x86 device, it does seem like Air Video or a similar app might be the best option for now.


For what it's worth, I had a conversation with a couple of people that have other Windows 8 devices later this evening after writing that post - one with a Dell convertible, and one with a Samsung tablet.
Both of them said they had experienced the same issues I did with things like rotation not working, the capacitive Windows button not doing anything, the trackpad being unresponsive and so on.
The guy with the Dell said that he just uses it as a laptop 90% of the time now unless he's watching a video, and the other assumed the problems were simply due to his Samsung tablet being a really cheap device. (and he is happy with it for the money)
 
To me it suggests that many of these issues are with the OS rather than the hardware, which is a bit concerning.
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fitbrit

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #38 on: March 31, 2014, 11:15:06 pm »

Funny that you mention the touch 'accuracy' of iOS. I kind of suspected as much. There are times when I *know* I didn't make accurate contact with a link or a text selection, yet the device knows what I meant. I've scrutinised the actual point of contact with my fingertip and the bit that is registered as being contacted is not the exact same spot, but rather what I intended to touch with my fingertip.
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icstm

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #39 on: April 15, 2014, 11:03:46 am »

"the bit that is registered as being contacted is not the exact same spot, but rather what I intended to touch with my fingertip."
I just used an iPad in "anger" today and had the same experience. Much better than my Xperia.
my Surface RT is very mixed.
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6233638

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #40 on: April 15, 2014, 01:31:07 pm »

"the bit that is registered as being contacted is not the exact same spot, but rather what I intended to touch with my fingertip."
I just used an iPad in "anger" today and had the same experience. Much better than my Xperia.
my Surface RT is very mixed.
I think you meant "under protest" rather than "in anger" but this is exactly why I'm back to iOS again now.
The saying is frequently over-used, especially when it comes to Apple products, but it just works as far as touch accuracy is concerned.
 
I picked up a 16GB iPad Air over the weekend, and I have to say that they have really improved things on the hardware side - the fit and finish is much nicer than my old iPad 3.
 
But there are still the same issues with very limited media format support.
JRemote seems to be fine for audio streaming, but what is the best solution for video?
Preferably something that does not require a "server" app running on the PC. (other than Media Center, that is)
 
As a temporary measure, I've just been setting Handbrake to do low complexity, but high bitrate encodes which only takes 5-10 minutes and streaming that.
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fitbrit

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #41 on: April 15, 2014, 01:59:15 pm »


But there are still the same issues with very limited media format support.
JRemote seems to be fine for audio streaming, but what is the best solution for video?
Preferably something that does not require a "server" app running on the PC. (other than Media Center, that is)

Sadly, I'm still with Air Video for this, so yes, an extra server app is running. This also has the disadvantage of forcing me to organise my media on disc using MC, or to remember where all the files are kept on the computer when searching for new additions.
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jmone

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Re: Streaming video to tablet devices?
« Reply #42 on: April 15, 2014, 05:28:55 pm »

I've not tested for a while but I got this to work at the time (see the thread for more detail)

I've only an iPhone to test and one combo I found that works is:
- ACE Player (http://ranysoft.wordpress.com/)
- MPEG2/DVD/PAL stream with MPEG2 Audio

The player did like both MPEG2 and AVC streams but had issues with Audio either being in sync (eg the video was playing way to fast when with AAC tracks used on the H264 and FLV Profiles ) or it would not play the DD track used by the MPEG2 Profiles.  The good news is the "MPEG2/DVD/PAL stream with MPEG2 Audio" profile seems to work and I guess it would in other plays (not tested).

EDIT:  Also tested it with "Good Player" with similar results to above (though while the H264 did not run in FFW it was out of sync with the Audio).  The issue with the  "MPEG2/DVD/PAL stream with MPEG2 Audio" profile is it is in a MPG container so can you not seek at all.

I'm sure there must be Apple heads who have worked this out!
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