Setup a Community IPTV service

[Hampster]

Hi! (this is my first post ) I'm looking to setup a community IPTV service, does anyone have any advice for me please, nothing turned up after a google search.

[popper]

for your content storage
http://www.freenas.org/

for your distribution network (you forgot the word wireless to get me interested sooner)
http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/08...most-as-cheap/

openmesh is probably your better bet right now
http://www.open-mesh.com/store/

VLC as your content server app (see its remote html interface etc)to your community and as your player,using multicast UDP and try out the VLC wizard for IP multicasting your video on 224.0.0.1 and filling in the sap announce etc so people can see and tune into the video streams easy(search here for multicast under my name i cant be bothered to find it and paste here) and AVC/H.264 as your encoder codec
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

and see this VLC ipod Encoding tutorial to see how you might begin to get consistancy to your content for all viewers/users.

http://wiki.videolan.org/IPod

[Hampster]

Originally Posted by popper

for your content storage
http://www.freenas.org/

for your distribution network (you forgot the word wireless to get me interested sooner)
http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/08...most-as-cheap/

openmesh is probably your better bet right now
http://www.open-mesh.com/store/

VLC as your content server app (see its remote html interface etc)to your community and as your player,using multicast UDP and try out the VLC wizard for IP multicasting your video on 224.0.0.1 and filling in the sap announce etc so people can see and tune into the video streams easy(search here for multicast under my name i cant be bothered to find it and paste here) and AVC/H.264 as your encoder codec
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

and see this VLC ipod Encoding tutorial to see how you might begin to get consistancy to your content for all viewers/users.

http://wiki.videolan.org/IPod

Thanks for your reply, it's very useful! , is wireless secure ? could my service be taken down by "bad people" who drive by in a car ?

[popper]

wireless is perfectly fine, even a simple wep key will do, to stop the casual driveby connecting if that is what you want.

but then this is a Community IPTV service and these people are more likely to use it for what it is providing I.e the novelty of a wireless IPTV in their area....

[Hampster]

Originally Posted by popper

wireless is perfectly fine, even a simple wep key will do, to stop the casual driveby connecting if that is what you want.

but then this is a Community IPTV service and these people are more likely to use it for what it is providing I.e the novelty of a wireless IPTV in their area....

Thanks for your reply, are there any "off-the-shelf" set top box's available (ordering online of course) as alot of my community don't have a computer in their homes

Edit: after a google search, I've located some IPTV Set Top Box's, http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...+top+box&meta=

[popper]

sure but here is were it gets tricky, there are not that many AVC/H.264 STBs today due in part to everyone trying to flog off all the old kit before the new AVC comes truely online.

this is were you need to know the tech words and tricks used, for instance you will see "mpeg4" used all over the place to sell kit, however there are two kinds you need to be sure to buy the new
Mpeg4-AVC (aka AVC/Mpeg4-part10)

NOT the old and antiquated Mpeg4-ASP (aka DivX/Xvid/Mpeg4-part2) this can NOT play Mpeg4-AVC.

this is really the only really usable Mpe4-AVC one i like the spec of, but that site has several older kit that plays the old Divx/mpeg4-part2
https://www.ripcaster.co.uk/node/220...FQZuMAodWm1KSw

and you could get by on these older mpeg4-ASP at the expense of higher bandwidth use per stream for a given encoding quality and size, AVC can and does provide better quality and smaller file size for a given bitrate than ASP....


are we talking a commercial enterprise here in your community IPTV or a real end user community lead IPTV service, it matters and there are far better options to take keeping to the multicasting and AVC codec OC so as to not buy kit that will be regreted later down the line OC.
http://www.inuknetworks.com/uniTechnology.html

end user lead projects can get by on the old part2 OC and you CAN buy old hardware DivX/MPeg4-ASP realtime encoders cheap.

and the divx streaming net STBs are in most specialist online shops today OC, but AVC/H.264 is really your better long term option as that is were the industry is going (although you would'nt think so looking at Vm executive choices for their STBs and headend specs LOL ).

[Hampster]

Originally Posted by popper

are we talking a commercial enterprise here in your community IPTV or a real end user community lead IPTV service, it matters and there are far better options to take keeping to the multicasting and AVC codec OC so as to not buy kit that will be regreted later down the line OC.

Thanks for your reply, it will be a real end user community lead service, I want to take a FTA/FTV Satellite or Freeview Feed (if the broadcaster says "yes") and distribute it to the end users.

