Several of us were having a discussion the other day regarding adding the streams as a media item, and I just wanted to add some more context.
We were looking for a way to seemlessly integrate a weatherstar simulator into an Etv playback. Different people had different goals on how to use this, from using it as its own channel, to use it as a program, or to use it as filler. The option to add an external stream as a media item was finally decided as the best way to allow the simulator to be incorporated in the various ways that people would want, in addition to allowing for some more functionality that currently doesn’t exist.
Users have in the past achieved a goal similar to this by using a record loop, wherein the video intended to be streamed is recorded over and over to the same file. Being able to add a stream would have many advantages to this approach, such as:
Displayed time and information will be accurate - using a record loop involves a delay, which would make some information incorrect by the time it airs. It may be as little as 1 minute if you only wanted one minute of filler, but if you wanted a longer program, like an hour, it could become significantly off by then
Adjustable length - whereas the record-loop method will only give you a set length of video, and creating a longer one will increase the delay, if you could insert a stream, this would allow the stream to be as long or short as it needs to be.
Superior fallback filler - typically fallback filler will loop the same thing over and over until the next program starts. A stream could be used as an ideal fallback filler which could expand to fill up any amount of time without being annoyingly repetitive.
While this conversation started in regards to WeatherStar simulators, different streams that people would like to incorporate were brought up. Some people would like to schedule NASAtv in their Etv instance, and another mentioned PlutoTV.
The hurdles that I see regarding this feature would be, one, that playback mode would need to be limited to either duration or flood. One and multiple would not make sense for a stream. The other hurdle is that it seems to me that a steam would not be able to share a collection with regular media files. It seems to me that there would likely need to be a new type of collection as a stream collection. Putting more than one stream into a collection might be a good idea for two reasons, either in case one stream goes down, as a backup, or rather if somebody would like to have one of several streams selected to play at random.