Trying to stream video from Amiko Mini HD SE to Windows

[N6BY]

In another thread here some of us were trying to figure out how to stream video from an Amiko STB to a non-android device. Someone complained that it was off topic, and I agree that it wasn't the original intention of the 'Pros and cons' thread to delve deep into some technical stuff. But I still think there is a good chance that we can work together and figure out how to do it.

Here is what I saw yesterday in my WireShark packet capture of a Big2Small session:

First (and I didn't see this in my post yesterday):

GET /cfg/get_channel_list.cgi

Then Big2Small is using port 554 and 'GET' style request parameters to specify what I requested to watch. In this case it was NBC West on C-Band.

rtsp://192.168.2.101:554/?alisatid=16&freq=3780&pol=v&msys=dvbs2&mtype=8psk&ro=0.35&plts=on&sr=29999&fec=0&camode=0&vpid=520&apid=781,782,783,784&ttxpid=8191&subtpid=8191&pmt=267&prognumber=12&pids=520,781,782,783,784,8191,8191,520,267

Finally, Big2Small starts playing the stream by sending this:

rtsp://192.168.2.101:554/stream=1

After that, the Amiko responds with lots of MPEG-II transport stream packets for the Android device to play.

The question is: How can we get something like VLC player to do this on Windows?

I can send a WireShark capture if anyone here is interested .

 

[iBoston]

Okay, what we need though is the first call from Big2Small where it requested the channel/frequency list from AmikoHDSE? Yes, I am interested in the WireShark capture.

 

[iBoston]

Big2Small and Amiko HDSE use the SAT2IP protocol

http://www.satip.info/sites/satip/files/resource/satip_specification_version_1_2_1.pdf

 

[T134]

I'd be interested in a looksee at the wireshark as well. Might show an ultra simple way to change channels and initiate the service in script or otherwise.

 

[N6BY]

Okay, what we need though is the first call from Big2Small where it requested the channel/frequency list from AmikoHDSE? Yes, I am interested in the WireShark capture.

I'll make a smaller WireShark capture and post it here, because the one I made yesterday is 100 MB. Meanwhile, here is a screen shot of the GET request:

 

[FaT Air]

Does a browser show anything when the address
192.168.2.101:554/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi is entered???

Now seeing the above post, looks like it uses port 8080 for the 'list'
192.168.2.101:8080/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi

 

[N6BY]

Does a browser show anything when the address
192.168.2.101:554/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi is entered???

Now seeing the above post, looks like it uses port 8080 for the 'list'
192.168.2.101:8080/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi

Not in a browser. But you can get the channel list using 'curl'. The command shown below successfully retrieved the channel list.

curl -O 192.168.2.101:8080/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi

Here is a link to the full packet capture from this morning. This time I ran 'Amiko Stream' on my LG phone and started a stream of the NASA channel.

http:www.naturalgfx.com/nasa_capture.zip

 

[iBoston]

Not in a browser. But you can get the channel list using 'curl'. The command shown below successfully retrieved the channel list.

curl -O 192.168.2.101:8080/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi

Here is a link to the full packet capture from this morning. This time I ran 'Amiko Stream' on my LG phone and started a stream of the NASA channel.

http:www.naturalgfx.com/nasa_capture.zip

I downloaded the zip file. It says the zip is invalid. Can you check it?

 

[N6BY]

I downloaded the zip file. It says the zip is invalid. Can you check it?

Its works here on my Mac. Should be 16.8 MB. What OS are you using?

 

[iBoston]

Its works here on my Mac. Should be 16.8 MB. What OS are you using?

Yea, i tried it a second time. Same error.. Running Windows7.

 

[N6BY]

Yea, i tried it a second time. Same error.. Running Windows7.

I'll upload it again uncompressed.

 

[FTA4PA]

Not in a browser. But you can get the channel list using 'curl'. The command shown below successfully retrieved the channel list.

curl -O 192.168.2.101:8080/cfg/get_channel_list.cgi

Figuring this out is getting a bit above my skill set but fyi, I ran curl in terminal on my own system. I had to use 10.0.0.5 since that is the address the Amiko Mini HD SE is located on my network. I got this result:

After executing the command there was a file in my home folder called get_channel_list.cgi which, when opened in gedit, showed a list of my satellites and the channels associated with them.

 

[N6BY]

Here is the capture file uncompressed:

http://naturalgfx.com/nasa_capture.pcapng

 

[iBoston]

Thank you.

