My facination with this first started with
Winamp TV, which is a sort of multicast ip tv. It uses
nullsoft's .NSV streaming container format, which consists of mp3 for audio and the open source
VP3 codec for video (newer streams use
VP6 which is not open source, but one of the best high compression codecs out there).
In looking for a open source player that plays .nsv files(
VideoLAN is the only open source player that supports .NSV) so that I could port it to XBMC, I thought that we could implement a more general multicast tv in XBMC, MBONE. We could use a SAP/SDP browser similar to
MultiKit so that it would grab internet TV channel info and showtimes. The only downside to recieving channels on the Mbone is that you have to be on the mbone. This means that your ISP's routers has to support multicast forwarding (Optimum Online does not) or someone can forward multicast packets you. This is where another program like
LiveGate could be implemented to tunnel the multicast UDP packets to you via Unicast UDP packets.
Multicast IP TV is not only limited to Internet Steams. You can set your local box to stream content from a DVB-T/DVB-S/DVB-C card, DVD, or MP3s to your entire home network. Sorta like the On-Demand stuff.
It seems like a lot of work, cause I guess it is, but to me it seems worthwile because the only thing that XBMC is missing is reliable Internet TV, and what internet TV service is more reliable than one being kept up by Nobel Prize Winners. I haven't been able to connect to an MBone stream from home, but I'm pretty sure my University is on. I'm going to find out if I can set up a tunnel from there to my house.
Is anyone else interested in this?
