Ustream Viewer Added to App Store

A few days after the public announcement of a Ustream viewer application for the iPhone/iPod Touch, the app has gone live in the App Store! Get it while it’s hot for some live-streaming-inauguration-action! UPDATE!: The app has been crippled by ATT to disallow 3G streaming, but if you’re jailbroken (or can make it so asap), there’s a fix below that should work for you too.

UPDATE 11:20p 1/19/09: Unfortunately, it appears that this app is crippled: you can only watch streaming videos on a WIFI connection, which basically makes it useless, since if you have WIFI, you’re probably capible of using a computer. Maybe not, but my plan was to watch the inauguration while going about my daily activities, so I’m working feverishly on a workaround. It’s not hard to do, provided the crippling is an app store thing and not a ‘we need wifi bandwidth, the videos won’t stream on anything less’ thing. If it’s the former, expect a fix in a matter of minutes.

UPDATE2 12:02am 1/20/09: It is done! I’m successfully watching live streaming Ustream video on my iphone. Here’s how (after the break).

1. Jailbreak your phone. It’s just how it works. You want your phone to do something AT&T doesn’t like? You have to, that’s just how it works.
2. Add the VoIPover3G app and the OpenSSH app from Cydia. If you do a search, both should be right there, since they’re in the BigBoss repository. More info on voipover3g can be found here (coral), basically it just tricks the any app that’s been configured in its list into thinking that it’s got a wifi connection when, in fact, it has a 3g connection only. In the case of Joost, for example, this doesn’t work all that well, since the video actually REQUIRES all the bandwidth of wifi to run, and fizzles and dies on 3G. Ustream, on the other hand, runs fine over 3G (though it HAS crashed on me trying this, no way to tell if it’s just buggy or if it doesn’t like the lower bandwidth).
3. Configure your VoIPover3G.plist to include the ustream bundle identifier. Basically, open a shell on your phone (go to Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app on your mac, or putty (google) on your windows computer and type “ssh root@(youriphoneipaddresshere)” without the quotes and substituting in the IP of your phone on your local wireless network. The default password is “alpine” again without the quotes. Type “cd /Library/MobileSubstrate/DynamicLibraries” no quotes, then “vi VoIPover3G.plist” again no quotes. I find it’s easiest here to highlight the line of text showing here, copy it into a text editor (TextEdit isn’t great, but any other should do fine) and edit it there. You can then hit “dd” no quotes to delete the line in vi (the program running in the terminal), then “i” to enter insert mode, then just paste your edited line back in” then type (colon)x(enter) to exit and save.
4. “But wait, what do I edit about that line?!” Haha, didn’t just leave you hanging, don’t worry. You want to add “tv.ustream.player” (the app’s bundle identifier) to that line, just like you see the other “com.something.something” entries. For example, my line looks like this:
   Filter = {Bundles = ("com.Fringland.Fring", "tv.ustream.player", "com.apple.AppStore", "com.audiofile.Interstate", "com.apple.MobileStore");};
   NOTE: I’ve found (I think) that for some reason, the first entry gets ignored in this list. At any rate, even if that’s untrue, it can’t hurt to put the entry in the middle. This is what I currently have, and what works for me.
5. That’s it. You may or may not have to restart your phone, sync it, what have you. I’m not sure exactly what it takes to kickstart this into effect. For some reason, after a restart then a respring, I still didn’t have it working, but then I did a sync to put Joost back on my phone for head-to-head troubleshooting, and it magically worked. Fiddle, if you get stuck post in the comments and I’ll do my best to help you in a timely fashion. I really want anyone who’s able to see this live, and on the iPhone is a great way to do it if you can’t take time out of your day to get to a TV or computer.

Hopefully that does the trick for everyone. Do let me know if not. For those of you interested, I’ve got a somewhat related post hot in the works about how to find bundle identifiers, since it’s sort of a pain and I just had to teach myself.

UPDATE: 12:31am 1/20/09: I seem to be having trouble getting the app to start without complaining, HOWEVER, if it’s being finnickey, I can get it to stream over ONLY 3g provided that I give it a valid wifi connection first, then load the app, then turn OFF the wifi using sbsettings. After that point, it’s no longer dependent on wifi to stream. I’m working on better characterizing the problem.

PROBABLY FINAL UPDATE BEFORE I GO TO BED TO GET UP FOR MY 6AM BUS IN THE MORNING: It looks like it’s working consistently now, though I’m not sure what changed. I think the reversion to complaining behavior might have just been a fluke. Bottom line is, try resetting (hold (hold) and (home) buttons together till it dies, then turn it on), powering off/restarting, and syncing, and any combination thereof after you’ve saved the config file. After some combination of those, it should work correctly. On a side note, when it’s having a bad day in terms of connection bandwidth, it says “bitrate too high, some frames are being dropped” in a quiet little message at the bottom of the screen, and goes on its merry way playing mostly unfettered. I’ve experienced occasional crashes, but that’s the worst of it. Have a time-delayed backup plan (tivo), but the worst that can possibly happen is that a crash cuts into the speeches/coverage for a few moments before you can relaunch.

HAPPY INAUGURATION OVER 3G EVERYONE!