Re: Watching VDR recordings and live TV on mobile

On 2017-11-15 07:39, Teemu Suikki wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been investigating methods to view VDR recordings and live TV
> when traveling, with an Android phone and possible Chromecast.
> 
> Here's some pros can cons of the different methods I have tried:
> 
> VDR Manager plugin + android app:
> https://projects.vdr-developer.org/projects/vdr-manager/wiki
> 
>   + Very clean app, great recordings and channel listings, easy to use.
>   + Can also edit timers, use as remote control for VDR
>   + DVB Subtitles work in both live and recordings!
>   - Recordings can't be seeked, at least not with Android VLC! Very 
> annoying..
>   - No transcoding for recordings, so must have a quick connection
>   - Also Live-TV is transcoding is only with Streamdev's externremux,
> which is not very good.
> 
> Then there is Plex Media Server with VDR.bundle and 
> plex-vdr-live-tv.bundle:
> https://hub.docker.com/r/jondalar/plex/
> 
>   + Nice app, although a bit complex for just VDR use.
>   + Plex has very good transcoding with automatic rate control, based
> on your downlink speed
>   + DVB subtitles work in recordings.
>   + Recordings are seekable.
>   + Plex is great for other media too, mp3 and movies etc
>   - No DVB subtitles in live tv!
>   - No other VDR control (timers)
>   - No EPG, expect for current programs
>   - Recordings are difficult to use, hard to find episodes of TV shows
> in correct order..
> 
> Does anyone have suggestions or ideas where to go from here? :) Plex
> stuff looks like it's not updated for years, but it also is something
> I could perhaps improve myself. VDR Manager's biggest problem is the
> lack of transcoding, but that would be very difficult to add.

Hi,

I've made a (horrible) hack that tries to transcode all kinds of video 
streams to ABR HLS on demand. It is web based and should work in any 
HTML5 capable browser either natively or through a javascript player. 
The stream can be chromecasted if You set hlsv3 and cookiehack to true 
in settings and start the stream in Android Chrome from the channel list 
clicking the small triangle beside the channel name. DVB and teletext 
subs can be "burned" to the video or passed through. Recordings should 
be seekable as much as they have been transcoded, the transcoding starts 
when the recording is viewed for the first time. The stream startup 
times are quite long because the transcoding is only started when first 
requested and HLS should have a buffer for about half a minute.

I personally use this monstrosity almost daily to watch VDR live TV on 
my Android phone. My VDR setup is on Gentoo so I haven't tested this 
much on other distros but I guess that should not be an issue. It surely 
is not as clean as the above apps but it works for me :)

If You are brave enough and want to try it You can get it from here 
https://github.com/timokousa/hod


--
Timo

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