Is media playback still supported on any web browser?

I

Ian Manning

Member
Is there any way of playing back recordings over LAN/VPN using a web browser? I remember this used to work with Firefox many years ago, but no longer.
 
Shouldn't it now be possible to use HTML5 video for this?

For recordings (MIME type video/ts, not generally supported), the source URL could direct to a stream generated by something like ffmpeg -i <DLNA_URL> -acodec copy -vcodec copy -f mp4 -, with MIME type video/mp4. Surely this must work since the DLNA URLs of actual mp4 files can be played.

For MP4, MP3, etc, the file could be streamed directly (or using its DLNA URL, which isn't currently exposed in WebIf despite the "indexed" icon). Or, depending on browser settings just use Opt+>Download.
 
/df said:
Shouldn't it now be possible to use HTML5 video for this?

For recordings (MIME type video/ts, not generally supported), the source URL could direct to a stream generated by something like ffmpeg -i <DLNA_URL> -acodec copy -vcodec copy -f mp4 -, with MIME type video/mp4. Surely this must work since the DLNA URLs of actual mp4 files can be played.

For MP4, MP3, etc, the file could be streamed directly (or using its DLNA URL, which isn't currently exposed in WebIf despite the "indexed" icon). Or, depending on browser settings just use Opt+>Download.
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Would I need to use something like VLC for that, and use the DLNA URL to open a network stream?
 
HTML includes a video player that would replace the no-longer-supported player VLC plugin in this application, so what I was suggesting would allow playing a recording in the browser as Firefox/VLC used to, and PaleMoon/VLC apparently still does.

You can always open a media file from your HDR in some video player that supports streaming (of the specific media container and codec combination), using its DLNA URL; for HD-Fox, only if the file is decrypted.
 
Ah Ok if I paste the DLNA URL into Chrome it downloads the file. I'd prefer to stream it, so presumably the Pale Moon browser would be a better option for me?
 
No idea about Chrome, but normally (ever since Mosaic, at least) a browser has some setting that controls how content that it may not be able to display directly is handled, based on MIME type, eg Ask each time/Use Xyz application/Always download. Perhaps the defaults differ between PM and Chrome. I expect that the built-in DLNA server sends the MIME type video/ts for a recording.
 
That would be ideal, but I can't find a way to do that in Chrome. I can choose which app Firefox uses to open specified file types, but it will download the file first anyway
Anyone know it's possible to get Chrome or Firefox to stream .ts files?
 
There may be something that you can do in chrome://settings/handlers.

Or it has been suggested that "Open in new tab" bypasses download settings, should you have a link in an existing page.

There may also be extensions that customise Chrome and Firefox to treat media as a stream.

This all applies to .mp4 as I doubt that browsers know about .ts. That's why I was suggesting some internal WebIf changes to remux .ts into a .mp4 stream on the fly - which the box seems well able to handle as long as no transcoding is involved.
 
Thanks. Unfortunately chrome://settings/handlers only shows me a couple of existing handlers - no option to add to them. "Open in new tab" and "Open in incognito tab" both go straight to file download.
Presumably the web IF changes you mentioned are something to be done by a dev type person, rather than a dumb user like me?
 
Ian Manning said:
Thanks. Unfortunately chrome://settings/handlers only shows me a couple of existing handlers - no option to add to them. "Open in new tab" and "Open in incognito tab" both go straight to file download.
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So much for the Internetz.
Presumably the web IF changes you mentioned are something to be done by a dev type person, rather than a dumb user like me?
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A dumb user would not be well advised to attempt it. Whether that means you is not for me to say. I might have a look in due course.
 
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