I've done some research regarding playback of ismv format (IIS Smooth Streaming) which is MP4 that's been segmented, with an accompanying XML manifest. Apparently it's possible to live stream this because each chunk is like a discrete MP4, so it would open the door to playback of MKV content on Windows Phone and decent GPU accelerated playback with the built-in video player. Subtitles also seem to be supported which is a bonus.
Anyhow, the big problem seems to be that you cannot connect to a Smooth Streaming URL without a player app which has support baked in. From the info I have gathered in
this forum thread it doesn't look too complicated: registering a byte-handler for a mimetype. I found some instructions for Windows 8 apps, but I guess from Windows Phone 8.1 all this stuff has converged to a universal app format. However, I'm not an app developer and I've never touched Visual Studio. I was wondering whether it might be relatively simple to extend the ServiiWP app to connect to Smooth Streaming content URLs to test (using the native player for playback), then if it works add support for browsing content from the Serviio Media Browser via http. Zip would need to add support to Serviio for the smoothstreaming muxer.
Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2012 12:56 am