STV Import: NetFlix for SageMC (v2.1) 28-Feb-09

[mhassman]

Does anyone know of a netflix stvi supporting watch-now that doesn't require sagemc? i'm not a fan of the ui - run just the malore tweaks for ui enhancements. Thnx!

[EmuZombie]

I think I've figured out the problem with not being able to use the browse feature anymore. In the channel.java file it references requests to use http://www.netflix.com for rss feeds. However, netflix changed this to be http//rss.netflix.com. A simple change should be all it takes. I'm unable to compile and test this at the moment. Can anyone give it a try?

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by EmuZombie

I think I've figured out the problem with not being able to use the browse feature anymore. In the channel.java file it references requests to use http://www.netflix.com for rss feeds. However, netflix changed this to be http//rss.netflix.com. A simple change should be all it takes. I'm unable to compile and test this at the moment. Can anyone give it a try?

That should not be a problem. There must be some conflicting library or app (Sage or other) or some other configuration that is causing a problem for some users. I'll try to see what else I may be able to do to help isolate the issue.

[Morgan111]

Went through a few different options to get something that works under the control of Sage that replaces the Internet Explorer player. Works great for me and had some help from Mkanet and Brent to uncover problems for me. Mkanet went through a lot of iterations for me. Thanks!


6/25/08 Update 2.0

• Update html parsing to account for change in website that caused inconsistent detection of Trailers and Watch Now.
• Added Blu-Ray Logo that is displayed on movie details screen when the movie is available in Blu-Ray format.
• Update parsing to fix display of User Rating stars on movie details page.
• Added custom viewer for Watch Now movies that is launched and controlled via Sage remote and shortcut keys. IE viewer is still an option.
• Add capability to select one of four possible bitrates for movie streaming.

Watch Now:
_______________________________________________________________________
Watch Now movies can be launched from the Movie Details screen automatically to play in Internet Explorer or by a custom player that incorporates Windows Media Player. The default player is the custom player. To select the IE player or switch back, press the Options button (or Cntrl-O) while on the Movie Details page and choose the desired player.

Pressing Watch Now with the custom player selected will present an option to watch the movie with one of 4 bitrates for streaming. The first uses little bandwidth but is fairly poor quality. The last rate requires a hight bandwidth but has excellent quality. Selecting the bandwidth will launch the player. To default to a specific bitrate and bypass the selection menu, press the Options button on the remote and select a specific rate as the default rate.

If the video contains episodes, a specific episode can be started by displaying the episode list and clicking on the desired episode.

Player Control:
The custom viewer is launched from a seperate executable from Sage, but Sage receives the remote commands and keyboard shortcuts as usual and passes the relevant commands to the viewer. The viewer will close and return to Sage by pressing the STOP button, or Cntrl-G.

The player has an on screen display which shows up until the video has downloaded enough of the file to begin playing or whenever a remote or keyboard command has been sent. The OSD contains the following information:

• Video Title and playing/buffering status
• Playtime progress bar
• Current playtime into video and video duration
• PREV and NEXT legends that indicate if the Prev or Next (Ch Up/Dn) buttons can be used to step to a new episode

Remote Commands Supported:
Play
Pause
Play/Pause
FF
FF2
Rew
Rew2
Info (displays OSD)
Stop

The FF/REW commands step by the time defined for advancing when viewing a show in Sage. Some PC configurations may not see an effect from these commands before the entire video has been downloaded. That is being investigated.

Pressing the STOP button will close the viewer and return to Sage.

If a movie does not start playing as expected, make sure the movie plays when started from the NetFlix website on that PC.

The Watch Now menu for selecting the playback bandwidth does also contain some nonfunctional buttons to download the videos for later playback. This does not seem like it may be worth my time to implement. Instead I may add a list that you can add Watch Now videos to and then later go back to for quick selection. I heard that the NetFlix queue screen also allows you to seperatley list the Watch Now items. That may be a different way of saving a list as well.

This new viewer will not play movies through the extender, but maybe snapdaddy's clever workaround to the extender will work as well or better with the custom viewer. The remote commands should send the requests to the viewer executable if it is all running on the server for the extender. I have not had a chance to try that on mine yet.

[snapdaddy]

Thanks for all the effort you've put into this! I'll try to test the new plugin with my extender hack tonight. If the remote commands go from extender --> server --> custom player, I think I'll be all set!

Awesome work!

Robb

[Brent]

I've been enjoying the new version of this plugin for a few days now - not having to use the IE viewer makes it work so much better - no need for girder and all of that stuff to get the remote control to work. Another great job by Morgan

Originally Posted by snapdaddy

I'll try to test the new plugin with my extender hack tonight. If the remote commands go from extender --> server --> custom player, I think I'll be all set!
Robb

Robb,
Let us know how this new version works with your workaround on the extender. I'm short on time so I haven't been able to try it out yet, but would love to hear how it goes with the new version. Thanks,

[snapdaddy]

OK - I haven't been able to test with the extender yet (I'm at work - boo!), but I've been playing with this via the placeshifter (which I think should behave about the same with launching things on the server and everything - someone please correct me if I'm wrong.)

What I have noticed thus far:

I can kick off watch now from the PSclient, and the NetFlixViewer.exe starts on the server (I have a VNC session over SSH so I can see the server desktop.) This is good.

