How to use placeshifting in Beyond TV 4.9

Nov 22 2009

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	How to use placeshifting in Beyond TV 4.9 - SnapStream Knowledgebase

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DESCRIPTION:

Beginning in Beyond TV 4.9, the placeshifting feature allows users to play back video directly through the Beyond TV web admin. This article provides information about using placeshifting.

ARTICLE:

Table of Contents

System Requirements

Setting up your Network

Using PlaceShifting

FAQ and Basic Troubleshooting

REQUIREMENTS

Beyond TV computer: Core2Duo equivalent or higher processor

Viewing PC:

Windows XP or Vista

Micorosoft Silverlight 2. Install Silverlight here: http://www.microsoft.com/Silverlight/resources/install.aspx

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or Mozilla Firefox 3

SETTING UP YOUR NETWORK

In order for placeshifting to function properly, you will have to open/forward ports on your firewall and/or router. Depending on your router, opening the ports are different for each router and http://www.portforward.com/ has a good how-to for various routers. You will have to open ports 9990 to 9999 (Placeshifting) and port 8129 (Web Admin) and use UDP & TCP (BOTH) for both port ranges.

Once you have setup your network, if you are on the same network, then you can just access the computer by it's local IP Address or computer name. If you are accessing it over the Internet, then you will have to know your external IP Address. An easy way to locate your external IP Address is by going to this website: http://www.whatismyip.com/ and it will present you with your external IP Address.

*NOTE: I know sometimes it's hard to remember IP Address numbers, so you could use a service like http://www.dyndns.com/ to create a static web address that redirects to your IP Address. For example, you could setup. http://michael.dyndns.com/ (not a working link) and it will redirect to your IP Address so you don't have to actually remember the numbers.

USING PLACESHIFTING

From your remote location, access your Web Admin by opening your IP Address in a web browser. When you enter the web admin library, you will be asked to choose from the following playback options:

Selecting Placeshift will allow video to be played back from within the web browser. To begin watching a video, find the video you want to watch, mouse over Options, and click Play.

Beyond TV's placeshifting feature is based on Windows Media Video, but other formats can be transcoded on the fly to work with placeshifting. If you select Play for a file in any format other than WMV, you will see the following message:

Because of this requirement, some machines may not be able to placeshift non-WMV files well because they will not be able to transcode the video fast enough to keep up with playback.

Click Continue to begin playback. You will see the video in a window like this:

Seeking within placeshifted video will require Beyond TV to rebuffer the video and may result in a delay of several seconds.

Click Stop to stop playback. NOTE: Stopping playback by any other method, such as closing the browser window or navigating to another page of the web admin, can result in temporary excess processor usage on the Beyond TV machine, as it will continue to attempt to placeshift your video.

FAQ AND BASIC TROUBLESHOOTING

How many users can placeshift video at once?

To prevent resource conflicts, Beyond TV limits placeshifting to two concurrent users. Any additional user attempting to start a placeshifting session will see the message "Too Many Open Sessions."

Can I use placeshifting on an Apple Macintosh or Linux-based PC?

No. Because Beyond TV's placeshifting feature requires Microsoft Silverlight, it is not compatible with non-Windows PCs at this time. You may use VLC to playback recordings "like" placeshifting on the Mac, please read about this option further in our blogs

When I am placeshifting video, my Beyond TV machine slows down/ the processor on my Beyond TV machine is pegged. What's going on?

During playback, you will see heavy processor utilization on the machine running Beyond TV by a process called BTVPlaybackEngine.exe. This process is transcoding and serving video, and heavy processor usage is normal.

The process BTVPlaybackEngine.exe keeps running after I've stopped my placeshifting session.

Stopping the session improperly can cause this issue. Remember to stop placeshifting by clicking the Stop button before leaving the page.

Playback through placeshifting is choppy, or pauses every few seconds.

The most common cause of choppy playback is insufficient processing power for transcoding in real time to Windows Media.
Suggested troubleshooting steps:

Stop any other tasks being performed by the machine running Beyond TV

Use ShowSqueeze to change the format of the video to Windows Media, so that it does not need to be transcoded in real time

Upgrade the processor on the machine running Beyond TV

Beyond TV will only allow one Placeshifting session.

Beyond TV will allow up to 2 simultaneous Placeshifting sessions. In order to do this, you will have to modify the settings.xml file. Please remember to shutdown Beyond TV completely before modifying the Settings.xml file.
Please navigate to this directory:

Windows XP - c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\SnapStream\Beyond TV\

Windows Vista - c:\ProgramData\SnapStream\Beyond TV\

Edit the Settings.xml file and find the MaxPlaceshiftingSessions properties and modify it's value from 1 to 2. Once you have done that, save the file and restart Beyond TV.

Cannot placeshift recordings from the Hauppauge HD-PVR.

Beyond TV currently only offers beta support for the Hauppauge HD-PVR and one of the features that is currently not supported is Placeshifting of HD-PVR recordings.

If you are still experiencing issues or have any questions, please submit a ticket to technical support.

Article Details

Article ID:

1536

Created On:

Nov 21 2008