Hi folks, maybe this is well known, as a sport lover i love to watch premier league, spanish "la liga", Italian Calcio, NBA, Eurobasket, golf, nascar, cyclism all IN HIGH DEFINITION AND FREE and so on...
DEVICES TESTED AND WORKS:
- Samsung Smart Hub Plex Client Years 2011, 2012 and 2013.
- Plex Home Theatre PC client
DEVICES TESTED AND DOESN'T WORK (THEY NEED SOME WORK IN THE TRANSCODING/MUXING/SENDING PROTOCOL SEE APPENDIX AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST:
- Android
- Roku 2
- Plex/Web in the same LAN
- Plex/Web remotely
DEVICES NOT TESTED:
- The rest of clients that aren't in before lists.
Maybe this is well known, but if it's not, this lines are for those guys who don't.
There is a easy way and cross platform solution to achieve this goal without messing with greedy cable operators, and all thanks to plex. (and also some crazy russian guys)
A) First Step:
Have properly configurated plex media server, then we will install the P2PTV software needed, MUST DOWNLOAD
- Sopcast (OS X, Windows, GNU/Linux (Ubuntu is the easiest for these things) http://sopcast.com/
- WINDOWS and OSX USER, JUST DOWNLOAD, EXECUTE, select anounimus connection, and pickup remeber me option for easiness of use.
- UBUNTU user, download both files for command line use and unzip in downloads for example then do the following commands in
cd Downloads/usr/lib
sudo cp -a lib* /usr/lib
##after doing this copy sp-sc-auth file to user directory
- Acestream (the same as streamtorrent, in essence) (, Windows, GNU/Linux (Ubuntu is the easiest for these things) http://info.acestream.org/#/install I encourage torrent download cause regular donwload is awfully slow.
- WINDOWS just install the exe file, be carefull with the installer and deselect show entertaiment videos and other garbage related options.[attachment=16157:Sin título.png]
- UBUNTU i don't recall if there is a .deb in the main page, i think yes. in other case just a little googling "Acestream ppa Ubuntu" will guide you the right way.
DO NOT FORGET TO ACCEPT THESE PROGRAMS CONNECT THROUGHT WINDOWS FIREWALL FIRST TIME OF USE!!!
B) Step two: We have to check if the router you are using is nat-pmp and/or upnp capable, this means tha acestream is able to open itself the port the program need to get connected to peers. If not, we have to setup up 2 different ports in our router (sopcast can't open itself a port for it, we can use 3902 as it is the default of the program; and 3903 for acestream if your router is not nat-pmp [which is diffcult, all routers since 2010 can map ports automaticly).
C) Step three: We are going to create two notepad files inside a folder named Streams (these folders should not been in any other library location like movies or home videos, i would put it on the user folder) named SOPCAST.strm and ACESTREAM.strm just save as .txt and then change the extension
- Open SOPCAST.strm file with notepad and paste the following, replacing plexmediaserverlocalip text with the required ip (192.168.x.x) or similar. This is this way even if we are running PMS and the client in th same machine.
http://plexmediaserverlocalip:8902
Save and close. - Open ACESTREAM.strm and do the same procedure but replacing as well 8902 for 8903
Doing the channel distribution like i did you are able to have two channels at the same time working in the pc and be able to switch between them if your bandwith supports also.
D) Step Four: Then we will go to plex media server web user interface and we add, with the category name of Streams, the folder we created with the .strm files, we should choose for optimal results the plex media files scanner, for no scrapping. Now it should appear both ,srm files under a new category named Streams.
E)Step Five: We have to do some tweaking for TSplayer and tsengine (which are installed by acestram). Look for TSplayer on your desktop or in Start menu and execute. then wait a Little bit for a multicolor circunference with a play symbol in the center, just right click and click options.advanced and in the port field type 3903 and tweak a Little up the number of max conections and total connections per stream adding a few zeros ;D. the first time we play an stream maybe a prompt Windows will arise and you are going to be asked gender and age, THIS IS PART OF THE PROGRAM, DONT ASK ME WHY, JUST LIE (OR NOT) AND YOU ARE GOOD TO GO.
