XMBC used in CCTV Network
#1
I thought I'd share this with you guys, maybe you'd get a kick out of it.

I'm the video tech for the anime convention 'AC Cubed' in Ottawa, Canada. The other weekend (Nov 2nd-4th) we deployed a system in which video content captured live from our main events room was broadcast around the convention center to remote TVs on a local area network. The Video over IP boxes we used to recive the video? Yup, Xbox's with Xbox Media Center.

In our case, we used three routers, one as an AP the other two as bridges at either end of the Atrium, to make a semi-wireless network where the shorter lengths were gapped using eithernet from the bridges. Yeah, it's a shame that the Xbox wifi adaptor costs about as much as a used Xbox. :/

The machines did quite well for what they cost and overall my fellow staff were impressed with the performance. A 10lb box with RF, composite, S-video, component or even SCART (Not like we'd need SCART in Canada) support just by swapping out an adaptor. Eithernet. Purpose built TV support. It's great.

We had four modified Xbox's set up around the convention wired into our network, one on a composite connection, two on S-video, and in our cafe we even had one rigged to a 32" HDTV with the component cables.

There were networking issues, where the radio signal bounced around the metal structure more than we hoped, as a result our G network was only capable of supporting 4-5 1mbps MPEG-2 streams, we had initially hoped for 3mbps. But oh well.

All our video fed into a server in the back of our main events room, where there was a video mixer which then fed into a PVR-350 card installed in an Athlon XP. VideoLAN was used to stream video from the card, add overlays, a clock, marquee, and scrolling on screen updates via RSS scripts. The resulting output was fairly professional looking, granted, it was VLC that did the grunt work there.

The only issue we had with the Xbox's was that we found out that if a playlist item set to loop in XBMC fails enough times, it will give up and just show on screen that there were too many errornious playlist items and just sit there. I hope there is some means to change that value to infinate. This normally occured during the first-field-test problems we had, and the server they were connecting to was offline as we went 'Awww fuck!'.

A few other anime conventions who had staff present are now interested in how this system was done, and we expect to employ the Xbox for at least a few years in the future. Especially as the box's will continue to get cheaper and they can do 8mbit 720p MPEG-2 streams in lab tests. (Is it reasonable to call my basement a 'lab'?)
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#2
Cool, not exacly what XBMC is intented to do but cool Cool ...I hope you all use XBMC at home as well now Wink

DJ_Izumi Wrote:they can do 8mbit 720p MPEG-2 streams in lab tests. (Is it reasonable to call my basement a 'lab'?)
I imagine that the wireless network will cause problems there too. Why not use new 802.11n (Draft-N) bridges to the Xbox? should cost about the same but be a lot better. Powerline HD network adapters is another possbility, though more costly and the range is less.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#3
At the time, it was about cost. Honestly, on a G network in ideal conditions with Afterburner enabled on all routers (We used WRT54GLs running DD-WRT) we were able to squeeze out 25mbps of data from the AP. However this sorta fell threw the floor once we used it in the field. I hadn't expected this as all our routers were in a large open room with direct line of sight of each other, dispite the bridges being 25 and 50 meters from each other. Plus we had multiple machines on each bridge, usually two, in one case three for a few hours. The WRT54GL does make a very nice bridge, with it's multitude of ports it basicly becomes a wireless switch.

However, we'd just prefer to use hard LAN, we avoided it at the convention center because... Well, The convention center IT company wanted $300 to use ONE port, $200 each for the second and third and $100 each for each additional port. We politly said 'no' and started to laugh once they wern't un audible range. :/

In all honesty, we originally started with the Xbox running Xebian (Xbox Linux) so it could run VLC. Hoping to use the Xbox as a small PC that was cheap. IN the end, Xbox Media Center was a last resort and it just worked a HELL of a lot better since it was compiled natively for the Xbox and there were none of those tricks and traps used to shoehorn it into the machine in the first place. Xebian had a LOT of small issues that XBMC negated by being a native application.

Now, if you XBMC guys could just be nice enough to tell me how to stop XBMC from giving up if it's playlist items fail too many times (In case the server is not responding), the machines should work about as well as they should.


