Great extender for the ipad

[ma22xx]

Just figured i'd share this incase anyone is looking for a better way to get sage on their iPad then sling(I hate how slow the interface is on there...not to mention the cruddy resolution). I downloaded the splashtop remote app the other day because it looked like a good alternative to vnc. After playing around with it though I realized it was actually quick and smooth enough to work as an extender for sage. Just setup sage client or server on whatever pc you have, turn mouse icons on, turn fse off, and install the splashtop app and you're good to go. I've only used it at home, not sure how it'd do remotely but from home it's a much quicker and higher resolution interface then sling. The video has a slight stutter to it but not enough to bother me or my wife. Audio took a little tweaking to get to work...you need to set the renderer to something that doesn't just pass the the spdif through. Other then that this thing rocks!

[paulbeers]

Does this even work outside of your local network? I don't see any mention of this.

If it does, how does it handle reducing bit rate to play a video back with limited bandwidth?

The reason Sling works, is because it is reducing the video quality so it can be shared over the internet due to bandwidth limitations. Same thing with Sage Placeshifter and same thing as many of the other products currently being used by users of Sage and iOS products. If it can't deal with bandwidth limitations then it makes it a very limited product for Sage use (only in the ideal situation where you are watching a movie on your iPad from your house which to me sounds like a better situation to just watch it on a tv).

Now if it does have some magical ways of reducing the video quality when away from home, then this would be the holy grail for those who have iOS products and might finally push me to buy an iPad.

Just my .02 worth....

[ma22xx]

I haven't used it remotely...I'd guess that sling still would do a better job of that. I may have abnormal use cases but mostly I want to use the iPad when at home. My wife likes to watch tv on the iPad when I'm playing a game on the tv or we use it to pull up the baby's room while watching something else. To each their own I guess.

[paulbeers]

Like I said, it isn't useless just limited. The idea behind the iPad for most is computing on the go. This is why a true Placeshifter App is so heavily requested for iPad users.

P.S. the other advantage of this is the ability to use Flash since it really just turned the iPad into a glorified thin client... and yes I will probably buy iPad 2.0

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by ma22xx

Just figured i'd share this incase anyone is looking for a better way to get sage on their iPad then sling(I hate how slow the interface is on there...not to mention the cruddy resolution). I downloaded the splashtop remote app the other day because it looked like a good alternative to vnc. After playing around with it though I realized it was actually quick and smooth enough to work as an extender for sage. Just setup sage client or server on whatever pc you have, turn mouse icons on, turn fse off, and install the splashtop app and you're good to go. I've only used it at home, not sure how it'd do remotely but from home it's a much quicker and higher resolution interface then sling. The video has a slight stutter to it but not enough to bother me or my wife. Audio took a little tweaking to get to work...you need to set the renderer to something that doesn't just pass the the spdif through. Other then that this thing rocks!

I saw that app the other yesterday. It sounded really good and for only 99 cents (pretty sure that's what it was) I need to go get it.

thanks!

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Does this even work outside of your local network? I don't see any mention of this.

If it does, how does it handle reducing bit rate to play a video back with limited bandwidth?

The reason Sling works, is because it is reducing the video quality so it can be shared over the internet due to bandwidth limitations. Same thing with Sage Placeshifter and same thing as many of the other products currently being used by users of Sage and iOS products. If it can't deal with bandwidth limitations then it makes it a very limited product for Sage use (only in the ideal situation where you are watching a movie on your iPad from your house which to me sounds like a better situation to just watch it on a tv).

Now if it does have some magical ways of reducing the video quality when away from home, then this would be the holy grail for those who have iOS products and might finally push me to buy an iPad.

Just my .02 worth....

I used it remotely for a short period during lunch today. I tried watching an SD recording, a blueray rip, an hd recording and an HD Recording converted to a lower video quality.

It does work remotely, but you need a really good connection. There was a lot of stuttering. The SD recording was watchable. The rest not nearly as much. Could have been my connection was better during the SD - not sure.

I can easily see how this could work great on the local network.

The mouse gestures will take a bit of time to get used to, but this one is definitely a keeper.

As far as remote access, it asks for an IP address in the connection box, but I tested it with a hostname and it works fine. Which means it'll work great with a dynamic IP.

it also does give you the option to reduce bitrate of video - to a point. There's a mouse gesture you do over video to either increase quality or increase smoothness of video. Higher quality will be jerky. Higher smoothness would be lower quality. There's only two settings (Sharp or Smooth). They do seem to work in sage, but I haven't really done a lot of testing yet.

[ybrew]

Played with this a bit more.
I've watched The Event and Survivor both at work during lunch the last couple of days. Using AirVideo was actually a bit jerkier than using SplashTop. As a remote desktop app, it's not my favorite (I actually like the mouse movements in "Remote" better) but this is still very useful. Better on a local network, but more than good enough remotely.

[Chriscic]

This program looks neat; may get it if not too expensive.

Unfortunately, all my media is on WHS, which can't play back a lot of stuff itself. Still, this could be useful for remoting into WHS from the iPad and also for messing around when my main PC is on

UPDATE: Tried it out - only 99cents and a trial version as well. Set up the Splashtop server on my Windows 7 PC to try it out. It didn't work very well. Video was jerky and after a few seconds it kept losing the connection. I don't think this was a Wifi connection issue since Air Video played (as always) just fine.

[Chriscic]

Ah, had to turn off SPDIF passthrough. Now working well.

[PLUCKYHD]

Wouldn't it be cool if you had a stvi to launch is sage and use that remote connection as a remote for all connected clients and sagetv extenders.

Just saying like ipad "lite" app

[wayner]

Plucky - is anybody working on a Sage MyMovie App for the iPad like the one that Binnerup has for MC? I guess the code already exists on the Sage side as while browsing your videos in the Sage Web client you can click to play in an extender or client. I guess the trick is to then marry that with the "click to play" UI that has been writen for MC.

[Ericft]

I have installed both the jreichen mobile streaming and tisagetv for viewing recordings on my iPad 2 and iPhone 4. I have had the greatest success streaming video from my server pc running splashtop remote- excellent video no stutter on LAN , min but watchable on wifi outside of home. For some reason have never been able to watch using any of the other methods. Continuous buffering, it locks up when you time scroll more than a few seconds. Very frustrating, not sure why splash top is so much better at sending info over the Internet. I realize that the server is playing directly and hence no transcoding needed, but the video still has to be sent over the Internet. Any idea of how to use the splash top methodology for sage as a place shifter?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by Ericft

For some reason have never been able to watch using any of the other methods. Continuous buffering, it locks up when you time scroll more than a few seconds.

So have you been in contact with jreichen to try to address those issues? If you don't bring up issues in his threads, chances are that they won't get fixed as he'll spend time on other projects/activities instead...