How to play RTSP on Google TV ( or use ffmpeg )

Question

In short, I have to play RTSP on a Google TV device (Sony nsz-gs7). How can I do it?

Things I tried:

• Use NDK to compile ffmpeg, then ffmpeg converts rtsp to udp etc. - Fails because NDK is not supported in Google TV (see: https://developers.google.com/tv/faq#ndk). This method uses ffmpeg as library.
• Put ffmpeg executable (compiled with NDK) in an application, then call the app from command line. (see: http://gimite.net/en/index.php?Run%20native%20executable%20in%20Android%20App - first method). I can deploy executable and set its permissions, but cannot execute it; i get "not found" error (its path is correct). If only I could run an executable file in Google TV, the problem would be solved, I think.
• Tried to display in VideoView, like Google TV VideoView playing YouTube rtsp videos, it didn't work either.

These approaches all work on Android phones, but I couldn't make them work on Google TV.

Any tips for displaying RTSP or running executable files? Or do I have to wait for NDK support?

Update: If there is an application which can play RTSP streams, we can also use it as a temporary fix.

Answer 1

The current version of Google TV is based on FFMpeg internally and is supposed to play RTSP content of course, if you try that example, you'll want to refresh the url for the RTSP content as YouTube doesn't keep them live long. Since RTSP is a transport format, not a codec, you might want to say what your encoding is.

That said, I've never made RTSP work myself - so I'm not speaking from experience, but I do trust my colleague Shawn who wrote the answer to the link above.

One of the features we announced at Google I/O 2012 was the ability to write your own transport stream and codec's in Java. That software is currently on the LG and will be on most of the others in the next few months.

If your need is urgent write me at Google or on Google+.