This import allows you to listen to Pandora Internet Radio via the Sage UI. It uses an external Java window with a browser to load Pandora but you can control the player and select stations to Play from within Sage. Imports are included for both the Default STV and SageMC.
You can control the Pandora Player from extenders but to hear it you must use do something like described here (use a spare analog tuner and view live tv). To automate this somewhat you can modify the "pandora/channel" property in the properties file for the extender which will cause Sage to jump to Live TV and tune the specified channel when connecting to the Pandora Player.
If using service mode you must log in as the local system account and check "Allow service to interact with desktop" in the service properties screen in Windows or the Pandora Player window will never be launched.
All extenders and the server itself will share and control the same Pandora Player.
Installation - Default STV
Unzip the downloaded file to "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV" while preserving the directory structure.
Go to the Detailed Setup, Advanced page and select Import Sage TV Application Package (.STVi File).
Navigate to the "SageTV\STVs" directory (usually up one directory) and select the Pandora.stvi file to import.
Select Yes to load the new STV and then select the new "Pandora" item on the Media Center menu. *If you are using the Dynamic Menu import you may need to add a menu item manually as described in the SageMC setup below.
Installation - SageMC
Unzip the downloaded file to "C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV" while preserving the directory structure.
Go to the My Menu, Settings page and select "Import STVi".
Navigate to the "SageTV\STVs" directory (usually up one directory) and select the Pandora_SageMC.xml file to import.
Select Yes to load the new STV.
Add a new item to the main menu with the Dynamic Menu options screen. This item should be a "New Internal Screen" and select the "Pandora Radio" screen in the list.
Select the new item you created on the main menu.
One-time Setup
Make sure you have the .NET 2.0 Framework installed (required for my Windows control program for focus and keystrokes for the external player window).
Select the "Connect to Player" button in Sage.
Switch to the "Pandora Player for Sage TV" window after it opens and log in to your account through the Pandora player. You will have to do this one additional time for extenders (the Player window is launched from extenders through the System account which is different than the local server account).
In a separate browser go to the Pandora Feeds page and input your email address for your Stations feed. Note your ID in the generated URL: http:/feeds.pandora.com/feeds/people/ID/stations.xml. Select the "Set Stations ID" button in Sage and input just your ID.
Close Sage and reopen.
Notes
The Pause command toggles Play and Pause. Stop once pauses and the second press closes the player. Skip Fwd #2 skips the current song.
If it doesn't seem to be responding check the Pandora Player external window and make sure there are no errors. Within Sage try to close the player and reconnect. If it doesn't seem to be skipping the song you may have gone over the limit of songs you can skip in an hour. If it doesn't seem to be responding to Thumbs Down you may not be logged into your account in the player window.
Version 1.1 - 07/21/08
Added Artist info screen, Search for Artist, and Create Station from Artist. Note that these features rely on HTML so they can easily be broken if Pandora changes their website.
Expanded Station selection list to 2-column table.
Version 1.2 - 12/06/08
The external player window is bigger to accomodate the main Pandora page (fix for recent changes to Pandora website).
Added Song Info screen with links to Artist screen and new Album screen. Added station creation from Song and Song search. Added bookmarking of song and artist. Added artist album list. All of these again depend on the Pandora website so can be easily broken by any changes they might make.
The screensaver is disabled when the Pandora player is playing.
There is a prompt to close the Pandora player when leaving the player screen while it is playing.
SageMC: The "loopback" channel is now tuned without leaving the player screen and the video preview can be hidden (thanks, flachbar). SageMC 6.3.8a is required to hide the video preview. Hide the preview by decreasing the "pandora/previewsize" property until you can't see the video but can still hear the audio (this number seems to vary based on client and display but 0.01 is a good starting point).
Default STV: The video preview is now included on the player screen so you can use the "loopback" channel approach on extenders. You can hide the video as above.
Images
by cncb on 07-11-2008 by cncb on 07-11-2008 by cncb on 07-21-2008 by cncb on 07-21-2008
