TyShow Windows Playback

[d7o]

TyShow is a DirectShow project to allow you to play tivo .ty files within DirectShow based players (eg Windows Media Player).

The current version is TyShow-BETA-0.11.rar

This is currently in a BETA state. Download is available here. CVS access is available although anonymous access is behind developer access so you may need to wait to get the latest source.

New Features
------------
VsrvSrc is new to this build. Its the source stream filter that lets you play prerecorded movies directly off of your tivo. Works really nice. There are some bugs in it still, mostly memory leaks. This feature should be considered ALPHA quality.

Once you've registered the filters, open up WMP and hit CTRL-U to open a URL. The URL that you will use is exactly the same format as tivo-mplayer. In other words, tivo://address.of.tivo/FSID where FSID is the stream you want
to play. There currently is no way enumerating the movies, although this may change. Currently I use the tivoweb interface to pick the fsid I want to watch.

If you have a problem with streaming, please extract the stream and make sure that TySplitter can play it locally before reporting problems.

Also, I would strongly suggest 100mbit networking for this. 11mbit 802.11b was really choppy while testing. There's quite a bit I can do to help with this, especially since I would really love to stream tivo over my wireless. However, for now, stick with 100mbit.

Known Bugs
----------
There are probably still streams that don't play correctly or that crash during playback. We're still refining this so don't hesitate to report crashes.

Occasionally while seeking, most often when seeking backward, audio will play but the video appears to be locked up. Seeking again, esp forward, will get playback working again.

There's still the issue where if you stop playback you usually can't restart playback. This is due to some incompatibility with the M$ mpeg audio filter. It doesn't happen with AC3 audio.

DbgMon is included in this build. If you run it while TySplitter is in use, you'll see some debug info. Right now, there's not much there. It doesn't display a whole lot unless you get an error. There'll probably be more info logged in the future.

TODO
----------
Dynamic pin changing is not supported. Coming soon, however, for streaming.

Duration is slightly lower than actual. This is due to the fact that it
can be slightly challenging to know exactly where the movie ends.

Mpeg1 should be supported. Haven't tested it yet because I don't
have any mpeg1 streams.

Live video playback is coming, probably by the end of the year. Got some research to do there still.


Read the readme.txt for a list of whats working.


This post will be edited as the project evolves to reflect the state of the project.

Have fun.

d7o

[d7o]

Updated post. There's a binary release now so ppl can start testing.

d7o

[burriko]

i only have 3 ty files to test with atm. one of the files wouldn't play at all, and the other 2 would both play for a few seconds and then the media player would freeze and a dialog box reporting a 'Runtime Error' would appear.

All extracted from a UK TiVo. The 2 that would play (albeit briefly) were extracted recently using mfs-ftp, and the one that wouldn't has been sitting on my hard drive for so long that i can't remeber what was used to extract it. mplayer play's it though so it must be a valid ty stream.

cheers,
burriko

[d7o]

Originally posted by burriko
i only have 3 ty files to test with atm. one of the files wouldn't play at all, and the other 2 would both play for a few seconds and then the media player would freeze and a dialog box reporting a 'Runtime Error' would appear.

All extracted from a UK TiVo. The 2 that would play (albeit briefly) were extracted recently using mfs-ftp, and the one that wouldn't has been sitting on my hard drive for so long that i can't remeber what was used to extract it. mplayer play's it though so it must be a valid ty stream.

cheers,
burriko

No doubt there will be many of these.

[phrend]

I registered TySplitter.ax, but Media Player does not seem to like .ty files... when I drag and drop a .ty file on the open Media Player window, I get the international "no" symbol - how do I get Media Player to open the file?

I tried renaming a .ty to .mpg, but that just crashed my Windows Explorer and Media Player.

[tivomaster]

Originally posted by d7o
No doubt there will be many of these.

I tried it on about 5 .ty files that were pulled off of my HDVR2.
Each one caused media player to crash with a crash dump.

