[pauldriver]

** updated '12/03/17 ** New Post, Alpha 5.1 update download
** updated '12/02/12 ** New Post, Alpha 5 Download
** updated '12/01/24 ** I need feed back, what you like, dislike, wish you could do, or just tell me your not interested, and I'll go away.
** updated '12/01/24 ** see new post Alpha#4 comments needed by friday, then feature lock heading to an INSTALLER/CONFIG UTILITY(WinAPI only)
** updated '12/01/19 ** see THIS POST for an issue with OS2 Developer preview 7111, Iframe will not scroll.
** updated '12/01/17 ** see THIS POST for update info and download.
** updated '12/01/17 ** Thumbnail video now persists as you travel the filesystem.
** updated '12/01/11 ** see THIS POST
** updated '12/01/11 ** added picture from PB of server page, now with preview!

OK, so I got irked over the inability of the Playbook to browse Windows network folders.

I previously checked around, heard about HFS, and tried it. It's a wonderfull mini webserver with a nice file download utility, but jeeze, downloading 1GB files, and then having to wait, just to watch something on my home network, was getting stupid.

Next I tried Twonkey and Tversity and they are fine DLNA servers (I run TVersity for a WD Live TV HD that just can't to talk to Windows 7 SMB shares) but the overhead and cumbersomeness of the DLNA web clients really sucked, it made using the Playbook a misery.

Then I realized. I don't need transcoding for the Playbook, it plays 90% of my files just fine, and the ones it wont play, I probably need to re-do anyway.

So I just needed a light streamer with a not awfull interface, god, I almost died trying to read the DLNA stuff, when it dawned on me that the DLNA servers are not using DNLA with their web clients, they are letting flash or the browser to the lifting.

So I took a look at the HTML 5 video tag, it's pretty simple, the browser does the real work, and it amazingly was easy to get a couple of files on a web server to play in the PB Browser.

I was off.

First I had to hunt for mini web servers that would set the mime types correctly, that's the kicker, the PB browser wont talk to the server, if the mime types are being reported by the server correctly. The only server I could find, quickly and simply, that handled things well was good 'ol Apache, well Micro-Apache

With a copy of Micro-Apache (with PHP, of course) I threw together a small site that just reads the file system and serves the media files to the playbook.

No fancy media databases, or PNP, DLNA, or other crud, the file system is the database.
Just an ip address and a port, something a shortcut handles just fine.

Now I'm streaming files, quick and simple to my Playbook.

There's a couple of gotcha's with this, I could only get Apache to set the mime type correctly for files located under www-root.

I haven't really played with solving this issue, as I just wanted something that would work, quickly, so I cheated, badly

I made symbolic links with mklink /d from the www-root to where my media files are stored.

The whole directory, Micro-Apache and the simple video server site, comes in at 2.4MB, and uses little RAM (9MB I think).

If anyone's Interested, I'll clean things up a bit, make an archive of my simple media server, and load it someplace.

Mind you this thing is NOT for use over the internet or use on a machine on public networks, it has little security, and if some have access to the network this is running on, that can easily get access the machine it's running on.

If people are interested, I'll see what I can do to lock Apache and my PHP down further.

Paul.

[quarky_uk]

Oh yes, that sounds superb!

[bluezone1]

Wow you might of just made my day.

[meske]

Subscribed! This sounds really cool.

[StormMan1988]

This is exactly what I have been looking for. I would defiantly pay for an app like this in app world. Provided that it streams video over my home wifi network and not through the internet in other words I don't want it to use my home bandwidth.

[canuckvoip]

If you can find me an easy way for me to stream video from my WDTV Live to the PB I will pay!

[ralfyguy]

If you can find me an easy way for me to stream video from my WDTV Live to the PB I will pay!

That, and while you're at it write something for full USB support as well. I wish I could do this myself. Need to make some extra money?

[CanadianThomas]

Nice, I do this in Mac OS X with Web Sharing. Just linked to my files like you did, using the terminal though, and all is good.

It's a way better solution than using orb or others as they transcode the video to flash resulting in the computer doing a lot of work and bogging down if being used by someone else and having to watch crappy flash encodes.

I think you will get quite a few requests for a download.

[Weetrucker]

I run a windows home server so this would be great

[kcmagnet]

I'd love to get a copy of this too! inability of the PlayBook to mount network drives is killing me

[si_chindo]

+1 Pleaaaase.

