I have a laptop running Windows 7 connected to my LAN. I have a Roku HD connecting my TV to my LAN.
I’d like to find a way to take any audio sent to my computer’s sound card to be streamed across the LAN to the Roku box so I can play it over my TV’s speakers.
Can someone give me an idea how to go about doing this. I assume I’ll need some software on my laptop to capture the sound and stream it over my LAN (VLC perhaps??). Then I’ll need some software running on my Roku box to receive the stream and output the audio to the speakers. This is the part I’m most unsure about. Do I have to develop my own channel to do this, or is there something similar out there already I could use or adapt to my needs?
You could also use Winamp + Shoutcast on the laptop to transcode the Stereo Mix portion of your sound card’s recording mixer audio, and use the Shoutcast channel to stream it back on the TV from the Roku.
You should also be aware that, no matter what solution you come up with, the sound will always be delayed by at least a few seconds due to transcoding and buffering, so if you’re wanting to redirect audio for a game or a video, you’ll have a tough time syncing it up.
“TheEndless” wrote:
You should also be aware that, no matter what solution you come up with, the sound will always be delayed by at least a few seconds due to transcoding and buffering, so if you’re wanting to redirect audio for a game or a video, you’ll have a tough time syncing it up.
Good point, although I’ll primarily be using this to listen to music so it shouldn’t be an issue.
“TheEndless” wrote:
You should also be aware that, no matter what solution you come up with, the sound will always be delayed by at least a few seconds due to transcoding and buffering, so if you’re wanting to redirect audio for a game or a video, you’ll have a tough time syncing it up.
Good point, although I’ll primarily be using this to listen to music so it shouldn’t be an issue.
What’s the source for the music, if I may ask? There are already channels available for internet radio and local audio/video that may be able to serve your needs.
“TheEndless” wrote:
You should also be aware that, no matter what solution you come up with, the sound will always be delayed by at least a few seconds due to transcoding and buffering, so if you’re wanting to redirect audio for a game or a video, you’ll have a tough time syncing it up.
Good point, although I’ll primarily be using this to listen to music so it shouldn’t be an issue.
What’s the source for the music, if I may ask? There are already channels available for internet radio and local audio/video that may be able to serve your needs.
A lot of the music I listen to is streamed from various web sources. MySpace Music is probably the one I listen to the most. As far as I know they don’t have a Roku channel yet. I looked into getting bluetooth speakers that I could listen to wirelessly, as my laptop’s speakers aren’t that great and I don’t want to go with wired speakers. I thought that since I had a Roku and a TV and a LAN I could come up with a solution that used those instead of buying more hardware that I don’t really need.
A lot of the music I listen to is streamed from various web sources. MySpace Music is probably the one I listen to the most. As far as I know they don’t have a Roku channel yet. I looked into getting bluetooth speakers that I could listen to wirelessly, as my laptop’s speakers aren’t that great and I don’t want to go with wired speakers. I thought that since I had a Roku and a TV and a LAN I could come up with a solution that used those instead of buying more hardware that I don’t really need.
Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. You’ve mentioned another channel idea to TheEndless. Don’t be surprised if he pops up tomorrow with a private channel that does MySpace music (or adds it to some other channel he maintains).
A lot of the music I listen to is streamed from various web sources. MySpace Music is probably the one I listen to the most. As far as I know they don’t have a Roku channel yet. I looked into getting bluetooth speakers that I could listen to wirelessly, as my laptop’s speakers aren’t that great and I don’t want to go with wired speakers. I thought that since I had a Roku and a TV and a LAN I could come up with a solution that used those instead of buying more hardware that I don’t really need.
Uh oh. Now you’ve done it. You’ve mentioned another channel idea to TheEndless. Don’t be surprised if he pops up tomorrow with a private channel that does MySpace music (or adds it to some other channel he maintains).
That might be tricky to implement. MySpace streams their music using Flash/RTMPE, which I don’t believe is supported by Roku. Hence my plan to just stream my sound card’s audio to my Roku.
That might be tricky to implement. MySpace streams their music using Flash/RTMPE, which I don’t believe is supported by Roku. Hence my plan to just stream my sound card’s audio to my Roku.
I’ve almost got this working. I’ve managed to get VLC to stream both my webcam video and sound card’s stereo mix output to Wowza, formatted as “Video - H.264 + AAC (MP4)” over “RTP / MPEG Transport Stream”. I modified the simplevideoplayer app to read the HLS stream from Wowza, and I’m able to get my webcam’s video and sound card’s audio on my TV.
However, I’m not interested in the video portion, just the audio. But if I try streaming only the audio I get nothing from Roku. I suspect that roVideoScreen requires a video stream to work, not just audio. Is this correct? If so, is there any way I can get only an audio stream over HLS without the video?
“belltown” wrote:
I’ve almost got this working. I’ve managed to get VLC to stream both my webcam video and sound card’s stereo mix output to Wowza, formatted as “Video - H.264 + AAC (MP4)” over “RTP / MPEG Transport Stream”. No, the roVideoScreen component won’t work with audio-only input.
I modified the simplevideoplayer app to read the HLS stream from Wowza, and I’m able to get my webcam’s video and sound card’s audio on my TV.
However, I’m not interested in the video portion, just the audio. But if I try streaming only the audio I get nothing from Roku. I suspect that roVideoScreen requires a video stream to work, not just audio. Is this correct? If so, is there any way I can get only an audio stream over HLS without the video?I hacked myself together a pc audio streaming app using Edcast to capture the audio and icecast to stream (I chose these because I’m familiar with them and they’re free, there are other options, like the Winamp Shoutcast plugin). I used the audioapp example from the Roku SDK* to start from, and pared down from there. The chain looks like this Sound Card Out->Ed Cast Capture(as mp3*)->Icecast Server->Custom Roku Audio App.
I could post my source, but it’s a ugly hack-job of the example source and I haven’t looked at it since summer. I’m not really sure in what state I left it in. If you got the video stuff to work, you’ll probably be fine working from the example. Feel free to ask if you need anything.
*Note 1: The 2.8 SDK is missing several files from the audioapp example. RokuChris posted the complete source to the 2.7 version of the example(which works fine with 2.8 )
*Note 2: The only streaming audio-only codec you can use with Roku is currently mp3. For files, aac and wma both work, but not streams of indefinite length.
I finally have it working now. The solution is actually very simple.
I just use VLC media player to capture my stereo mix and stream it as MP3 using HTTP over my network. I set the destination port to 8080 and path to /mp3. To play it on Roku I only need to change one line of code, the URL in the NPR module of the audioapp, to http://192.168.0.100:8080/mp3 and lo-and-behold my sound card output is now being streamed to my TV. No need to use Wowza or any other streaming media media servers.
now if we didnt have to deal with “HLS” we could do the same with Video!
AVC streamer seems to work a bit but i’m not having luck. i have been playing with a few other solutions however and will post as soon as i can get something working.
eventually i am sure the guys at VLC will have a HLS streaming option and then the roku world will be perfect!!
and just add the url or even Chaneru and add it as a .url in case you ever need to make any changes in the ip address and dont want to fool with changing your code all the time
