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

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by Nebruin

I have a similar issue, only my main SageMC front end is fine and setup the way I always had it, but the Netflix menu is all messed up. It has a black background, and the text when I go to the Instant Queue is all stuck at the top left of the screen so it's not readable. Any ideas on what I am doing wrong?

Thanks.

-Nebruin

You have to make sure the zip file is copied with it's structure intact to the root path
\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV

SageTV should not be running on that PC when installing those files. I have also seen a few times where the NetFlix screen does not appear correctly until restarting SageTV after IMPORTING the plugin. Maybe there is also the possibility that you had tried it more than once. You need to reload the clean baseline SageMC STV before importing again. (Or load a previous STV revision that definitely does not have NetFlix import code in it)

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

I am starting to add a feature to the custom player code that could incorporate some mouse emulation from the standard Sage remote events.

Is there any way to get the custom player code to SendMessage() to my Netflix Control script? If so, I will add the ability to receive those messages in Netflix Control and release it as a compiled EXE (no need for AutoHotKey).

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by brainbone

Is there any way to get the custom player code to SendMessage() to my Netflix Control script? If so, I will add the ability to receive those messages in Netflix Control and release it as a compiled EXE (no need for AutoHotKey).

Hey! I have not seen that yet! That would save me redoing a lot of stuff you have already figured out. Yes I could do send messages and just include your utility with the NetFlix import if this works out and you are fine with it as well.

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

Hey! I have not seen that yet! That would save me redoing a lot of stuff you have already figured out. Yes I could do send messages and just include your utility with the NetFlix import if this works out and you are fine with it as well.

Ok, attached is a modification of my netflix_control script.

I've moved all remote control/keyboard bindings out of the main control script and replace them with message handlers. You can look in the src.zip file included in the attached to see the script source code, and the "netflix_remote_control.ahk" file that I used to test the message handler in netflix_silverlight_control.exe

Sending a message of 0x5555 with a wParam of 10 and a lParam from 100 to 110 (see netflix_remote_control.ahk for map of what each of the 100, 101, etc. do) to the hidden netflix_silverlight_control.exe window will tell netflix_silverlight_control to do whatever you ask of it.

netflix_silverlight_control.exe should be running before IE is opened to the silverlight player. Once it notices the player is open and locates the "Full Screen" button, it will make note of any episode buttons if they exist, click the "Full Screen" button, locate any relevant buttons, and wait for instruction. If the IE netflix player window is closed, netflix_silverlight_control will reset itself, waiting for another netflix player window to open. If you run netflix_silverlight_control.exe more than once, it will reset and replace any existing instance.

Please let me know if you have any questions, or need any further modifications.

[Morgan111]

Great! Those changes should work out well. It may be a few days before I have some feedback, but I think this will work.

Morgan

[kentro71]

Just wanted to let you 2 know, you rock! What you are doing is great, and keep up the good work.

[raoul]

First of all... I love this plugin. I run it with the original netflix player, so no silverlight woes for me.

I have had it working for a month or two without any problems, but now it seems to have developed a bottleneck and I was wondering if anyone has any guesses what I could do to fix. I am on cable internet, so shared bandwidth that drops considerably during primetime. At first I thought my problems were due to this, but not anymore.

It was a bit jerky to stream during primetime (download speed dropped to 2M/sec), so I got in the habit of using the download and watch later feature. Lately, it seems to take forever to bring up the covers when I do even a search (for example: Weeds). Then once I get all the covers, I select Weeds Season 2, and it just sits forever trying to download the description or the episode list. I have left it for 10 minutes and it never comes (keep in mind that it originally worked normally).

Again, I thought it was just my bandwidth had dropped too low, but I checked it last night and I was at my full 8M/sec while having these problems. So, I thought perhaps Netflix was just getting hammered with requests during primetime. However, I went directly to Netflix via IE and it was lightning fast. Also, I was able to not only get the description/episode list, but also able to stream them down and watch in realtime. I did leave SageTV running the background, just to ensure I was comparing apples to apples.

Anyway, it seems as if I have a bottleneck when trying to do this through SageTV, but no clue as to where to even start looking. Any thoughts?

[SteveD]

Is there any way to use a hauppauge/usb uirt remote combination to control netflix silverlight.

I currently use a wireless usb mouse to control netflix

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by SteveD

Is there any way to use a hauppauge/usb uirt remote combination to control netflix silverlight.

I currently use a wireless usb mouse to control netflix

Use EventGhost and v0.8a of my NetFlix Control scripts.


1) If you previously installed Netflix Control v0.6, delete it to remove any possible confusion.

2) Install NetFlix Control v0.8a as described here

3) Install EventGhost. I use version 0.3.6.1487

4) Install the EventGhost plugin included with Netflix Control, as described in the plugin's readme file.

5) Start netflix_silverlight_control.exe (not netflix_control.exe)

6) Start EventGhost, and open up the file attached to this post. (you'll need to extract "USB-UIRT_NetFlixControl_Blank.xml" from the zip file)

7) In EventGhost, expand the "Autostart" tree item

8) Right-click "Plugin: USB-UIRT", and make sure "Disable Item" is NOT checked. After this, make sure you do not see an "Error starting plugin: USB-UIRT" in the left frame.

9) Press a button on your remote. You should see an event pop-up in the left frame of EventGhost. If not, you may need to double click the "Plugin: USB-UIRT" plugin and mess around with it's configuration.

10) Expand the "Netflix Silverlight Control" tree in EventGhost.

11) Press a button on your remote that you want to assign to a Netflix function, like the stop button for example. You should see an event pop-up in the left frame.

12) Grab the event that popped up in step 11, and drag it to the Netflix Silverlight Control action you want to assign it to, like "Stop".

