Got an iPad and its cool!

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by wayner

@heffneil - Try downloading Air Video to be able to stream Sage content to your iPad. They are releasing an iPad specific app but it isn't out yet. There is an iPhone app that should work.

See:
http://www.inmethod.com/air-video/index.html
http://www.inmethod.com/forum/posts/list/749.page

I've got airvideo and orb. I think orb is a little nicer, but both work well. Very cool apps.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by ybrew

I've got airvideo and orb. I think orb is a little nicer, but both work well. Very cool apps.

Thanks - I haven't used Orb for a few years now. I used to use it a few years ago but I found that it times it would suck up a lot of my PC resources.

I have an iPad on the way. I live in Canada and they won't be on sale here for a few weeks but one of my colleagues will be in NYC tomorrow so I asked him to pick one up for me.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by ybrew

I've got airvideo and orb. I think orb is a little nicer, but both work well. Very cool apps.

I can't get Orb to work with my iPad. I have set up Orb on Two PCs and I can get it to stream from the server PC to other PCs on my LAN but when I try to access video files from my iPad I get "Unknown exception on your PC running Orb". Audio files work fine but I get this with every video type when I click on the video file name.

I guess you don't see this?

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by wayner

I can't get Orb to work with my iPad. I have set up Orb on Two PCs and I can get it to stream from the server PC to other PCs on my LAN but when I try to access video files from my iPad I get "Unknown exception on your PC running Orb". Audio files work fine but I get this with every video type when I click on the video file name.

I guess you don't see this?

Air video is being a bit flakey and crashing on my iPad
Orb works just fine but it's not optimized for the iPad yet
I'm playing with too much other iPad stuff right now though to worry about trying to watch a movie

The iPad is awesome!

[wayner]

Originally Posted by ybrew

Air video is being a bit flakey and crashing on my iPad
Orb works just fine but it's not optimized for the iPad yet
I'm playing with too much other iPad stuff right now though to worry about trying to watch a movie

Do you use the Orb Media app for the iPhone or just use the web browser as the front end? I can't get the web browser to work but I haven't bought the app. Apparently they are working on an iPad Orb app. What I would really love to see is a version of Placeshifter for the iPad.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by wayner

Do you use the Orb Media app for the iPhone or just use the web browser as the front end? I can't get the web browser to work but I haven't bought the app. Apparently they are working on an iPad Orb app. What I would really love to see is a version of Placeshifter for the iPad.

I use the orb app and can't wait for the iPad app
Agreed on placeshifter - would be VERY nice

Poster from my iPad (of course)

[wayner]

Air Video works pretty well but some times it seems to become rather unresponsive. I am not sure if that is due to Wifi problems on my end (I doubt it) or if the app is just not that solid yet. It doesn't work that well for my TVShows folder since there are hundreds of files in that folder. It works much better for my Video Library folders. And, of course, neither Orb nor Air Video can play LiveTV from Sage.

[wayner]

Maybe we should all chip in to buy Narflex an iPad. If he had one you know that he would want to be able to use it as a Sage client which would greatly increase our likelihood of having a Sage PlaceShifter client.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

Maybe we should all chip in to buy Narflex an iPad. If he had one you know that he would want to be able to use it as a Sage client which would greatly increase our likelihood of having a Sage PlaceShifter client.

I wish it were that easy - if that were true we'd have an iPhone app by now...

[wayner]

Brent - any insight as to why there is no such app? Is there no interest at Sage or is it an issue of being worried (or actually knowing) that Apple would not approve this app? As I have posted elsewhere, even in this thread, Air Video allows you to stream video files over your LAN (or wifi) to your iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad. They have even released an iPad specific version of their app.

There are a few issues in using this with Sage, including the fact that it doesn't work so well when you have hundreds of video files in one folder which is kind of the case with all Sage users and their RecordedTV folder.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

Brent - any insight as to why there is no such app? Is there no interest at Sage or is it an issue of being worried (or actually knowing) that Apple would not approve this app? As I have posted elsewhere, even in this thread, Air Video allows you to stream video files over your LAN (or wifi) to your iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad. They have even released an iPad specific version of their app.

My guess is this. There is some interest on the part of SageTV, but it's something they still have on the drawing board while they are hard at work with another project or two..... Just a guess though. And the things that keep them from putting this above those other priorities would be basic things like how much time invested for something that they can't be sure will be accepted by Apple - more likely these days, but couldn't say that very long ago. I hope it will happen for the iPhone & Android first though there's no guarantee it will ever happen.