Back to TSPLAYER go to preferences and choose "show settings all" and look in the left list for streaming options, and in the first text default stream output chain field to the right of the window where you can type paste
#duplicate{dst="http{mux=ts,dst=:8903}",dst=display}
[attachment=16164:Sin título8.png][attachment=16165:Sin título9.png]
Look carefully that is 8903!!!
Save and close and that's all, just few steps more and we will enjoy all of these sports events we love.
F)Step Six: Now there is a two Golden rules (and maybe breakable the second one if somebody helps with this as i have been only able to got it work this way)**
- IF YOU SEE ON YOUR PC SCREEN THE EVENT IT MUST PLAY IN YOUR PLEX CLIENT (except if you try to play the cannel while Acestream/Sopcast is buffering in this precise instant, then you'll probabky get an error, just try 2 or 3 times more).
- YOU MUST ALLWAYS EVERYTIME YOU USE THESE CHANNEL KEEP "FORCE LOCAL TRANSCODING" OFF.**
USAGE:
ADVICES
First you have to get the cannel for the event you want to watch, my advice is to start watching at least 20 minutes (the earlier the better) before the event starts, because you have to select a correct cannel, and maybe there are some offline cannel an you dont want to get nervous.
Second is that higher bitrates suppose more quality of the stream and higher bandwith requeriment) i have watched some FC Barcelona, Chelsea, Real Madrid matches with 7000 kbit bitrate with mp3 2.0 audio and 720p res (this means that all the bitrate was for the video)
Third, is russian channels (NTV+ HD,etc) are the better option
PROCEDURE:
(If the client is the same machine as the server, when you get the stream working just mute sopcast/TSplayer window and minimize it)
1) Get into a sports streaming site:
My favourite pages for links for these sport streams are:
- Wiziwig tv http://www.wiziwig.tv/index.php?part=sports ; In english and has big quality streams
- Live tv.ru http://livetv.ru/en ; russian site translated to multiple languages
- soptv.ru http://soptv.ru/ ; 100% fully working sopcast channels, the best choice when you dont want to keep looking for more quality and high bitrates as is always 1800-2000 kbps very stable connections, the con is that is in russian, but i think that a good dose of google translator is not so bad....
[attachment=16158:Sin título2.png]
2) Sopcast links: just click on them from the browser and open them in the player (or just in the browser), when you would be getting quite stable watching in the miniscreen attached to the main Windows of the program just go to plex client and choose sopcast channel inside the category we created and it must work :D
Ubuntu Users (GNU/Linux): click in the event and get the sop://sop.broker.com:3912/123341 direction (this is an example of sop:// direction)and do the following command terminal:
./sp-sc-auth sop://yourchanel.com:port/channelnumber 3902 8902
You will know that is working if in terminal window it doesn't stop showing words and letters very quickly like crazy. Sometimes ubuntu sopcast users have to repeat the command several times to get the stream work, but is not really a pain.
3) Acestream/Streamtorrent links are a Little bit more difficult to use but not so much. For example in wiziwig.tv click the event you want to watch and click url button it may show something like this:
Acestream://aosndoasbfiuabf87y2387dbAKD
Now copy the part of the right: and open a new tsplayer window, push CRTL+T (the same as file>open torrent stream) and paste in the copied text in the box, then push play or open in the down side of the window. This may work always, but is ther another scenario.
[attachment=16162:Sin título6.png][attachment=16163:Sin título7.png]
Now click into watch now (in other pages such as livetv.ru is just a play button, push it)
then we will have two scenarios
Scenario 1, TSplayer opens and all goes like silk and you are watching the stream, now go to your plex client and play Acestream Channel we created before (remember...?)
