[xine-devel] network master/slave

[Miguel F. <mi...@ce...>]

hi,

here i am with yet another network crazy idea... :)

following Siggi's suggestion, i'm working on changing his broadcast
patch to use tcp sockets. ok, what is this about?

one would start a xine "master" that includes a tcp server. then,
multiple xine "slaves" may connect to it and they will "clone" what is
being displayed on the master. that is, master's stream will be sort of
broadcasted to the other clients.

actually, by changing it from udp to tcp it got considerably simpler. i
just had to create the server module and a new demuxer (input is handled
by existing input_net.c). also, the changes are quite unintrusive (it
uses the same callbacks used by network buffering control).

before people start asking, here are some clarifications:

- why i'm doing this? because people contracted me to do that, and since
my work is GPL'ed i can commit it back to xine cvs.

- why not use udp broadcast/multicast? besides the trouble of handling
package dropping gratefuly (specially for xine control buffers)
broadcast/multicast was killing some small devices used in this
particular project that have only 10Mbps ethernet interfaces.


i'm attaching a first version of the patch (more like a proof of
concept). it still need some fixes and cleanups but it actually works
(tested with dvds, including menu navigation). note that xine master
server is not enabled by default (a stream parameter must be set).

since i feel biased to decide whether it should be commited to cvs or
not (when finished), i'd like to hear what other developers think about
it... so?

regards,

Miguel