Albatross and later works by streaming the raw ty stream from your tivo
using vserver, or static video files on your computer, to VLC using plugins from the
TiVo-VLC Project (now part of VLC!). VLC then transcodes
and streams your program to the client, any Flash-enabled web browser!
Here’s a quick diagram:
This is significantly simpler than the old method.
Albatross is available for distribution under the terms
of the GNU General Public License.
how it used to work
tystreamer 2.0 worked by streaming the raw ty stream from your tivo
using vserver to VLC using plugins from the
TiVo-VLC Project. VLC then transcodes
and streams your program to the client, which was either VLC or Windows Media Player:
This is significantly simpler than the old method which tried to
use typrocess, requant, and lvemux to pull the stream, split the audio
and video, resize the video stream, and then mux it all together before sending
it out to the browser.
And on top of all that complexity, it didn’t work. There are serious limits
to how much the requant function from Metakine can reduce the size of the
stream, and furthermore, if it works too hard it tends to choke. By
streamlining the process to one application, the process is much easier
to set up and has fewer external requirements, even though it does require
slightly higher system specs. I’m able to stream video from an S1 Phillips TiVo
using the original TiVoNET card in real time using an Intel Pentium III 866MHz
processor with 386Mb or RAM running Mandrake Linux 10.1 Official desktop
while running X11. You can run tystreamer on slower machines by reducing the
quality of output that VLC produces.
tystreamer is available for distribution under the terms
of the GNU General Public License.