Scenario 2: You will see a ugly web player, ther you have to seek for a reversed eject symbol and then click into the "social menu", and search for a text box named video link or stream link or content link (it will look like: a838914hjbsfb1414guy32435ah523sv), copy it and paste in TSPLAYER file>Open torrent stream (like we do with the link before) and it may work.
[attachment=16159:Sin título3.png][attachment=16160:Sin título4.png][attachment=16161:Sin título5.png]
It is possible also to launch ace player over ssh with, i.e. :
DISPLAY=:0 nohup acestreamplayer acestream://67b62701868918cca3433fc97dad58bacfdf54f7 &
Then you can also logout ssh prompt and the program will keep running.
APPENDIX: DEFAULT OPTION STREAM CHAIN FOR ACESTREAM TWEAKS AND CONFIGURATION IF NEEDED (ACE HD PLAYER, TSPLAYER)
References:
http://www.videolan.org/doc/streaming-howto/en/ for aceplayer hd / tsplayer as it is a fork of vlc
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO_play_internet_video_and_audio_streams fot .strm file usage in XBMC (with is nearly familiar with Plex)
The default chain posted in the first lines of the post works well in Plex Home Theater App, as well XBMC, as well Samsung Smart Hub Plex app
A simple generic chain that we could use would looks like:
#duplicate{dst="http{acodec=?,vcodec=?,mux=?,dst=:8903}",dst=display}
By default i use http protocol, acodec and vcodec not in my chain, "ts" for muxing.
it is supposed that is posible to transcode the stream with the following codecs: (vcodec option) or repack in another container (mux option)
Also the http option can be changed for mms or rtp, with the consequent change of dst=:8903
look the choices of the vcodec ,mux, dst down this line:
vcodec
mp1v MPEG-1 Video - recommended for portability
mp2v MPEG-2 Video - used in DVDs
mp4v MPEG-4 Video
SVQ1 Sorenson Video v1
SVQ3 Sorenson Video v3
DVDv VOB Video - used in DVDs
WMV1 Windows Media Video v1
WMV2 Windows Media Video v2
WMV3 Windows Media Video v3, also called Windows Media 9 (unsupported)
DVSD Digital Video
MJPG MJPEG
H263 H263
h264 H264
theo Theora
IV20 Indeo Video
IV40 Indeo Video version 4 or later (unsupported)
RV10 Real Media Video
cvid Cinepak
VP31 On2 VP
FLV1 Flash Video
CYUV Creative YUV
HFYU Huffman YUV
MSVC Microsoft Video v1
MRLE Microsoft RLE Video
AASC Autodesc RLE Video
FLIC FLIC video
QPEG QPEG Video
VP8 VP8 Video
Audio Codecs
Use the "name" part in your acodec=... commands
name description
mpga MPEG audio (recommended for portability)
mp3 MPEG Layer 3 audio
mp4a MP4 audio
a52 Dolby Digital (A52 or AC3)
vorb Vorbis
spx Speex
flac or fl32 FLAC
And the mux options are
name description
mpeg1 MPEG-1 multiplexing - recommended for portability. Only works with mp1v video and mpga audio, but works on all known players
ts MPEG Transport Stream, primarily used for streaming MPEG. Also used in DVDs
ps MPEG Program Stream, primarily used for saving MPEG data to disk.
mp4 MPEG-4 mux format, used only for MPEG-4 video and MPEG audio.
avi AVI
asf ASF
dummy dummy output, can be used in creation of MP3 files.
ogg Xiph.org's ogg container format. Can contain audio, video, and metadata.
dst=
This option allows to give informations about the location where the stream should actually be saved or sent.
Here is the meaning of the dst option depending on the parameter used for the access option.
If the file output method is used, dst is the complete path where the file should be saved.
If the udp or rtp output method is used, dst is the unicast or multicast destination address and, optionally, UDP port, in the form address:port.
If the http, https or mmsh output method is chosen, dst is the address, port and path of the local network interface on which the server should listen for requests. If no address is given, VLC will listen on all the network interfaces. These information have to be supplied using the address:port/path syntax.