TVSP+MPC based PVR and mutli user networked setup

[mr.duck]

Pleased with what I have achieved for a media setup at home. Summery...


Home Server
- Fanless mini ITX
- TV recording with a http web interface for TV guide and scheduling
- NAS duties for accessing media and for backups/general storage
- Wake on lan to wake server after it has gone to sleep to save energy
- Very quiet with 2 x 3.5" HDD mounted in scythe quiet drive enclosures
- Automatic remuxing TV into MKV for lower overheads and high performance playback
- Automatic streaming of current recording over network using VLC to serve (~4 sec delay compared to live)


Client computers
- Standard windows desktops or laptops connect over wired/wireless network
- A file manager and MPC HC for the HTPC interface
- TV playback is perfect thanks to remux to MKV (subtitles work better and corrupt video gets cut in the remux)
- No TV ads any more and files seek instantly and effortlessly thanks in part to MPC small, medium, large skip steps
- Access the live TV stream using VLC by just clicking a shortcut (used to watch sports which must be live)



But now I have found MPC can access the video stream. See screenshot for proof:

http://i.imgur.com/oXFTy.png

Check the titlebar. That is the home server address and MPC is accessing the http based feed!

But it's not reliable enough. Sometimes takes a few attempts to open it before both the video and audio are working. It stutters a lot at first but usually settles down eventually. It wont use LAVSplitter for the feed, instead it shows "Mpeg splitter (low merit)" whch will be the MPC built-in TS splitter I believe.

Requesting help/ideas to improve reliability so I can watch the F1 in glorious madVR quality! :thanks:

[mr.duck]

Nice setup! Can you share some info in a thread elsewhere (that's more appropriate) for the VLC setup and other things you use?
Well I use TheFolderSpy (http://venussoftcorporation.blogspot.com/2010/05/thefolderspy.html) to monitor xml file in the TV scheduling software's folder. As soon as a program is being recorded, TheFolerSpy triggers a VBS script to run which launches my batch file either minimized or hidden completely. The batch file reads the xml file and checks any/all current recordings for a suitable match based on a couple of name checks and a genre check. If any matches are found then it runs VLC from the command line and starts the http feed. Client computers just have to run VLC with the address as a parameter and the stream is played with only a very small delay.


Anything else you would like to know? The remuxing thing was many days of work as I wanted to make it perfectly reliable and was a steep learning curve for me as a non programmer. I rewrote the whole thing from scratch at least a couple times. It's got a lot of lines of batch file code.