Streaming Live TV to Xibo - Best way

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Hi All, Just wanted to share this info with the community after days of trying various methods to stream live TV to Xibo for the 2022 World Cup, I think I found the best way, in my experience.

I had been playing around with RSTP from a cheap amazon HDMI encoder for days with no avail, then I decided to try OBS and a cheap capture card to RSTP, still pretty poor performance, Then I found the most reliable and efficient way, which I am currently using to send live TV to 10+ TVs across multiple buildings

You will need:

  1. You will need a cheap USB capture card, plenty on Amazon mine was in the region of £30
  2. You will need a windows desktop to run OBS, the power of your desktop will be relational to the quality of your streams.
  3. You will need a linux server to run restreamer
  4. Obviously you will need a live TV source. Mine is a cheap Freesat box, but freeview will also work or anything outputting to HDMI will work in reality.

How I did it:

  1. USB capture card plugged into the Windows desktop with OBS installed, set OBS to take the capture card input / sound
  2. setup and configure the linux server with restreamer, plenty of documentation here
  3. Stream via RMTP from OBS to Restreamer , guide here
  4. Set Restreamer to output the stream via HLS, copy HLS link
  5. Within Xibo use the HLS module , paste the link in there and done! I’m running Android DSSevices players and all working flawlessly with HLS. RSTP was such a pain!

You can also use Restreamer to send your stream to a dedicated webpage, and various other places if needed. Its a pretty handy tool

Link to capture card
Link to OBS

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Hi, I too have been working to setup a live TV stream to my players. I sorta came to the same conclusion you did however, I was not happy with the OBS and capture card…

So, I went a little different route, the only problem is it cost a little more.

I chose to use a HDMI high definition encoder (H.265/H.264 Encoder - EXVIST H.265 1080P WiFi HDMI Video Encoder HDMI to RTMP Encoder W/SD Card Slot Max. 128G DDNS HTTP ONVIF RTMP RTSP TS UDP Hikvision Private Protool for IPTV Live Streaming $146.00, non-WiFi version is $109.00) that connects to my Live TV connection, which is either a set top box (cable TV) or satellite box using HDMI which then encodes the video directly to an HLS Stream which is supported on the Xibo Windows player.

Using a short Ethernet crossover cable I was able to connect the HDMI Encoder directly to the Windows XIBO Player (which is an Intel based Fanless Mini Desktop Computer Support 4K HD/HDMI+VGA Port/Dual WiFi/Gigabit Ethernet). I could have used WiFi as well, just figured the ethernet would be faster.

Also. my use case might be a little different, as I have video feeds for each display as apposed to streaming one feed to all displays.

This seems to work, with minimal setup as there is no external software needed, you just have to configure the Web services and HLS feed on the HDMI encoder for the player to connect too.

Hope this helps.

Kyle

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