[popper]

from a tech but simplistic POV, DVB-T (terrestial freeview) is broadcast as several seperate Mpeg2 Encoded PS streams(channels) inside a single Transport stream wrapper/container, DVB-S(2) comes in Mpeg2 and Mpeg4-AVC Encoded flavours, so no re-encoding/transcoding is really required, but OC you loose lots of bandwidth in the DVB-T case, as it carrrys far less PS channels for the given TS (transport stream).

you can take any DVB-T/S('2' the new standard) evenDVB-C(cable) and DVB-H (handheld) streams (its all the same TS wrapped thing really) providing you can get the right USB2 stick or PCi(e) card and the right BDA (in windows) or supported linux DVB drivers, and feed that full TS or split off the PS channels inside directly to VLC and have that just pass along the stream to the network.

the problem is selecting the channels inside the full DVB TS, seperate PS isnt a problem OC,you just put them on seperate ports and fill in the 'sap announce' .

i had lots of fun when i did a test and fed the full DVB-T TS stream into the LAN network and started a VLC to view it on a remote PC , lots of windows opening up all at once, rather than have me select which single channel i wanted to see LOL.

i assume any of the hardware streaming STBs will have the right software patches and be able to select anything inside it sees with a GUi of some sort, but i dont use them as yet due to the lack of AVC decoding problem, so cant really advise you there.

the hardcore Linux DVB developer guys can probably answer that questionmark better if you ask them, other EU/US linux users are far more advanced than the UK in this, as they have the open market kit and can hook up anything they choose, to anything the services provide without some VM type T&C restricting the EU open market of end user choice.....

[Hampster]

thanks for your reply, so my best choice (if i've got this right ) would be to use satellite feeds, would it be best to use seperate computers (1 for each channel feed) so if 1 computer crashes only that 1 feed goes down (until reboot) and not all the channels, the computer(s) would be using Windows (lol), i wonder what i could do about the people who don't have a computer, a set top box (of some sort) would be the only option that i can think of.

---------- Post added at 19:14 ---------- Previous post was at 18:34 ----------

Originally Posted by popper

end user lead projects can get by on the old part2 OC and you CAN buy old hardware DivX/MPeg4-ASP realtime encoders cheap.

That might be the best option for me to go for (cost).

[popper]

it gets a bit harder than that to understand LOL, but yes you could do it that way for a selection of channels ,for instance im looking at cable tech screen.

its listing 292 channels and they are inside 30 TS streams, the sat feeds will be the same or even more.

many are encrypted OC so are out of bounds and not applicable to this situation, and it just gets far to messy to take onboard this needless extra info for now.

the simplistic way to think of it is, 1 DVB-S device per TS stream at any given time, inside these TS will be several channels you can select to watch.

this is why you need to read up on it and ask the linux devs and hardcore users you can find in several messageboards to clarify the details.

you could do werse than buy a few cheap DVB-T (or DVB-S if you already have the digital [dual/quad] LMBs and dish etc) USB2 cards that are used and supported by the DVB linux guys, and play around with the DVB VLC streaming tutorials you will find if you look.

this will then directly translate to your understanding of whats required to add more devices and feed their digital content directly into the (wireless)network.

the most basic setup would be 1 suported DVB linux DVB-t USB2
device, 2 PCs and one of those streaming STBs you want to use, plus 3 VLCs running, one to act as the server that takes the TS feed, and two for playback of the Multicast TS stream, AND LOTS OF READING and asking the linux DVB heads to to help you out.

theres probably some commercial hardware to take the place of the serving VLC software,but probably not Multicast enabled as they dont seem interested in providing that yet, and it will be in the high price range probably industrial range at that, but i dont know of any as i have not looked.

and i prefer to see were freeware can take us in the community run IPTV world, all the bits required right now are there, but it needs some polish to get there right now but thats OK, theres time.

---------- Post added at 19:26 ---------- Previous post was at 19:19 ----------

"the computer(s) would be using Windows (lol), " in that case you must make sure they have BDA drivers and even then that means make sure its Linux DVB supported.

the windows version of VLC can use BDA compatable DVB kit now but its still alpha and i cant find the time (when im in the mood) to work out how to tune it properly yet to test

but at the end of the day, DVB linux is really the only real choice in this (wireless)LAN streaming IPTV if you want it to work properly, thats were the real devs are, no real windows devs are working on it as a generic option...

[Hampster]

I wonder what VM will be doing with their old analogue equipment (lol)

---------- Post added at 19:43 ---------- Previous post was at 19:31 ----------

Originally Posted by popper
end user lead projects can get by on the old part2 OC and you CAN buy old hardware DivX/MPeg4-ASP realtime encoders cheap.

That might be the best option for me to go for (cost).

[popper]

well now that you said you want to use DVB, thats the cheap option, as you dont need to Encode to a digital format, its already there in Mpeg2 DVB-T.

OC those DivX realtime USB2 Encoders are also useful for making *smaller offline versions of your live DVB streams, so yes its werth considering if you can find a reason to use them, im holding out for real AVC/H.264 D1 (thats standard PAL(UK)/NTSC(US) TV video size) realtime Encoders.

*as in filesize, as well as CIF/QCIF and Ipad screen res sizes AND bitrate/s.

[Freesat-Box]

One option could be to go down the myth-tv solution. I haven't used it, but many of the guys I know swear by it. It might be something worth looking at.

[altis]

You could have a Slingbox or the like. You'd need one per active channel though.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/26...-anywhere.html