[diegonei]

Sounds interesting

[Poncherelly]

If you can find me an easy way for me to stream video from my WDTV Live to the PB I will pay!

I'm able to stream movies from my home server / pc using ORB. Very cool app and even works over 3g and bridge if you use flash as the default. If you're interested, do a search in here, someone added a nice how too.

As for the file browser project ... I would love to help test

[canuckvoip]

I'm able to stream movies from my home server / pc using ORB. Very cool app and even works over 3g and bridge if you use flash as the default. If you're interested, do a search in here, someone added a nice how too.

As for the file browser project ... I would love to help test

Thanks... tried Orb years ago when it first came out on the Wii. Was not ready for prime time back then. When I got my PB on launch day one of the first things I remembered was Orb after realizing the PB would not read a network share. I haven't been a fan of the vid quality so am hoping/searching/wishing for something better.

Cheers

[Poncherelly]

Thanks... tried Orb years ago when it first came out on the Wii. Was not ready for prime time back then. When I got my PB on launch day one of the first things I remembered was Orb after realizing the PB would not read a network share. I haven't been a fan of the vid quality so am hoping/searching/wishing for something better.

Cheers

I agree. ORB is flexible but not what I would call the end all. If a better tool comes out ... I'm switching too

[pauldriver]

Ok, umm, yeah, access to a WD LiveTV, interesting request

I was gonna post a screen shot, as I'm working on the thumbnail preview video, kinda like the WD LiveTV does, yeah, I kinda copied their layout too

OK, attachment time, snapped from the PB.

The layout is pretty basic, and Playbook does the hard work of actually rendering the media, the server just makes sure the mimetype is set correctly before sending the stream.

The boxes on top are buttons, home and help are fixed, the television, movies, and wdplayer buttons are symlinks to the top directories these can even mapped network drives (whoo hoo!) and get generated dynamically

The list contains the files in the directory, and the little boxes turn the preview on.

Clicking a filename will cause it to play fullscreen.

I'm working on the preview (getting it to persist as I navigate) as well as directory sorting and locking out the "ability" to traverse out of the basic filesystem and examine the rest of the filesystem ( you can only look, you can't actually touch ).

I'm kind of shocked at the response, I'll do what I can to get the code cleaned up and get something posted tommorrow.

[pauldriver]

Oh, did I happen to mention I wrote this from wordpad?

Hahahahaha, Playbook don't need no stinking upnp, no dang dlna, to heck with ecma/java/action script just need HTML, CSS, and well, PHP cause I'm lazy and didn't want to learn how to read a directory in something else.

Goodnight, I'm loopy and falling asleep at the playbook.

[kill_9]

@pauldriver - Have you cleaned up the instructions and written a complete tutorial yet? This would be perfect running as a virtual machine instance.

[Poncherelly]

Oh, did I happen to mention I wrote this from wordpad.

Color me impressed! I wish I had your skills!

[StikiGreenZ]

I'm interested in helping test this out! Good idea.

[pauldriver]

Making microapache and a website "end user" installable and writing documentation for that is hard, making it useable by alpha tester #1, my 68yr old mum is proving to be harder still.

She's the reason that [home] and [help] were the first things added after I got the first video to play.

IMHO, This took no skill, it's a 'parse a directory' script I probably learned online 10 years ago, and the HTML5 video tag, and the Playbook. Really, the impressive part is that the Playbooks entire media library is linked to the webbrowser, not just support for the 'web' video formats.

This setup works in I.E., Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, just only with .mp4, .ogv, .mkv, or .webm, whichever of those are supported by your browser (it's a bit of a mess BTW).

I got 'lucky' in that Godgle err Google returns Videojs.com as like the first hit when googling html5 video playback. Not that I'm using their code, it's overkill for a resource designed for the playbook, but the site was instructive.

I'm off to work, I'll attempt to get something together and posted by 8pm (gmt-8).

Paul
(posted via bridge, while riding to work)



P.S. Wow, any one ever have a virtual key get stuck before? my space bar just went nuts?

[SoUnCool]

I will definately pay for this server and setup. I am using ES file explorer to browse to my SMB/NFS shares, as well as my NAS device, but so far only able to play files that are under 1GB, over 1GB the app starts to download and buffer them locally which sucks

[pauldriver]

OK, just got home, had to work a few extra hours tonight, gonna work on this till I drop.

l8ter

Paul.

[SoUnCool]

thanks Paul. waiting for upadte whenever you have a change

[canuckvoip]

Awesome Paul!
I can hardly wait!!!