Faster Internet connections at home, time to support HD resolutions in placeshifter

[mkanet]

Now that people are starting to get FIOS, CableTV internet connections with solid 10mbps, 20mbps upstream speeds it makes sense to look into hardware accelerated AVC encoding/decoding support; or in a worst case scenerio software encoding/decoding for HD resolutions. I'm curious if it makes sense for sageTV to start supporting HD resolutions in placeshifter for people who have the hardware and bandwith already in place to do this.

I currently get 11mpbs-16mbps upstream for highly compressed data transfers, definitely nothing lower than 11mbps (with 62mbps sustained downstream). Unfortunately, placeshifter is limited to only old fashioned SD DVD resolutions with a limit of just 2mbps speed. I currently max out my placeshifter settings to only get DVD quality over the internet. It would be great to watch real HDTV over the internet. I'm wondering how long it will be before this is a reality.

[Lucas]

Until SageTV makes the necessary mods, you could theoretically have a VPN client on your remote PC and as such your placeshifter will think that it is opertating in your home LAN and work directly without transcoding.

Come to think of it, you could use the proper PC client version for this.....

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Lucas

Come to think of it, you could use the proper PC client version for this.....

I've tried using SageTV Client remotely over a VPN and it wasn't a very satisfying experience. Latency turns out to be a big issue in UI responsiveness. Placeshifter seems to handle this better since all the UI processing happens on the server and only the keystokes and screen updates are remoted. Whereas Client executes the UI locally, so all the database interactions have to be remoted over the VPN, which really slows things down.

[evilpenguin]

If they ever bundle in a multithreaded version of ffmpeg then I think this is a real possibility. I know my Q6600 can handle faster than real time 720p encodes with conservative settings that look pretty good.

[mkanet]

Im already going through SSH remotely. Using the transcoder is necessary to dynamically adapt to bandwidth availability. Without the transcoder, all it would take is, for example, my wife to send an email with an attachment from home to break playback of the streamed mpeg2 file. Unfortunately no home internet speed offerings currently offer enough bandwidth to accomodate that kind of headroom. Non-transcoding for HD video is more appropriate for LAN speeds. Even my 802.11G wireless isnt good enough for reliable non-transcoded HD video.

Originally Posted by Lucas

Until SageTV makes the necessary mods, you could theoretically have a VPN client on your remote PC and as such your placeshifter will think that it is opertating in your home LAN and work directly without transcoding.

Come to think of it, you could use the proper PC client version for this.....

[mkanet]

I wonder if its as easy as swapping out the executable.

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

If they ever bundle in a multithreaded version of ffmpeg then I think this is a real possibility. I know my Q6600 can handle faster than real time 720p encodes with conservative settings that look pretty good.

[evilpenguin]

If only it were that easy

Sage's FFmpeg (SageTVTranscoder) contains a lot of special customizations/optimizations for Sage so a straight up swap would completely break everything. But, they usually update ffmpeg with every new release so, provided there are no legal/technical issues, I wouldn't be surprised if they update to a multi-threaded version with the next beta cycle.

[stanger89]

How many people really have 10Mbps pipes? I don't think anybody around here offers anything over 1Mbps (up) for prices south of astronimical.

[reggie14]

The Sage transcoder already is multi-threaded, isn't it? I remember lots of discussions about a year ago or so. From the reports I've seen, it's never really lived up to expectations. I don't think it actually breaks things into separate threads very well.

I wonder if we'll ever see H.264 encoding on the Placeshifter. Is there some reason Sage can't use the x264 encoder?

[mkanet]

Which x264 encoder are you talking about? I dont know of a open source transcoder that supports Nvidia CUDA (or ATI's AVT). I'm guessing thats what sageTV development will be looking for if they decide to support AVC encoding.

EDIT: I found something that looks like might do the job, but I doubt sageTV would ever bundle it sageTV software since its not free:

Badaboomit

Originally Posted by reggie14

...Is there some reason Sage can't use the x264 encoder?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Which x264 encoder are you talking about? I dont know of a open source transcoder that supports Nvidia CUDA (or ATI's AVT). I'm guessing thats what sageTV development will be looking for if they decide to support AVC encoding.

x264 is an open source H.264 encoder. It's what Handbrake uses as a H.264 encoder. As you can imagine, it's software only. I don't see Sage using a CUDA encoder anytime in the foreseeable future. I don't think Placeshifting is a terribly important or widely used feature in Sage for them to pay licensing fees for a commercial product. And, I don't think we'll see a GPLed hardware-assisted encoder anytime soon.

