My BIGGEST complaint about PlayOn is that it re-encodes files it doesn't need to.
For instance, Hulu has their stuff encoded as H.264 and Netflix is VC-1, both of which are supported by Popcorn Hour. So, why not just directly stream the output from Hulu and Netflix to Popcorn Hour devices?
OK, I understand that for Hulu, the advertisements are in flash. So, why not just encode those as H.264 on the fly and add them to the stream and don't re-encode everything else. And for Netflix, just LEAVE IT ALONE.
If the streams were just passed along and not re-encoded to MPEG, it would solve a LOT of problems. The biggest of which is with processor power and memory usage, plus of course, video quality would never suffer because of re-encoding.
Anyway, that's my biggest problem with PlayOn. The FAQ says that they do this (and I'm sure it's their intention to do it eventually), but so far, I'm not seeing it and don't quite understand why...
Charlie
Ah, yes... we wish it were so easy.
The biggest hurdle currently is that we haven't tested with a Popcorn Hour device at all.
That said, we had high expectations for the native codec capabilities on devices like the PLAYSTATION 3. However, we were disappointed right out of the gate with the HTTP streaming capabilities of the PS3 with media streams other than MPEG-2. Other codec videos played fine if the media was local to the PS3 HDD, but once we tried streaming over HTTP from our PC server, it just failed miserably.
Even if it did work well, we still have limitations with mixed streams, where the main video is H.264 and the advertisements are Flash Video. Without sending a single stream to the device, it's impossible (with the DLNA standards) to show multiple and exclusive streams in series. So, we don't have a choice currently there.
The bottom line is that if and when we test and officially support devices like the Popcorn Hour, and if we determine that it does a good job handling online/HTTP streams of eg. H.264, we will avoid transcoding and just serve directly. We hope to be pleasantly surprised once we have time to test!
PlayOn Administrator
This might help slightly, tho I'm aware you won't know for sure until you test it out for yourselves.
The developers of the Popcorn Hour's firmware make an HTTP streaming app called MyiHome that streams any file the device can play without any re-encoding or even remuxing. With that in mind, this list might help:
Video capabilities: H.264 up to 5.0 , Mpeg-4 (GMC only supports up to 1 warp point) , VC-1
Video containers it DOESN'T accept directly (seems to work with everything else, MKV included) : OGM, RMVB, FLV
Audio codecs it doesn't support : FLAC(5.1), MLP/TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS
Chances are everything you send to the box will simply need to be remuxed from FLV if you happen to be streaming any H.264 based FLV files in the first place. (I'm assuming your Youtube implementation gets the same MP4 files that Apple and the PCH box itself use)
Not sure if any of that is useful, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to mention it.
Thanks much for the detailed feedback! We will definitely be taking a look, though likely after our Netflix Silverlight integration is completed.
PlayOn Administrator
Any update on this? In all seriousness, I think the best, easiest way to get *minimal-fuss Popcorn Hour compatibility would be to run the myihome server, visit it (http://ip.address.of.machine.its.one:8000), "watch a clip" in the different containers (mkv, avi, etc.), and see what it sends you, as the Syabas plays have no trouble playing back that info.
* e.g. attaining compatibility without having to purchase a device
I have two players in the house from this company, and being able to run non-transcoded Hulu and Netflix streams would be a dream, as its something my woefully underpowered fileserver can't do (especially over Wine) and that neither box really needs.
Edit note: As someone who made a quick check on Opera, it really seems that the "stream" is basically a plain text file with this information:
Title%20Of%20Show|0|0|http://10.0.0.85:8000/action/playvideo.jsp?id=f308&ext=.mkv|
A breakdown:
The "playvideo.jsp" address basically amounts to an outright http file transfer. I'm guessing the "webserver" has to be capable of resuming for the sake of video seeking (not sure how to enable this, but it seems there are ways to flag a "non-seekable but pausable" video for the player.
Once again, I hope this helps.
I've been waiting for this for a long time... as in allowing a disable for video transcoding.
I would be interested to know if any progress has been made for custom transcoding settings for devices that can handle (for the most part) native streams.
We are still working on this, so there is nothing available yet to release to the public. Note that for the most part, this will only be relevant for local media sharing. Online video feeds will in general not work without being transcoded first, for a number of technical reasons.
PlayOn Administrator
My hope just died, I shall hold a vigil.
Sorry to hear that! But it's impossible for the PCH to natively play the majority of file formats and codecs that are available through online streaming. If it were, there would be no need for products like PlayOn in the first place.
For a cost-effective device like the PCH to handle these kinds of streams, it would need to either be through a direct technical and business relationship between the manufacturer and the given content provider, or by adding additional CPU and codec support physically to the device -- and thus making it more expensive, along the lines of a PC.
PlayOn Administrator
Ahh, that statement is a little misleading. The PCH streams quite a few more sites then you think natively. See here (though it's made for the NMT platform):
http://www.mspportal.com/action/showservice.jsp?homePath=/nmt&serviceid=...
There'a a few pages worth of stuff.....
You're right! We really meant "it's impossible for the PCH to natively play the majority of file formats and codecs that are available through online streaming provided in PlayOn". In other words, services like Hulu, CBS, and Netflix cannot be played by a PCH directly.
