Does "Play in Browser" of Webfrontend actually work?

[wartstew]

I've been happily using MythTV for over 15 years now. I just upgraded to .33.

I've never been able to get the "Play In Browser" feature to ever work.

Some years ago there was some talk that the person who had been working on this is MIA (Missing in Action).

So just curious if this works for people and I simply have something wrong with my installation, or it has never worked anyway.

I notice it triggers MythTranscode to start running, but I never get anything to actually play in the browser.

Previously I've been using that feature in the old mythweb, but since it run Flash, it is getting harder to find a client device (need to use something old) that can still play from it. I'd love to use the more modern HLS streaming mode promised in webfrontend.

[white_haired_uncle]

So just curious if this works for people and I simply have something wrong with my installation, or it has never worked anyway.

I've played with it a little. I can get it to stream to VLC. In TV->Recordings, I pick an episode and hit Watch, then XSPF/... and select to open with VLC. To be able to do this on Linux/firefox, I had to go to firefox preferences, search for Applications, and set "What should Firefox do with other files?" to "Ask whether to open or save files" (I miss being able to just type in a content type and application).

I'm pretty sure I did some playback from Video Gallery at one point, but that's not working for me now. Probably (okay, I'm guessing here) broke when I moved my videos out of storage groups so I could use an external player in mythfrontend.

I have to say, this new webfrontend looks like it may be the biggest thing to happen to myth that I can think of. A frontend that works on windows with relatively no configuration seems like a really big deal for a lot of people. Not me, but a lot of people. Well, even for me it might be pretty cool, as most of my house guests have windows laptops. And smart phones. Hmm...

Just tried same method on my android phone, but VLC closes too fast to try and do anything with. No luck with mpv. The myth part seems to work (too small to really see, but it looks like it's working).

Back on a PC, if I play the video in VLC and go to Tools->Media Information, I can get a URL and send that to smplayer on windows, or mplayer/mpv on linux. Not much point to this, but maybe a clue for getting something besides VLC working.

Hmm, I typed that URL into mpv on my phone, and it worked (though I had to use IP vs hostname). Not going to do that again, but is this a clue as to some very cool stuff coming down the road? Seems like I'm close, just missing a little "glue".

EDIT: Maybe I'm missing something pretty basic here and it wouldn't be necessary, but it seems to me that if there were a fourth button under Watch, like "Display URL" that we could cut from and paste into an application, it might make using workarounds a lot easier than my "open in VLC and find the URL" method. Even if (if?) I am missing something, you never know what apps might show up in the future that could use that URL.