And, I don't think there's a huge need for hardware-assisted encoding. Sure, it would be nice, particularly for HD stuff, but I don't think very many people will be streaming HD video to extenders. Decent bit-rate 480p video is probably enough (and unless I'm mistaken Sage doesn't even do that now), and strikes a pretty good balance between video quality, processing power and bandwidth. I'm guessing a pretty high percentage of Sage servers out there can encode H.264-main profile (high profile might be too much) in 480p in real-time in software.

[mkanet]

Yeah its hard for me to know what other people's needs are. For me, Ive already outgrown the max quality that sageTV placeshifter offers at 480p/576p @2000Kbps via Internet. If I were to take your comments as the average sageTV user's needs (which is probably true), my guess is sageTV will probably just stay where its at while devices like slingbox may much more easily offer "HD" resolutions. It would be relatively low cost for them; while marketing the "HD" offering (regardless of how many people actually actually can take advantage of it).

Originally Posted by reggie14

x264 is an open source H.264 encoder. It's what Handbrake uses as a H.264 encoder. As you can imagine, it's software only. I don't see Sage using a CUDA encoder anytime in the foreseeable future. I don't think Placeshifting is a terribly important or widely used feature in Sage for them to pay licensing fees for a commercial product. And, I don't think we'll see a GPLed hardware-assisted encoder anytime soon.

And, I don't think there's a huge need for hardware-assisted encoding. Sure, it would be nice, particularly for HD stuff, but I don't think very many people will be streaming HD video to extenders. Decent bit-rate 480p video is probably enough (and unless I'm mistaken Sage doesn't even do that now), and strikes a pretty good balance between video quality, processing power and bandwidth. I'm guessing a pretty high percentage of Sage servers out there can encode H.264-main profile (high profile might be too much) in 480p in real-time in software.

[reggie14]

Out of curiosity, does the higher resolution Placeshifter setting work on the extenders in placeshifter mode? I've never tried it on the extenders. I do occasionally use the PC-based Placeshifter client, and I can't use the D1 resolution because it just makes things look awful. I think there's some sort of goofy deinterlacing problem with mplayer, but I'm not sure. It's been discussed before here, but I don't think its been resolved yet (at least, not in the Placeshifter client as shipped).

[mkanet]

Does anyone have any ideas how to play ripped bluray movies via placeshifter? I have a several dozen bluray movies now (and growing quickly); but cant play any of them via placeshifter due ffmpeg's inability to trancode bluray on-the-fly; even on my quadcore Q6600 CPU. I'm guessing multithreading doesnt work that well or not at all. That would be kind of lame to not have an easy way to play any of my 1080p/1080i H.264 videos via Internet using placeshifter.

[gplasky]

Since placeshifter can't play DVDs I doubt it will play Blue Ray.

Gerry

[mkanet]

I meant bluray media files. A lot of people like to keep the movie itself without storing video games, trivia, commentaries, etc. I have no problems playing back my old fashioned DVDs in the form of mpeg2/vob. Sadly, FF/REW doesnt work on low-res 480p H.264 for me via placeshifter either. I'm not sure how all the people who record their TV recordings with the HD-PVR using H.264 even use placeshifter.

The only type of video that works correctly at any standard resolution and REW/FF is mpeg2; luckly, at least my TV recordings are in mpeg2 format.

Originally Posted by gplasky

Since placeshifter can't play DVDs I doubt it will play Blue Ray.

Gerry

[bcjenkins]

Get a Sling Box and hook it up to an extender. I have one, works great on rips.

B

[mkanet]

LOL.. yeah, I guess that's one way to solve the problem.

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Get a Sling Box and hook it up to an extender. I have one, works great on rips.

B

[bcjenkins]

It also solves the mobile phone playback problem too..

[mkanet]

I just got word back from SageTV development. They are closely following the active development for CUDA support in FFMPEG. SageTV will definitely add this when its finished. They seem just as motivated to add it as I am. I think I'll just wait. It really doesnt make sense to temporarily use slingboxes and swap back and forth between it and sageTV placeshifter. Afterall, placeshifter has direct pure digital access to all 12 of my digital tuners.