Linux Stream Instructions

Playing our stream in Linux works OK but the server sends the lowest-quality stream and so the picture quality isn't great (when a Windows Media Player client connects to the server, it tests the connection speed and sends the highest quality stream that the connection can support. Linux players do not negotiate this connection speed test and so the server sends the lowest quality stream). I haven't figured out how to get the server to send a better-quality stream yet, but hopefully it's possible.

Depending on what distro you're using, you should have mplayer either installed by default or on the disks. If it's not installed, go ahead and install it. Then go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html and download the "essential codecs package" to the tmp directory in your home directory. It's about a quarter of the way down the page under the "Binary Codec Packages" heading. Just click the "Linux x86 20060611" link in the table. Note...the date (20060611) may be newer if the codec files have been updated.

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As root: Untar/b-zip2 the essential codecs package into /usr/local/lib/codecs/. Here are the step-by-step instructions (NOTE: if you downloaded a newer version of the essential codecs than 20060611, you'll need to change the file names):

    cd /home/tmp

    mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs/
    (if you already have this directory, you can skip this step)

    tar xvjf essential-20060611.tar.bz2

    mv essential-20060611/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/.
    (if you already had a codecs directory with codecs in it, use the force flag: mv -f essential-20060611/* /usr/local/lib/codecs/. )

    rmdir essential-20060611

NOTE: The codecs used to be put into /usr/local/lib/win32 in the past which also works, but I made /usr/local/lib/win32 a sym-link to /usr/local/lib/codecs/ just in case my version of mplayer required the old location. If your mplayer complains about missing codecs, do this...

    ln -s /usr/local/lib/codecs /usr/local/lib/win32

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You can delete the tarball of the codecs you originally downloaded if you want.

Then run mplayer, right-click on it and select Open... > Play URL... Enter mms://miraclechannel.streamsvr.com/miracle-sat

Click OK and you should see our stream. NOTE: It may take a while to start. On my system, it takes about a minute to cache the video stream before it starts playing.

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