There are a few issues in using this with Sage, including the fact that it doesn't work so well when you have hundreds of video files in one folder which is kind of the case with all Sage users and their RecordedTV folder.

Really? What sorts of issues? - are you saying "in one folder" because that's how the iPad would show it?
I ask because I'm the guy with:

• TV Recordings 239.86hrs - much of this is on one drive, but some is on a second drive.
• Music: 927 albums / 4753 tracks
• Video: 17 files
• DVDs: 441 files
• Pictures: 9465 files

Not all on one drive, but a lot of content nonetheless

[wayner]

I have lots of content too - my total video content is over 29 days and my TV folder has about 500 video files that take up over 1.5TB. The problem appears to be that you browse Air Video by folders and when you select a folder it tries to get thumbnails for all video files. This seems to cause it to timeout on some folders.

The other problem, of course, is that it cannot stream live TV and, I am assuming, files that are currently recording. Most other functionality you can get from the Sage web server.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by wayner

Brent - any insight as to why there is no such app?

Requiring a Mac to develop the application, the cost of becoming an iPhone/iPod/iPad developer, having to develop in cocoa, and Apple still being able to just refuse the application, all those inconveniences add up...

[wayner]

Is there not a SageTV version for the Mac? If so then presumably Sage does have a Mac and has done some development for that platform.

IMHO a really sharp SageTV app for the iPad platform would also help to sell SageTV licenses.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

IMHO a really sharp SageTV app for the iPad platform would also help to sell SageTV licenses.

Agreed. Especially if it did placeshifting

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by wayner

Is there not a SageTV version for the Mac? If so then presumably Sage does have a Mac and has done some development for that platform.

Well, if the Mac version is java based too, it might be more of a port of say the Linux version than anything close to an iPad application...

[paulbeers]

Everyone has to remember too, that not everyone has an iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. You are having to bank on the fact that the Apple devices are going to be around for years to come in order to cover R&D costs (which would be considerable, although the new iPhone 4.0 SDK does allow you more access to the devices native video playback). Also, you could alienate many of your clients that do not have an Apple product, but have a competing device if you don't release a placeshifter for their device (i.e. Android or Windows mobile 6.5/7). Now Sage would be forced to have a placeshifter on 6 different platforms as opposed to just 3 (and all 3 are currently x86 based which the other "future" 3 are not).

Oh and don't get me started on how many people would complain about poor video performance that would be blamed on Sage when in fact it was poor cell phone connection that caused the problem (see Wireless MediaMVP and how much mud was flung at Sage even though it was a poor Wireless chip in the MediaMVP that caused the problem).

[stuckless]

Along the same lines as @paulbeers post.... Anyone that has ever tried to write code that streams mediea to devices, can tell you, it's not a simple task. Companies like Orb and Sling have built an entire business around just doing that... for SageTV to become an expert in mobile streaming would be take considerable resources, and putting those resources on this project would potentially remove them from doing other things, such as adding new features to the STV that can be enjoyed by everyone.

I would think that your best bet on getting SageTV content on your device (iphone/android/winmo) is to use Orb or Sling... or pehaps someday, one of us will figure out the magic set of parameters to make mobile streaming work via the mobile browser

[wayner]

There are obviously some issues in writing such an app but I don't think it is insurmountable - Air Video has accomplished pretty much all of this and they appear to be a small company with fewer resources than Sage. The Air Video app has a server that runs on your PC (or Mac) that does the streaming, transcoding (if necessary) and where you specify what folders to add to the media database.

Presumably you wouldn't need much of this with Sage as you already have the Sage server running which can already transcode to Placeshifter clients - perhaps the output of the stream would be a different format than what Sage currently uses. Air Video then appears to use the Apple iPad video player for media playback. Therefore all you have to write is the iPad client UI and I must admit to not being an expert in this area so I don't know how much work it would be to port the existing Sage Placeshifter code over to the iPhone OS. And then there is the issue of getting Apple to accept the app.

This could also be accomplished in stages - step 1 would be to build a client that would work for streaming over wifi on a LAN, step 2 would be to make it work over 3G connections. Paul - you mention the problem of poor cell phone connections - I think another big problem would be the limited upload bandwidth that most people have with their ISPs.

Personally my main use for this would be as a portable playback device in my home. My iPad, like all iPads purchased so far, doesn't even have a 3G radio so that isn't even an issue so far. But this I do know - there is no better playback device for media content when it comes to screen, battery length and weight than the iPad.

[stuckless]

@wayner - you seemed to have it figured out... and yeah... it actually looks pretty simple, now that you've explained it... could be a real business opportunity here for you to write this and sell it on app store.