My use case at the moment is to get the video my STB at the office is showing to show in real time in a window on my laptop at home. Currently I use a webcam pointed at a monitor connected to the STB, and I use motion to make the MJPG available. The laptop has a VPN connection to the office and can connect to the HTTP server in motion. I need to be able to resolve text when it is a fairly light color on a supposedly contrasting fairly light background. In practice with the webcam and Motion I'm close. Frequently the text part doesn't quite work.

I was using ffserver also.

I don't particularly need the HTTP layer nor the browser itself. But I can tell a colleague on the office network: Look at my $WEBCAM_URL to show them something on my STB so that's nice. If I could say "ffplay $WEBCAM_PARAMS_AND_IP_ADDRESS" and it was available within the office, that would be the same.