Kodi Community Forum - XBMC as multicast streaming server

Hi all,

I have the following scenario and want to solve it with XBMC:

1) 1 MacMini with XBMC installed (the HTPC)

2) multiple WiFi MacMini Clients with vlc installed, waiting to receive a multicast udp stream.

When I start a movie on the 1st MacMini, this one should display it AND start a udp multicast stream which should be received by the other clients.

Sense of the whole scenario is to have one main (living-room) HTPC and a few clients located somewhere else in the house which are just passive.

Former I had vlc on the first MacMini and this scenario worked fine - but, of course, I want to use a feature-rich (and eye-candy) application like XBMC on the HTPC, not just the OSX finder...

Is there a streaming server plugin for XBMC or is it possible to use vlc as internal player?

Any help is welcome!

Thanks,

TvonT

tvont Wrote:Is there a streaming server plugin for XBMC or is it possible to use vlc as internal player?

No and no. Currently you would have to use VLC externally and stream it to call XBMC clients including your HTPC.

Thanks for your answer, Gamester17!

The problem is then that I need to have two apps for playing / managing content Undecided

Are there plans to include a multicast streaming plugin or the ability to use vlc instead of the inbuilt player (mplayer?)? Eitherway, does mplayer not have almost the same features as vlc?
I think I'm not the only one who is in need of a multicast streaming feature.

the only feature I really request for now is that I have an "else" option, i.e that I can tell xbmc: if start playing a video / audio file ELSE start vlc (in the background as multicast streaming server, which I already can configure in the vlcrc file)

It whould be just one configureable parameter...almost the same when you do visualization while playing audio files...or, maybe another (not so nice; overdone and more complicated) way could be to implement one of vlc's control interfaces.

Help in sight?

Thanks,

TvonT

tvont Wrote:Are there plans to include a multicast streaming plugin or the ability to use vlc instead of the inbuilt player (mplayer?)?

No and no, (and no, XBMC for Mac does not use MPlayer).
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Video_Players

tvont Wrote:I think I'm not the only one who is in need of a multicast streaming feature.

Probably not not it is not a feature for the masses neither, nor something that I think people would expect be built-into a media center software, what you want is very niche. XBMC is designed to be a media player, not a multicast streaming server.
http://xbmc.org/about/vision/

Your best bet would be to write a python script or plugin yourself that send commands to VLC on demand, as a add-on feature.

FYI; here is a similar thread but discussed from a other approach:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=6207

...and it seems to be mostly focused on music synchronizing.