With the streamdev plugin you can receive live TV streams via network. Current version supports

• VDR-to-VDR streaming for native VDR clients,
• HTTP streaming, which is particularly useful for Windows clients and clients on the Internet and
• Multicast streaming if you have many clients watching the same channels or as a feed for multicast-only settop boxes.

Streamdev also offers HTTP access to recordings. Native VDR clients must use network shares (NFS, Samba/CIFS) to access recordings via network.

Features in Detail¶

VDR-to-VDR Streaming¶

The source distribution actually includes two plugins: streamdev-server and streamdev-client. Now guess which plugin needs to be installed on your VDR server and which one on the client.

The streamdev-client plugin adds a device to your client VDR which behaves like a DVB card. Once the device is tuned to a remote channel, all other channels on the same transponder are available through the same device, too. If your client needs to access multiple transponders at the same time (e.g. for PIP or client-side recordings), have your VDR client start multiple instances of the streamdev-client plugin. With the same trick your client can access multiple streamdev-servers.

Typically you will want to install some of my streamdev related plugins available from http://vdr.schmirler.de/.

HTTP Streaming¶

You can feed your favorite media player with a live stream from streamdev or watch recordings. I guess most people are using VLC. For convenience, streamdev serves out M3U playlists. Point your web browser to streamdev's HTTP port to get the URL.

It is possible to pass the live stream or the recording through a script for custom transcoding. This allows you to send a stream with reduced bandwidth over the Internet. The streamdev source distribution includes a sample script which supports mencoder and ffmpeg2theora. With URL parameters it is possible to change settings on the fly. Some examples:

• http://127.0.0.1:3000/EXT/1 (Channel 1 with default settings)
• http://127.0.0.1:3000/EXT;VC=x264/1 (using x264 video codec)
• http://127.0.0.1:3000/EXT;QUALITY=dsl6000/1 (optimized for a DSL6000 line)
• http://127.0.0.1:3000/EXT;VBR=250;ABR=16;WIDTH=128/1 (custom video/audio bitrate and width)

Multicast Streaming¶

Streamdev can multicast live streams on your local LAN segment. This is especially useful if many clients are watching the same show, as the stream is transmitted only once. You should be able to receive channels with your IPTV equipment or a media player like VLC. Each channel has its own multicast address, so you can broadcast multiple channels at a time.

Git¶

Web frontend: http://projects.vdr-developer.org/git/vdr-plugin-streamdev.git/
Native git: git clone git://projects.vdr-developer.org/vdr-plugin-streamdev.git

Acknowledgements¶

The original author of streamdev is Sascha Volkenandt. However he stopped working on it quite a while ago. The old streamdev homepage is http://linux.kompiliert.net/.

Thanks to "The Open Source Factory" for hosting streamdev.