 

[N6BY]

...
After executing the command there was a file in my home folder called get_channel_list.cgi which, when opened in gedit, showed a list of my satellites and the channels associated with them.

You can also specify a name of the output file to something more suitable with the '-o filename' instead of -O

Anyway, the file contains all the information that Big2Small needs to display a list of channels for the user to choose from. Once he has made his choice it constructs an 'rstp' request to open the stream followed by one to play it.

This opens the stream:

rtsp://192.168.2.101:554/?alisatid=16&freq=3780&pol=v&msys=dvbs2&mtype=8psk&ro=0.35&plts=on&sr=29999&fec=0&camode=0&vpid=520&apid=781,782,783,784&ttxpid=8191&subtpid=8191&pmt=267&prognumber=12&pids=520,781,782,783,784,8191,8191,520,267

So the challenge now is to find a non-android program to play the stream. And to make it user-friendly we would need a program to construct the 'rstp' string with the parameters.

T134, any chance of making the Mini HD SE 'open source'?

 

[T134]

This opens the stream:

rtsp://192.168.2.101:554/?alisatid=16&freq=3780&pol=v&msys=dvbs2&mtype=8psk&ro=0.35&plts=on&sr=29999&fec=0&camode=0&vpid=520&apid=781,782,783,784&ttxpid=8191&subtpid=8191&pmt=267&prognumber=12&pids=520,781,782,783,784,8191,8191,520,267

So the challenge now is to find a non-android program to play the stream. And to make it user-friendly we would need a program to construct the 'rstp' string with the parameters.

First things first....I'd recommend constructing a rtsp string based on the above and testing in VLC. If someone gets it to work coming up with a playlist or control script or something shouldn't be impossible or even that difficult.

T134, any chance of making the Mini HD SE 'open source'?

Not a chance in hell LOL.

ALi has overly restrictive controls on their entire system. It is all closed source. Working with ALi involves strict non-disclosures and if you piss them off you lose ALi and are screwed. This isn't us here, Amiko in Europe or our factory, it is ALi. Our factory couldn't give me the SDK or much else even if they wanted to. The most we can hope for is getting some direct questions answered from our ALi engineer. I'd have to really dig into this and do a ton of testing first before that would happen. I'm thinking based on your work and what I am seeing in this thread that Mini SE owners can get this done without factory support. I'd really love to be involved with this but at the moment I just don't have the time to dedicate to it. Probably be Jan-Feb or whenever things hit dead winter slowdown before I could jump in with both feet. You guys will probably have it working well before then.

 

[FaT Air]

can you not enter the stream url into VLC??
I.E. Open network stream: rtsp://192.168.2.101:554/?alisatid=16&freq=3780&pol=v&msys=dvbs2&mtype=8psk&ro=0.35&plts=on&sr=29999&fec=0&camode=0&vpid=520&apid=781,782,783,784&ttxpid=8191&subtpid=8191&pmt=267&prognumber=12&pids=520,781,782,783,784,8191,8191,520,267
Could you ZIP the get_channel_list.cgi & upload it? I'd ilke to take a look inside.

I downloaded the zip file. It says the zip is invalid..

Could be blocked by windoze. locate file , right click on it and select properties. UNBlock.
If that's not it, I'd suggest the 7Zip program.

 

[iBoston]

Already tried that on VLC. From the research i have done, It seems like the way to go is to get OPENRSTP which is a opensource rstp client. I believe you could use openrstp to setup and initiate the video stream. Then VLC will play the stream. I'm still doing research, but this is where my research is pointing me.

 

[T134]

I've done quite a bit with live streaming protocols in VLC. Each version seems to have its own problems. To this day I keep 2 versions of VLC active on my computers.

2.04 has been the best for rtmp and rtsp. Some if not all of the newer versions won't play rtmp and/or the variety that 2.04 does well with. I don't think I've tried rtsp in anything newer than 2.04. I've rarely found rtsp live streams of interest where I can't find a HTTP or rtmp so it has been a long time since I tried one.

Man, really wish I had time to get into this project and try it out.

Here is the VLC 2.04 link. You can install it along side a newer version by changing the install target. If you plan to only try it out or use for streaming like me be sure you don't associate anything with 2.04 or change the web plugin to it. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/2.0.4.html

 

[T134]

Also I just downloaded and extracted the nasa ZIP file with no problems here. Win7, 7zip.