Topic: Does Video really work?

I'm trying to use my 8" Insignia to view videos I'm sharing from Windows Media Player and one machine crashes when trying to open a folder of videos and the other can't seem to play any formats.

What should I expect from the video player?

Re: Does Video really work?

I put a DivX AVI file on a USB stick, and it played just fine.  I did not try playing videos over the network.

Re: Does Video really work?

jsevinsk wrote:

I put a DivX AVI file on a USB stick, and it played just fine.  I did not try playing videos over the network.

I too have played Divx videos on the infocast 8. It was a 700 MB movie file and played flawlessly.

Tar, feathers, congress. Some assembly required.

Re: Does Video really work?

Ive had a lot of success playing most .avi files off of USB drives and memory cards, however I havent been able to explore network file systems to play videos.

Re: Does Video really work?

I have an Infocast 8'' and can confirm that video works from USB and memory card for a lot of formats. It is actually impressive for the hardware in the unit. However, can anyone confirm streaming video working? I have had limited success with that.

First, it took quite a while to figure out that "Video/Network devices" meant upnp/dlna rather than e.g. smb shares (that really should be in the docs...). I have then tried streaming from both ushare and minidlna and see the same thing: the video play well for a while, but then stutters a bit. After that, the player usually stops and I get an error dialog saying that the "video format is not supported" (which is clearly wrong, since I was watching the video up until that point.) While the outages are somewhat random, they seem related to high bandwith scenes (= lots of stuff moving), so my suspicion is that the video buffer is just too small and the player does not react well to empty buffer situations.

I'm very interested if anyone here can state that they are able to watch complete videos streamed over upnp/dlna on their Infocast 8'', or can confirm that they see the same type of errors.

Re: Does Video really work?

Ok, so I'm not crazy then... I can confirm the same problem with streaming video to Infocast 8'' from the media server. I was trying to use Serviio Media Server on Win2003Server OS. On the Media Server side I used "Automatic Detection" option for Renderer Profile (which is actually falls back to DLNA - I was checking with the Wireshark). The same video(s) play perfectly fine when I play then from the USB.

Declared ability of Infocast 8'' to receive music and video from PC (Media Server, I assume?) was pretty much the only driver for buying this thing. My intent was to be able to consolidate video and entertainment news channels that I'm interested in  on the Media Server side, and direct it in the uniform way to my Infocast 8'' device. If this thing actually can't do it, it most likely goes back to BestBuy...

Re: Does Video really work?

Good to hear that I am not alone in seeing the video dropouts, at least. (And, regarding your other comments; have anyone declared that the Infocast 8'' can receive music over the network? Because that is clearly not implemented yet.)

I wonder if we can tune up the video buffer manually in some way. Videos appear to be played using gstreamer, and they seem to use a modified version of the gst-template example 'gst-app'. I have not found the source for the infocast version anywhere, so I'm not sure what is going on within it. I'm also not sure why they have decided to go with gst-app, when they have a gst-launch binary that should be capable of doing all that they are doing. My plan is to try to re-wire the unit to use a script replacement of gst-app to play videos, and in that script use gst-launch to play the video with a much larger buffer.

However, I'm still trying to figure out the right gst-launch pipeline for doing this.

Re: Does Video really work?

@rartino: I might be wrong about streaming music from PC (documentation for Infocast 8'' is pretty lousy), and there is not to many places to get clear specs for this thing, but from their advertisement video I got an impression that it should be possible. Actually now (after you said that audio streaming not implemented), I now remember I haven't seen Network Devices option (like in the VIDEOS and PHOTOS) in the MUSIC section and thought WTF...

Now, would it be more constructive to ask Insignia for clarifications on this matter first (or maybe someone already tried?), and then go for "do-it-yourself" option? At least we may get a better understanding of why it is not working. I only started looking at the things, and not sure how bad is Insignia Tech Support is. I'm wondering if we could get clear word from manufacturer about exact requirement/limitations, or confirmation that it only works on their advertisement video...

Re: Does Video really work?

Hmm... I found this promo video.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuNIUkg3GZc
They say: "Infocast plays photos and videos direct from memory cards, usb-drives, photobucket or straight from your computer." So videos are supposed to stream, while music isn't explicitly included.

That said, the whole video/photos/music management feature seems backwards implemented to me. Why not just make sure upnp works well for all three forms of media and then use one of the many well-working upnp-server implementations to give access to local media? Instead they appear to have cooked up their own implementation on extracting local metadata and making it available over some kind of http-like interface.

10 (edited by Dalik 2011-01-07 19:34:58)

Re: Does Video really work?

@rartino:

Over last several days I have read many chumby threads to get better general understanding about the design, and some things are clearer now, but yes, you're right - many things look weird (like if this platform was made to make things harder to hack/use, which is not the case, of course).

I can't figure out one thing. If the device has means of playing video (in very decent quality) and audio (btw, it seem to be able to read both mp3 and now also wma) from the local flash/usb, why can't it use the same apps to do the same thing via UPnP (it currently event don't offer and UPnP options for audio). Or, if there are still technological limitations associated with UPnP, why not to make remote CIFS/Samba share available inside the VIDEO/MUSIC/PHOTOS sections in Control Panel and use the same playback machinery as for the USB/flash content? Instead I can see tons of flash Apps for inet audio/video streams which are specific to a particular station/tv channel. And what I should do if I, say, want to watch Russian news channel? Why not to consolidate it under one universal App (or I'm missing something) and make it possible to add/remove your TV/Radio station on the fly?

And BTW, it would be nice to have an option of maintaining a list of favorite stations in the (otherwise just great) ShoutCast Radio App...

But in general, this seem to be a nice toy, so I think I'm gonna keep it