# streaming from pc



## drdarren (May 15, 2004)

Hello all and happy new year. I have 5 tivos, two hd and 3 regular. i am looking to store my dvds on a hard drive and i want to know if there is a way to stream the movies to the tivo. i dont want to physically transfer them like tivo desktop plus does, i only want to stream. Is there any way to do that?

thanks


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

drdarren said:


> Hello all and happy new year. I have 5 tivos, two hd and 3 regular. i am looking to store my dvds on a hard drive and i want to know if there is a way to stream the movies to the tivo. i dont want to physically transfer them like tivo desktop plus does, i only want to stream. Is there any way to do that?
> 
> thanks


 tivostream can do it (see my sig for a link). Note 1 big problem with HME video streaming is there is a 1.1GB limit to stream buffer, which means any single files over 1.1 GB won't play past the 1.1 GB mark.
Note however that I am getting close to a new release (v0.11) which will support folder playback, so for DVD rips if you leave the original 1GB VOB files structure intact for each DVD that is one way to workaround that issue.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Also, there is HME/VLC (see my sig).

These only work on S3/HD -- the S2 doesn't support video streaming.

moyekj, how are you distinguishing between hitting the end of the stream, and just running out of buffer?


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## madneon (Jun 17, 2007)

moyekj said:


> tivostream can do it (see my sig for a link). Note 1 big problem with HME video streaming is there is a 1.1GB limit to stream buffer, which means any single files over 1.1 GB won't play past the 1.1 GB mark.
> Note however that I am getting close to a new release (v0.11) which will support folder playback, so for DVD rips if you leave the original 1GB VOB files structure intact for each DVD that is one way to workaround that issue.


If you get some time, if you find out any info about a app that can run on a drobo am I the only person that stores is tivo movies on a drobo??


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## tivoupgrade (Sep 27, 2000)

Check out this how-to posted in the Coffee House:

Using your TiVo DVR as a Video Jukebox

It should probably be in this part of the forum...

Lou


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

I like the idea of streaming stuff to my Tivo - in theory. In practice, I find the current incarnation of pyTivo (which doesn't stream, but instead works with Tivo's MRV functionality) to be a much more flexible and workable solution than the current incarnations of those streaming options mentioned above.


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## digger69 (Dec 13, 2007)

moyekj said:


> tivostream can do it (see my sig for a link). Note 1 big problem with HME video streaming is there is a 1.1GB limit to stream buffer, which means any single files over 1.1 GB won't play past the 1.1 GB mark.


LOL - my wife was complaining that videos streamed w/ HME were stopping right before the end. Now I know why


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## moyekj (Jan 24, 2006)

wmcbrine said:


> moyekj, how are you distinguishing between hitting the end of the stream, and just running out of buffer?


 That was the trickiest part of implementing folder play - determining when playback actually completes (and it's not just catching up to current buffer).
For .mp4 files stream status of 11 is returned when playback completes but for .mpg files there is no such indication. So what I do is keep track of changes in buffer end point (duration). If that is not changing and current position is within 1 second of duration then I flag it as potentially end of playback, then I let 1 more event loop transpire and check again to see if the buffer end point has moved. At that point if it still hasn't moved and position is still at that point then I assume it's end of playback.
It's not perfect, but it seems good enough from my limited testing.
It sure would be nice to have official HME support for video streaming to overcome the 1 GB buffer limit and these other "hacks", but for now one has to make do with the limited information available.

P.S. I've also implemented channel down/up during playback to jump to next/previous file in playlist which can serve as a manual way to switch files in cases where end of file detection doesn't work and the stream is paused at end of playback.

EDIT: After more testing the convoluted hack for mpeg2 playback complete detection is not reliable, so I removed that mess. So my current implementation will only jump automatically to next file in folder for mpeg4 files. For mpeg2 user will need to use channel down to jump to next file once play pauses at end of playback.


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## drdarren (May 15, 2004)

thankyou for al the info. very impressed by all the work everyone is doing. i tried pytivo and galleon but as you are aware, there is no streaming. i am going to try your program and will be happy to give feedback.

darren


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## westside_guy (Mar 13, 2005)

Reported last post as spam (on several threads).


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