In dealing with ideas of the 'future', I also realized that multiple server addresses could be entered into the playlist, probably just differing by port, the list could be set to loop, and every time you 'skip track' on the remote, the Xbox will connect to the next server in sequence. Essentually, I could run one server for each 'channel' and the Xbox could channel surf. Just remap the remote controls to remove most functions and you could make the box publicly useable to flip threw various remote streams.
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#4
don't think it's possible at this time, but we can certainly add a advance option for it. always nice to see alternate uses
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#5
I would appreciate it, because at the price point of the Xbox it's really good at this purpose. It was just a pain if I had to fix something, the server was down for 10mins (Or, ahem, once I stepped on the button on the power bar to the server) and every machine in the convention center gave up on their playlists after a while. A few times I had to grab the IR remote kit, walk around to each xbox, press Okay, then start their playlists agian.

It was a pain to have to pop in and out the IR donger and walk around to every machine. Next year, I'm hoping to have ebay ninja'ed up enough cheap Xbox DVD Kits that I can super glue an IR reciver into each machine's port #4. (Glue so, ya know, some convention attending idiot doesn't claim himself a souvineer.)

I looked up the prices of a similar purpose built system online, one company I found, that sold entire video over IP infrastructure from server to client and everything inbetween, wanted $629 USD per unit for their MPEG-2 Video Over IP reception boxes. While these boxes would likely work a hell of a lot better than any Xbox Media Center. (Unless someone built a new version dedicated entirely to that purpose. Ha ha, fat chance) The price of $629 vs $50 or so, depending on how well you haggle with 16yo kids who want to see their Xbox to upgrade to a 360, any limitation is quite tolerable.
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#6
Hi DJ, what you have done here is of great interest to me as I currently have 16 CCTV cameras at my property and I would be really keen to be able to stream them across my Xboxes (currently 10)

Currently the CCTV goes in to a Bosch digital recorder, so I am guessing I am going to need a video card in a PC to be able to stream the CCTV, could you give me some more informationon on this please.

Much appreciated, thanks very much.
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#7
The software in question that we used was VideoLAN or 'VLC'. http://www.videolan.org/

We used it in Windows XP but it's on various operating systems including multiple flavors of *Nix.

http://wiki.videolan.org/Hardware

It's hardware support for capture devices is a bit limited. However it also supports DV cameras for input, which offers great quality.

Other than that, you basicly rig it to take video from the camera or input device, transcode it or manipulate it (or not) and stream it on it's own built in HTTP server.

VLC is the 'hard' part. The Xbox after, well, you just tell it to connect to the right address and away you go.
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#8
r10817 - added: advancesetting playlistretries, to control number of consecutive failed items before aborting playlist. default is 100, set to -1 to never abort.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#9
Uhm, wow, gosh, awesome. Smile Thanks a lot, that solves the one itty bitty issue we had with the system. Big Grin
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#10
cool stuff dj. but since i am videolan ignorant i have a few questions after reading the wiki:

you set up your vlc server to do http streaming (obviously) How did you set up xbmc to find it? I didnt think there was a browser in xbmc.

what are the commands you used to combine streams (i think you mentioned overlaying an rss feed as a ticker over a video?)

tnx.
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#11
bwanaaa Wrote:cool stuff dj. but since i am videolan ignorant i have a few questions after reading the wiki:

you set up your vlc server to do http streaming (obviously) How did you set up xbmc to find it? I didnt think there was a browser in xbmc.

what are the commands you used to combine streams (i think you mentioned overlaying an rss feed as a ticker over a video?)

tnx.

Doing text and graphic overlays are all in VLC's settings, it has an arrangement of filters.

Doing the streaming in XBMC is easy. Like the wiki says, you just have to give it the address in a text file. Normal text files with the extension 'strm' can be recognised by XBMC as 'media' that contains streaming video information. So you just open notepad, write in "http://192.168.1.101:1234" and nothing else, save it as something like "VLC Stream 1.strm" , make sure you use STRM instead of the TXT extension, and XBMC will now play the item. ...Assuming there's actually a server at that address to respond. Smile
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#12
Does this work with UDP streaming? Just thinking it would be more efficient over wireless to use UDP to minimize the amount of traffic?
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#13
It does seem to work over UDP, just use udp://0.0.0.0 instead of http and it'll go.

I just used HTTP because at the time, with VLC, it was easier to tell the Xbox's where to look rather than tell VLC where to broadcast.
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#14
Question 
I want to know if I can set up the xbox as a streaming player only.

What I would like to do is host xbmc on my main pc then stream the content out over the network to the xbox. I would love to be able to have the xbox set up so that on turn on it automatically goes to waiting for a video stream with no input from the user required.
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