AppName: wmplayer.exe AppVer: 9.0.0.2980 ModName: tysplitter.ax
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00001c0b

[TheAvatar]

I had to chang the extension of my ty file to MPG, but then I could drag it into WMP and it played! There was no sound, and the video was a little slow with some digital artifacts. But great for an Alpha! My ty was extracted with Tystudio btw. Can this be used with TMFTP (or whatever that FTP client EVERYONE but me is using to transfer files to and from Tivo) to stream video off Tivo? Currently I am using Mplayer with a .net interface, but being able to do the same with WMP would rock!

[rung]

Window's Media crashed on me, too. Downloaded S1 SA ty with mfs_ftp. I saved the appcompat.txt file if you want it.

[d7o]

Thanks for the replies. I'm curious, what MPEG2 filter is everyone using. I know the Fraunhofer mpeg2 filter crashes on my .ty files because of the B-Frames. However, I don't allow that mpeg2 filter to be downstream.

The latest source thats in CVS now only allows the elecard mpeg2 filter downstream as opposed to the binary which will allow anything except the fraunhofer mpeg2 filter. I've only tried these two filters but the elecard filter works very nicely.

So post which mpeg2 filters you use and I'll try them out and see if I can work out some of these issues.

Thanks,
d7o

[d7o]

Originally posted by TheAvatar
I had to chang the extension of my ty file to MPG, but then I could drag it into WMP and it played! There was no sound, and the video was a little slow with some digital artifacts. But great for an Alpha! My ty was extracted with Tystudio btw. Can this be used with TMFTP (or whatever that FTP client EVERYONE but me is using to transfer files to and from Tivo) to stream video off Tivo? Currently I am using Mplayer with a .net interface, but being able to do the same with WMP would rock!

If you start up WMP with the .ty file on the command line (eg c:\program files\windows media player\wmplayer.exe \foo.ty) it will ask you if you want to associate the .ty extension with the media player. If you say yes, you can open .ty files without problem.

If you are having video problems or crashing, download the elecard mpeg2 filter. I'll put up a binary later today that will only work with elecard.

d7o

[burriko]

Originally posted by d7o
So post which mpeg2 filters you use and I'll try them out and see if I can work out some of these issues.

i use InterVideo's mpeg2 decoder, from WinDVD 5. it plays the first second or so, and then freezes.

i've also tried nero's mpeg2 decoder, and that wouldn't play anything.

[d7o]

Originally posted by burriko
i use InterVideo's mpeg2 decoder, from WinDVD 5. it plays the first second or so, and then freezes.

i've also tried nero's mpeg2 decoder, and that wouldn't play anything.

The Fraunhofer decoder does the same thing. After about a second or so it freezes. Interestingly enough, if I don't send it any of the B-Frames, it works fine, although choppy since I'm only sending it 1/3 of the frames it normally gets.

There's a new release. It won't allow InterVideo's mpeg2 decoder or Fraunhofer or Elecard or any other mpeg2 decoder filter to connect to it. Why? I've taken the Mpeg2DecFilter from the MediaPlayerClassic project and dropped it into mine. Its packaged up in the release as well. TySplitter will only allow this filter to connect to it. Also, Mpeg2DecFilter's MERIT is set rather low so your normal mpeg2 filters will be used in every other case (playing a DVD for example).

This may fix a lot of problems.

d7o

[rung]

Originally posted by d7o


So post which mpeg2 filters you use and I'll try them out and see if I can work out some of these issues.

Ligos found in the K-lite codec pack. http://www.freecodecs.com/

As a side note, anyone have a DVD filter for media player? The one that comes with K-lite (Cyberlink's) refuses to play mpg audio substreams on my system (AC-3 works fine though).

Thanks,
Greg

[tivomaster]

Originally posted by tivomaster
I tried it on about 5 .ty files that were pulled off of my HDVR2.
Each one caused media player to crash with a crash dump.

AppName: wmplayer.exe AppVer: 9.0.0.2980 ModName: tysplitter.ax
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00001c0b

Tried the latest version still crashes..

AppName: wmplayer.exe AppVer: 9.0.0.2980 ModName: tysplitter.ax
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 00001bdb

[d7o]

I just found another crashing bug. I've been doing a lot of bug fixing and cleanup.

I'm almost done with seeking. When its finished I'll check it all in and upload another build.

d7o