Streaming Video on Demand

[jessesn]

Hi,

Does anyone know of a good solution to do video on demand? TCMCP and Share drives work reasonably well if the video is pre-compressed. Is there a better solution that will transcode the video on the fly so that it doesn't need to be pre-compressed? I played around with VLC and that will work reasonably well, but I couldn't figure out how to make it on demand. I.e. allow you to select what you want to watch and allow you to fast forward/rewind. Is there a better solution? I haven't looked are Orb Networks in a while, but that might work. Is there a PC based slingbox solution? Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
Jesse

[Cybrid]

Hi,

Does anyone know of a good solution to do video on demand? TCMCP and Share drives work reasonably well if the video is pre-compressed. Is there a better solution that will transcode the video on the fly so that it doesn't need to be pre-compressed? I played around with VLC and that will work reasonably well, but I couldn't figure out how to make it on demand. I.e. allow you to select what you want to watch and allow you to fast forward/rewind. Is there a better solution? I haven't looked are Orb Networks in a while, but that might work. Is there a PC based slingbox solution? Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
JesseWin Media Encoder,
http://www.jakeludington.com/archives/000217.html




Eric "that Kid" Hicks, Snapstream
http://theillustratednetwork.mvps.org/GeneralPocketPC/EricHicksPocketPCWatchTVHowTo/Snapstream.html

[jessesn]

Cybrid,

Thank for the feedback. Unless I'm mistaken Windows Encoder falls in the same boat as VLC, where you have to select a playlist and you can't control the media (i.e. pause fast forward etc). But it is an interesting alternative. VLC is slightly better in this regard because you could telnet in and at least start a new stream. I guess you could also VNC into your windows machine and also pick a new stream in Windows Encoder as well too.

The Snapstream one is interesting though. I'll have to pick-up the trial and see how well that works. Thanks for the suggestion!

Regards,
Jesse

[Cybrid]

You can have streaming or pause/fast forward...
Streaming is like TV. You can watch but have little control. For free...Win Media Encoder and Terminal Services works....
Snapstream does provide a control interface to set recording/ change channels but needs hardware encoders and costs money. A $200+ investment I'd rather make elsewhere.
For the stop/pause/fast forward capability...Nothing will accomplish that better than a network drive. Orb's ability to bypass the need for configuration of your PC is good but...again a live stream can't be fast forwarded. and a hardware encoder tv card needs to be used.
You could...configure a shared network drive accessible from the internet but I don't want to even consider the horrific security risks of that.