[Live-devel] Re: WMP 9 and realplayer 10?

[Laurent Pinchart]

> sorry for the stupid questions, but...
> Are windows media player 9 and realplayer 10 (base version) supposed to
> be able to connect to an rtsp server implemented with the live.com
> libraries?

The question is not that stupid, although you should have searched the mailing 
list archives.

> I have been recently told that WMP9 supports rtsp, so I tried to use it
> to connect to testOnDemandRTSPServer (I tried the MPEG1 ES stream). (VLC
> is able to connect to it and play the video, so I assume that
> testOnDemandRTSPServer is correctly working).
> WMP 9 accepts the "rtsp://.../mpeg1or2ESVideoTest URL, and even tries to
> connect, but it immediately complains about "unsupported protocol".
> I tried to have a quick look at the network traffic, and it seems that
> WMP9 sends a "DESCRIBE" request, and disconnects as soon as it receives
> the response (containing the SDP description of the stream)... Any
> ideas? Is it possible that WMP9 sends an RTSP request but expect to
> receive the stream in something different from RTP?

WMP9 might support RTSP, but it seems (from what I've been told) to support 
only the WMV and WMA RTP profiles. Probably an attempt from Microsoft to show 
their "commitment" to open standards and still keep their products 
incompatible.

> After that, I tried realplayer 10 (again, I tried
> "rtsp://<ipaddr>/mpeg1or2ESVideoTest"). realplayer does not complain,
> and begins to play the stream (it is an MPEG1 ES), but there are a lot
> of artefacts in the reproduced video (again, the video plays fine with
> VLC). Does anyone know if realplayer wants something non standard?

I have no idea about that. There was a problem with LiveMedia (well, rather a 
non-implemented header in the answer) which prevented RealPlayer to play 
anything at all, but I sent a patch and it has been fixed.

I also found a bug in RealPlayer which affected multicast streams. RealPlayer 
asked for a unicast stream even when it meant multicast, so the server answer 
was not understood properly. I turned multicast off in RealPlayer as a 
workaround, and filled a bug report with RealMedia. I didn't test video at 
that time though.

Are you using RealPlayer in multicast mode ? If so, which version (and build 
number) ?

Laurent Pinchart