Streaming live TV to smartphone!

[spinedoc]

Sprint SPH-i600 smartphone and Snapstream's Beyond TV, has anyone had success with streaming live TV? It is possible to stream live TV to a remote computer on the internet, and also to a Pocket PC, I can already do this and my setup is already successfully set up.

My i600 can connect to my home server/Beyond TV server, but on clicking the live TV link it yields an empty page.

Im hoping someone on here has successfully accomplished this. I am a bit amazed that no one on here has even attempted this, the Beyond TV program is like 50 bucks. On my Pocket PC I can literally view my live Cable television from home, anywhere I am, and can change the channels on the fly. I dont see any reason why this cant be done on a smartphone, unless the smartphone browser is just not compatable.

[encece]

Have you tried it directly using WMP instead if PIE?

[spinedoc]

Yes I have tried, but it does not work, I get a WMP error. It's not really designed to do it like that, although you can sort of do it.

[spinedoc]

All you people with smartphones and no one has dreamed of having live TV on it? Seems like most of you guys underuse your smartphones.

[wirelessbeachbum]

I have been able to stream recorded videos, but not live TV, You will need to have WM2003 in order to even get the recorded videos to stream. Most of the time I will save the videos to an SD card, now that you can stop and start the videos with the New OS without having to go all the way to the beginning of a movie it's a very usable product.

[spinedoc]

Are you just accessing .asx/.asf files from a server, or are you using Beyond TV?

[spinedoc]

By the way, using Beyond TV I can stream recorded content, it looks pretty amazing, it downloads the CGI.ASX file which tells it where to stream from.

It is live TV that I am having a problem with, sigh...

[syabiku]

spinedoc,

I've been thinking about getting a smartphone, and the SMT5600 with its built in WMP10 is very intriguing. I immediately thought of streaming live TV to it. From a programming standpoint, it'd be easy. The Windows Media Encoder API provides a very high level of abstraction, it's almost like connect-the-dots in simplicity. That code, along with some code to change channels on the tuner, would allow you to set up a moderately-powered PC at your home that would serve out a live windows media stream to a port that your smartphone could connect to with WMP10.

The problems are in the data throughput that the SMT5600 provides; you're stuck with GPRS speeds. I've read that the device is GPRS Class 10, which I understand means your max download speed is 32-48 kpbs ??? I'm not an expert here, so someone please confirm.

As a test, I've taken some video and reduced it to fit on the SMT5600 screen dimensions and compressed the stream to 40 kbps, and believe me it does not look pretty, and the audio has a lot of artifacts too. There's a lot of tweaking you can do with Windows Media Encoder, so maybe I've not found the right settings.

Anyway, if someone could confirm what the maximum and typical download speeds are on the AT&T GPRS network, maybe that could let us know if live streaming TV is feasible. But I am not hopeful. :(

Now, if they come out with an EDGE or UTMS smartphone--then streaming TV is definitely a sure thing and I'd get that device as soon as I could! Any news on when such phones are coming??? 2005?

[Kris Kumar]

Hi spinedoc

Thanks for pointing out the Beyond TV software.

Over the weekend I was trying to hook up my ATI TV card and Windows Media ENCODER to stream a TV channel. But was able to stream only audio. It seems more like a limitation of Windows Media Encoder. As the Encoder refused to accept video input.

Will try out Beyond TV in the next few days. Meanwhile had a couple of questions.

- Do you have to buy Beyond TV LINK along with Beyond TV?
- Noticed that your initial post was made in Oct, any progress since then?

Thanks

[rrape]

I just downloaded free trial of Beyond TV. It did not come with TV Link; however, that may also be available via free trial.

[keirmeister]

Greetings,

I don't know if this was answered elsewhere, but I found it rather easy to stream live video to my smartphone using Windows Media Encoder. It's essentially the same method used with PocketPCs.

Essentially, you setup Windows Media Encoder on a PC to stream incoming video.

I run Media Player on the smartphone, and tell it to open a URL to the PC (http://machine IP address:8080 - you can change the port).

Voila! Piece of cake.

This works via bluetooth with ActiveSync.

But it's SLOW!

Cheers,

Keirmeister

[Kris Kumar]

Awesome....

Wish I can get the video streaming to work. But I think I will have to upgrade the display card before I can do that.

BTW...by streaming incoming video do you mean TV Tuner on the computer or the video from the video capture board.

I can do the video capture streaming, but cannot stream the TV Tuner. :-(

[rrape]

With proprietary software on my D-Link internet camera, not attached to a computer, I can find no solution to view it on a smartphone with windows media player 10. Straight access to the camera via its IP requires an OCX plugin that does not install on the smartphone like it does with Win IE from a computer. Any ideas in that regard?

Rick