PlayOn Administrator
PCH can play everything except flash basically. Most popular streams aren't actually flash but are handled in a flash player, and most of the sites out there are indeed handling it with... flash (still waiting on html 5). However, if you can figure out how to point it to the originating stream (for higher quality videos without flash streams) then the PCH should be good to go. This has been done to some extent, i.e., Youtube. I thought that's what PlayOn did, grabbed the native streams...
So admin, are you trying to say that when PlayOn accesses Netflix, it is transcoding a flash video codec and not a VC-1 codec? I wasn't under the impression that that was the case. I wasn't sure what the audio stream was though.
The PCH absolutely cannot stream video content directly from Hulu or Netflix. (If it did, there would be no reason to use PlayOn with the PCH in the first place.) Netflix videos are not Flash encoded. Hulu videos include advertisements that must be incorporated into a single stream (i.e. transcoded, regardless of codec) in order to work over DLNA.
PlayOn Administrator
The reasons for no Netflix to PCH include no layer DRM, insufficient browser capabilities, and no available API. The video stream is not the problem based on all available information.
This is how I've understood the PlayOn process, it uses the website as a substitute for an API to access the video stream. Nobody else has been able to do that thus far, otherwise TVersity, Twonky, and the like would be streaming Netflix as well.
I know devices like the 360 and PS3 are picky about video/audio codecs and container formats (which the APIs work around), but that isn't the case with PCH. I haven't seen it stated anywhere what exactly is the format of the stream that PlayOn accesses from Netflix, which is why I am unconvinced that the PCH couldn't handle the stream.
I'm just saying that no evidence has been presented to support that statement. You'll have to bear with me on my theoretical explorations. I'm not really interested in Netflix on the PCH, the new 360/Netflix interface really rocks, fast forward and rewind are unbelievably smooth, video quality is dynamic (running wireless). So I'm not even considering switching that, I would just like to know of the true reason it's been stated that PCH couldn't handle the accessed Netflix stream if that is indeed a fact.
We are very confident that the PCH cannot handle the specific format and logic to decode Netflix streams. Only a PC or a device that has Netflix-specific firmware upgrades would be able to play the videos natively. You can of course ask the folks that manufacturer the PCH as well!
PlayOn Administrator
haha, that's funny, i don't know if you intended it to be but that was good.
All it comes down to is, yes, the PCH can play a VC-1 (MP@HL & AP@L3) as well as AC3, DD+ audio, which is what Netflix uses, but you keep telling me it can't, which is why you have me throwing my arms sideways while giving a shoulder shrug. What am I missing here?
For a cost-effective device like the PCH to handle these kinds of streams, it would need to either be through a direct technical and business relationship between the manufacturer and the given content provider, or by adding additional CPU and codec support physically to the device -- and thus making it more expensive, along the lines of a PC.
This seems a little inaccurate which is why I think I'm not being understood too well. Codec support isn't an issue with PCH at all, it supports pretty much everything you throw at it except flv.
Despite what the PCH claims to support, when we served the media to it in our testing, it was unable to play the media unless PlayOn transcoded it. If you would like more information regarding how to use the PCH (which we do not officially support yet, for what it's worth) to access Netflix directly, it is probably best to contact the manufacturer of the device. They are certainly much more familiar with their device's capabilities and limitations than we are.
PlayOn Administrator
Ah I see, you have a test machine. I remember before that you guys didn't have one, glad to know you have added to your testing devices. Unfortunately, no matter how hard it is tried, getting an official response from Syabas is a very rare occurrence for ambiguous matters. I don't have any VC-1 videos to test with, but hearing that the video didn't play properly from a test is not entirely surprising, just learned something new. Thanks
The PCH A/B family doesn't have the proper DRM code in it's firmware to decode the stream but it does play the format that Netflix sends (i.e. remove the DRM from the file and the PCH would play it). The new C series they just released is supposed to have support for it.
Yes that makes sense, I knew PCH couldn't handle DRM, and it slipped my mind that VC-1 is a MS codec capable of utilizing DRM. It's all coming together now. Supposedly the new C-200 should handle DRM, but I might be spitting out nonsense since this is from a spec I thought I read, I don't feel like going to check right now.
I suppose the real issue is that not enough devices have the PCH's unique issue to be worth the developmental effort (even one solid coder spending a solid month on it is something like $10 grand in development costs, or roughly 340 PlayOn licenses, not counting overhead, just to break even).
The PCH can play Netflix streams just fine. It's just that they have to be un-DRM'd and possibly have their streams re-muxed, much like OGM support through MyiHome, and while there's a CPU hit from doing so, it's substantially smaller than the CPU hit from transcoding to MPEG-2. Of course, this is entirely on the assumption that Netflix uses VC-1 for its video streams. If you can, try ripping a small segment of the Netflix stream onto the hard drive and re-mux it into an MKV (or a WMV, but I don't know of any WMV muxers per se). Any NMT device should have no trouble playing it.
However, PCH owners are an uber-niche, let alone PCH owners with a dedicated fileserver that's not running Windows (e.g. running Wine on a mid-end computer, where the performance hit from transcoding is non-trivial), meaning that realistically, save for some explosion in popularity for players that can arbitrarily handle VC-1 over a LAN but can't open Netflix directly, we probably won't see support in PlayOn.
That's just my vaguely educated guess anyway.