If I leave the "Nexflix Player Open" dialog on the screen, I can issue transport commands from PS that get sent to the movie playing on the server. This is also good.

However, to watch the movie on my extender (or via PS), I need to change to channel 999 - and once I do that, I lose the "Netflix Player Open" dialog, so I lose the ability to control the viewer.

(But the new viewer is much cooler, IMHO, if just for the fact that it goes full screen automatically, with no IE junk anywhere. Now I do not need the AutoIT script to go full screen. I still need the menu item to close the NetflixPlayer.exe with a batch file, unless we find a way for me to get that control back.)

The good news is that I CAN watch things via PS/Extender. If there was some way for me to pop up that dialog again (the "Netflix Player Open dialog) so I could FFWD the movie, I'd be golden. At least now, I can still pause and rewind (because Sage is just treating it as a normal "live" program).

Verdict: This made things a little simpler, which is great. I also love the selectable DL streams.

Great job!

[Morgan111]

Well that is a start. I may be able to take care of that problem by adding another option.

If the new option is set, I could set the channel to 999, start the NetFlix viewer and then bring up a live video screen, while still capturing the inputs, and then closing the live video screen when the stop button is pressed.

There may be some complications in that process but I think it may be doable. I'll take a look at that. Don't know if I can get to it tonight, but I'll try.

Morgan

[SamSlade]

Great job!

And actually, I'd be very interested in download for later -- it would allow me to download a higher bitrate than I know my DSL can support live. But it does sound like a lot to implement to keep track.

[ryttingm]

Morgan,

Very excited to try this out. Thanks for all your hard work.

-Mike

[scott2020]

Is there a proper procedure to upgrade? I downloaded the new and unzipped over top of the old one, did the STVi import again, and deleted off my menu and re-added. But now when I go in and browse, I see nothing in my queue, browse all, or anything like that. I verified all of my user settings are OK in the setup. Sorry if I missed it along the way. thanks!

[Bandit]

snapdaddy - can you tell me how you are getting it to play on your extender? I'd kill for that functionality. What does changingto channel 999 have to do with anything? What is that remapped to...did I miss something in an earlier post where you explained your process?

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by scott2020

Is there a proper procedure to upgrade? I downloaded the new and unzipped over top of the old one, did the STVi import again, and deleted off my menu and re-added. But now when I go in and browse, I see nothing in my queue, browse all, or anything like that. I verified all of my user settings are OK in the setup. Sorry if I missed it along the way. thanks!

You need to install it after loading a clean SageMC_169.xml or install it over a version that you know does not already have the NetFlix plugin installed. You can leave your menu as is.

[ryttingm]

Morgan,

Well I have it up and running. VERY impressive. This is going to be a big improvement over running it in ie. I love being able to select the bit rate and not worrying about using lmremote to simulate mouse strokes.

There is one issue I have. there is no resume playback. This is further compounded by the fact that you only need to press stop once to close the netflix player, no confirmation. running it in iexpore it would remember your last position and restart from the same location.

[Bandit]

Morgan - First I gotta say, AWESOME job. I am loving not having to grab the wireless mouse. Secondly, I still can not browse the Watch Now or the DVD sections. Only thing I can browse are the channels. Had this problem with last version and still have it with this one. I can modify my queue and everything also, I can't find a problem with my setup, could it be that I am still in my 2 week free trial and there is a difference in the site perhaps?

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by ryttingm

There is one issue I have. there is no resume playback. This is further compounded by the fact that you only need to press stop once to close the netflix player, no confirmation. running it in iexpore it would remember your last position and restart from the same location.

Both good points that had gone through my mind and out before. The double stop pretty straightforward. For the resume I will see if NF happens to include the last position somewhere in the data that I am already looking at, otherwise I will have to maintain a list somewhere.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by Bandit

snapdaddy - can you tell me how you are getting it to play on your extender? I'd kill for that functionality. What does changingto channel 999 have to do with anything? What is that remapped to...did I miss something in an earlier post where you explained your process?

maybe you already saw it, but here it is:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33731

[scott2020]

Thanks 1,000,000!
It works great. I'll give the watch it now a try soon. I ran into tons of DRM issues before, since I guess they don't let you watch on anything with digital output from your video card. Bummer.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by Bandit

Morgan - First I gotta say, AWESOME job. I am loving not having to grab the wireless mouse. Secondly, I still can not browse the Watch Now or the DVD sections. Only thing I can browse are the channels. Had this problem with last version and still have it with this one. I can modify my queue and everything also, I can't find a problem with my setup, could it be that I am still in my 2 week free trial and there is a difference in the site perhaps?

Well the good thing is that you can update your queue (must be valid login data) and browse channels. Do the details when appear to populate correctly when selecting a movie from the channels?

Let me take a look at something and maybe I can send you a test version that captures some specific data in that area.

EmuZombie, are you also able to update your queue and see valid details when selecting a movie from a channel?

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

Well the good thing is that you can update your queue (must be valid login data) and browse channels. Do the details when appear to populate correctly when selecting a movie from the channels?

Let me take a look at something and maybe I can send you a test version that captures some specific data in that area.

EmuZombie, are you also able to update your queue and see valid details when selecting a movie from a channel?

Morgan,

yes, it populates the data correctly when I select a movie from the channels or when I do a search. After logging into the netflix site I notice I am no longer in the free trial period, so any site changes because of that shouldn't matter any longer.