other clients besides showtime and bmc?

Peter Vágner

Hello,
Are there other possible htsp clients besides xbmc or showtime media center?
What I am trying to do is to get a native desktop application working well with tvheadend. Currently I am just http streaming channels in totem but I miss ability to start recording or access epg.
Eventually is there a htsp client implementation in python somewhere?

This may sound stupid but I cant use these full fledged media centre apps because of the lack in accessibility. I am blind and am limited to the desktop apps. So I am looking for something I can control my-self and the rest of my family can use for watching at the same time. Any ideas / work in progress or whatever?

greetings

Peter

Hein Rigolo

Peter,

at the moment there are no other clients that can talk via the HTSP protocol to tvheadend.

A python based command-line tool that can use standard HTSP calls to tvheadend to perform certain tasks would be very helpful, but unfortunate that does not exist at the moment.

What kind of tool are you exactly looking for? I personally think of a command-line tool where I can just query the available channels, or query the epg or schedule recordings.

something like:

htspclient --list-channels --server tvheadend.server

available channels:
BBC One
BBC Two
BBC News
etc
etc

and

htspclient --show-epg --channel "BBC One" --timeframe today

EGP BBC One
20:00 The One show
20:30 Food factory with Stefan Gates
21:00 EastEnders
21:30 A question of sport Olympic Special
22:00 EastEnders

22:30 Absolutely fabulous

and this

htspclient --schedule-recording --channel "BBC One" --program "EastEnders" --start-time 22:00

recording scheduled
channel: BBC One
program: EastEnders
start: 22:00
end : 22:30

duration: 00:30

Not sure if you are up to coding something like that in python, but if you are .. I am sure we can help you with testing and discussing the various ways of using the htsp protocol.

Hein

Peter Vágner

Hello,
First I need to explain I am not sure I can write something like this or if I am able to write something usefull at all.
However I am verry interested in having stable dvb-s viewing in one of the known desktop players that works with ubuntu and other common distros out of the box.
If I were to write video player from scratch then I am not even going to try writing one since I am blind almost from my birth and handling video and other visual stuff is even beyond my imagination. If I can find a media player which I can try writing a plugin or a streaming component for then I would definatelly like to try doing something.
From accessibility and availability perspective totem is available in ubuntu and also in gnome, is fully accessible out of the box I just need to find out if its suitable from the technical side of things.

Since writing UI is something I would like to only do after I am sure I can understand and write a stable code which talks HTSP client side as a prototype or a testing tool I may come up with something console based first.

Now I am really just trying to decide if something like this makes sense and if I might be able to do it.

As I have mentioned in the first post currently I am just loading http://tvheadend.host:9981/playlist in totem and streaming streams available in that playlist. When switching channels that are not broadcasted on the same transponder I do need to do the following: stop playback, wait about a second or so, then start playing another entry from the playlist, then untill the stream is fully connected and buffered enough to play another second or two passes. Might I be able to make it more confortable by writing a piece of code which talks HTSP protocol?
Then after this thing is solved I would like to add simple EPG viewer where only currently broadcasted program is displayed along side the channel name. From the channel list popup menu I would like to have ability to show an EPG window with all the events belonging to the chosen channel.
I would like to make the UI in GTK 3 so it is as accessible as it could be under linux.

If possible I would like to avoid caching and handling configuration. I would leave that to the tvheadend.

I need to at least see some code where HTSP is implemented client side and do some tests until I can give a final word whetehr I am able to do it. Anyway I would be happy to receive possible directions / advices if you have them.

Greetings

Peter

Igosr Petroff

Hi.
There is project for embedding htsp protocol to another mediaplayers:

http://code.google.com/p/libhts/

Regards.

Peter Vágner

The fact someone knowledgeable enough is working on something like this is fantastic, however the projects today is in its early beginning. as I see it currently it cant be used it has just some initial htmsg structures.
I have also looked how showtime does this and frankly I need to study or to gain more experience in order to be able to make some good use of it. Also I have briefly looked at developing totem plugins. Definatelly creating plugins is not an easy task however I havent yet found a way if I can somehow feed my own data to totem and instruct it to render the stream.

I am not giving up yet however currently I feel a bit lost. If someone is interested in this as well and is more experienced than me I would gladly cooperate or whatever.

Greetings

Peter

Hein Rigolo

Peter,

If you just want to get a better feel for how you can use htsp to talk to tvheadend then I would suggest to just concentrate on the non media side of things first. If you know how to do that then adding the media parts to it should be easier I guess. And with your disability such a tool would be more useful for you then a full blown media player/plugin. And because there are so many media players with each there own way of implementing plug-ins or extensions it would be a very big task to get them all the work with htsp.

And I also would think that there is a need for a command line level htsp client for people that would like to use scripting etc to automate some tasks on tvheadend.

Did you also try to look at the xbmc-pvr implementation of the htsp protocol? maybe there you can get a feel on how it can work in a situation where the media display side of the player is generic and the htsp side is implemented as a separate piece of code.

Hein

Peter Vágner

Hello,
I was slowly playing with htsp protocol, basically I was trying to create something in python that would allow me to talk htsp client side. I was using tvhguide implementation as an example and to compare my results.
Now I have realized Adam Sutton has written a py/tvh module which is much better and more complete implementation of what I was slowly trying to do.

Still I have nothing interesting to share, I just feel I am now a bit closer to what I would like to get at the end.

Thanks to everyone who is working on this.

Greetings

Peter