Dreambox Streaming via the network
You can control the Dreambox completely via the network. This makes sense if you want to watch with a notebook via WLAN. The Webinterface (on Dreambox-IP) has a VLC button. It does not neccessarily link to VLC but to the player which is associated with M3U files. Which one is best? My experience:
Winamp did not work at all
VLC has drop-outs and freezes after about one minute
It might all be a question of codecs and properties. But my solution was to use the free MPlayer instead. If you use Windows, there is a complete download package. On my noterbook it never froze. Every minute or so about one second was repeated - but you can use it after all. You can set the M3U association in the options/properties/file types menu. It isn't there by default.
Every time you zap, the stream has to be restarted by re-clicking "VLC".
The Web-X-TV link in the WebIF does not work on my PC.
You can also access the stream directly with http://DreamboxIP/video.m3u
Of course, bandwith should fit. TV streams in standard definition usually have 1 to 6 MBit/s. WLAN standard is 54 MBit - enough, but only if the connection is perfect. Otherwise bandwith will be cut down to 36, 24, 12 MBit/s or less. Then it gets problematic. If you have a very fast internet upload bandwidth, you could even stream via the net. Most people should at least be able to stream radio via the internet. This requires port forwarding - haven't tried it yet.
TV streams in HD use up to 10 MBit. Here comes a nice new feature: Old dreamboxes won't show MPEG4, the PC will. But only if it's a DVB-S channel (locked in the Satfinder). If it's DVB-S2 (like in most cases) - no chance with the older models. And the CPU must be fast - some MPEG4 streams are very demanding.
Radiovibrations.com -> Dreambox Notes