13) Repeat steps 11 and 12 until you assign all the buttons you want to.

14) Right-click "Plugin: USB-UIRT", and make sure "Disable Item" IS checked. This will enable itself when necessary.

15) Save the EventGhost configuration file.

16) Open internet explorer, go to Netflix and open a Watch Now movie. The movie should automatically go full screen. If not, netflix_silverlight_control.exe is probably not running. run it.

17) Use your remote.

18) Report back here if it works.

Note: I don't have a USB-UIRT, so I'm unable to test this.

[mkanet]

I'm not sure if anyone uses posterview for their watch now movies. But, there's been a bug for months that makes this feature unusable. Actually, its pretty hard not to notice the problem. But, can someone please tell me how I can fix the text?

Morgan, could you please upload a fix or maybe show me where to change it in Studio.

PS: I cant seem to embed the picture here, so I'm attaching a screenshot.

Thanks a million!

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I'm not sure if anyone uses posterview for their watch now movies. But, there's been a bug for months that makes this feature unusable. Actually, its pretty hard not to notice the problem. But, can someone please tell me how I can fix the text?

Morgan, could you please upload a fix or maybe show me where to change it in Studio.

PS: I cant seem to embed the picture here, so I'm attaching a screenshot.

Thanks a million!

Michael,

Did you miss an update a while back??

Originally Posted by Morgan111

11/19/08 Update 2.06

• Correct font handling on movie list that broke with SageMC 6.3.8.
• Account for changes to website coding that prevented the "More" prompt.
• Added menu item for Instant Queue on Main NetFlix Menu.

Download it HERE!

As always,
-Shut down sage when unzipping files to c:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV
-Before importing the new xml, roll back to the baseline SageMC or a version of the STV without NetFlix installed.


Just some minor updates this time. I have additional updates to make, but this should help some of the emergency issues. The instant queue will list the items that are Watch Now from the main queue, but I still need to add a way to delete movies from that view of the queue as well.

[mkanet]

Thanks Morgan! I had copied the files over when that update came out. However, I didnt use the updated stvi it came with!

Originally Posted by Morgan111

Michael,

Did you miss an update a while back??

[mkanet]

My wife had a very good question. Why dont any of the movies show what year they were released. She noticed that the Netflix homepage shows this, but not in this plugin.

She also wanted to know if there's a way to sort the movies by the year they were released, or only show movies that are new ...not from 1977.

Anyway, just thought Id throw some suggestions your way to make this to have a more WAF for me

[zetronboy]

Great work on the plugin BTW.
The SageTV screen saver is coming on while watching NetFlix movies on demand. I am using the Internet Explorer viewing option because the internal does not work. I suspect its because I have a silverlight netflix enabled account. When Sage launches other programs from the OtherPrograms sub-menu it switches sage to sleep mode and does not bother me.

[mikesm]

Morgan, any idea on if or when you will have calls to Brainbone's silverlight plugin integrated into this plugin? I am now in the process of resurrecting a client (rebuild from the ground up with windows 7), and netflix is forcing me to use the silverlight crap, and netflix (and physical DVD playback) are the main reasons for me doing this.

If you think it won't happen or will be quite awhile, then I'll go through the effort of learning eventghost and getting all that setup, but if you think it might be sooner rather then later, then I'd just rather wait and save myself the hassle... :-)

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by mkanet

My wife had a very good question. Why dont any of the movies show what year they were released. She noticed that the Netflix homepage shows this, but not in this plugin.

She also wanted to know if there's a way to sort the movies by the year they were released, or only show movies that are new ...not from 1977.

Anyway, just thought Id throw some suggestions your way to make this to have a more WAF for me

Good idea. I should be able to add that.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by zetronboy

Great work on the plugin BTW.
The SageTV screen saver is coming on while watching NetFlix movies on demand. I am using the Internet Explorer viewing option because the internal does not work. I suspect its because I have a silverlight netflix enabled account. When Sage launches other programs from the OtherPrograms sub-menu it switches sage to sleep mode and does not bother me.

Another good idea. I will check on the way they do it from that menu.

[Morgan111]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Morgan, any idea on if or when you will have calls to Brainbone's silverlight plugin integrated into this plugin? I am now in the process of resurrecting a client (rebuild from the ground up with windows 7), and netflix is forcing me to use the silverlight crap, and netflix (and physical DVD playback) are the main reasons for me doing this.

If you think it won't happen or will be quite awhile, then I'll go through the effort of learning eventghost and getting all that setup, but if you think it might be sooner rather then later, then I'd just rather wait and save myself the hassle... :-)

I've been on and off it for a few weeks. I planned on having a little more time tonight and maybe something out tomorrow to try. The extender with Brainbones plugin should work well. Control with the client is the case that may require a bit of tweaking and further updates or additional configuration.

[wirecreative]

I want to delete this STV and try installing it again.

I'm having a few problems with the player (no onscreen controls, when I stop the player, the screen goes white and freezes and I have to stop Sage via TaskManager), and for some reason Netflix shows up twice in my SageMC add-ons settings screen.

How do I remove it? There's no obvious option. Do i just delete the files from the SageTV folder?

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

I've been on and off it for a few weeks. I planned on having a little more time tonight and maybe something out tomorrow to try. The extender with Brainbones plugin should work well. Control with the client is the case that may require a bit of tweaking and further updates or additional configuration.

Ah, you mean the plugin that plays the netflix viideo on the server and then reencodes it for access on extenders? I'm much more interested in the sageclient option firing the silverlight plugin natively myself, but I understand if it's not the highest priority...

Still, if you think it might get done in the next 3 weeks or so, that's enough get me to hold off on the hassle of getting eventghost etc... setup... :-)

thx
mike