How I got Netflix Watch Now on my HD Extender.

[Narflex]

Dude, super cool.

[snapdaddy]

Hey Morgan - so, I gave this a shot, here's the quick scoop before I turn in:

Started from scratch, imported, set loopback channel at 999, tried to Watch Now.
Didn't seem to be changing the channel - instead when I did watch now, seemed to always be showing channel 2 (the lowest channel in my lineup).

So, I looked at my lineup, and what do you know, I DO have a channel 1 on that tuner that is dedicated to s-video. (I'd never noticed it before because I actually have channel 1 enabled on my digital lineups for On Demand.) So, I disabled channel 1 from the other lineups and enabled it on the loopback capture card. Sure enough, Watch Now now showed my server desktop. So, looks like it is always going to the lowest channel for me, and not using what I have specified in setup. Maybe I did something wrong somewhere.

Also, when the movie appears, my clock seems to be bleeding through from the STV (in the top right) and some identifier text (ex: "[Lsage.ag;@1dd4cbb" is always shown in the top left (see crappy cell phone pic for fuzzy examples).

I fought for a spell in the beginning with it not working at all, and it turns out that was because I did not have a default rate set. If I have it set to manual (I was selecting playback bitrate each time), the Watch Now would not show on the extender. It seemed to start playing (I had audio) but the preview window was still present in the lower left, and the movie would not display until I pressed 'esc'. (The bitrate selection screen was semi-present as an overlay.) As soon as I set the default rate, things started working fairly well. So, no biggie.

As for commands: pause, play, and stop seem to function. RW and FF bring up the status bar, but do not seem to actually perform any transport functions.

Recap:

Works (plays movie) if default rate set.
Does not seem to be respecting channel change.
Some transport controls work.
Extra gunk on movie playback screen (on extender only).

Again - I'm happy as a clam with what you've already done, so don't feel obligated to take this mod any further on my account. But I'm also happy to test anything you'd like to send my way.

Thanks again. I'll check back on Sat - tomorrow is our annual all day Cubs outing at work, so I won't be online during the day (or probably in shape to be online at night ).

R

[Morgan111]

Robb, thanks for the test report.

I can get rid of that garbage on the screen with a couple of quick changes.
The channel change is probably not a big deal. I tried 1 and 999, but it probably always tuned to 1 and I didn't know it.
I'll look into the problem with manual bitrate selection.
The FF/REW may be one of the WMP cases where it does not work until the video is fully downloaded.

I as well as other would love to have this working on the Extender, and I should be able to adapt it for the SlimPlayer as well. I'll probably be picking up a new video card tomorrow or Saturday and can start trying it myself.

Yes, that cell phone pic is crappy...

[sjrx0213]

Morgan,

I can confirm Snapdaddy's channel 2 experience. I can also confirm the existence of the S-Video channel 1 setting. I hadn't noticed it either. The 999 entry is definitely in the properties file.

I tried channel 1, and was able to get as far as what you see in the attached (blurry) picture.

About the middle third of the screen is the feed from the server, floating over the Watch It Now screen. What you see is my server login screen. (Since I'm running Sage as a service, I'm get the behavior Snapdaddy posted initially -- the NetflixViewer fires off as a process, but with no GUI on the server.)

--Steve

[Morgan111]

Thanks Steve.

I found that I had the Channel changing hard-coded to channel 1 when I was testing, so that has been solved.

It looks like you must have selected your bitrate manually because of the way the server capture is displayed in the middle. I will have that fixed tomorrow.

I don't think there's a workaround for launching the viewer unless there is an active login session.

[sjrx0213]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

Thanks Steve.

I found that I had the Channel changing hard-coded to channel 1 when I was testing, so that has been solved.

It looks like you must have selected your bitrate manually because of the way the server capture is displayed in the middle. I will have that fixed tomorrow.

I don't think there's a workaround for launching the viewer unless there is an active login session.

Hi Morgan,

Yes, I manually selected the bit rate. I just tried setting it to a default value, and got a full screen.

Thanks,

--Steve

[sjrx0213]

Woo-hoo! Thanks to this post in the Studio forum, I can now get the NetFlixViewer to spawn a GUI when Sage is running in service mode (Windows XP).

I had been running it under my login account. I just changed the "Log On As" property to Local System and checked the box to "Allow Service To Interact With Desktop", and voila! Clicking Watch It Now on the MVP kicks off the viewer on the server, and the loopback kicks in.

1. Open the Services window under Administrative Tools
2. Right-click on the SageTV service and select Properties
3. Stop the service (unless you already did with the Sage control panel)
4. Click on the Log On tab
5. Select Local System account and check the box to Allow Service To
   Interact With Desktop
6. Restart the service

I'll be curious to see if this works for other folks.

--Steve

[Mitch G]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Dude, super cool.

But, this won't stop you guys from working with Netflix to add Watch Now as a native HD100 application, right?


Mitch

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Mitch G

But, this won't stop you guys from working with Netflix to add Watch Now as a native HD100 application, right?


Mitch

Who said they were working with Netflix???? Did I miss something?

[Mitch G]

No you didn't miss anything other than the hopeful thinking in my brain.


Mitch

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Mitch G

No you didn't miss anything other than the hopeful thinking in my brain.
Mitch

I think it would be a great idea for SageTV to do this, add the "Netflix Watch-Now" feature to the sales pitch and potentially get even more folks to look at the HD100. Don't know how the license pricing would figure into the equation for SageTV though. I'm sure they've thought about it at least.

In the meantime, this solution by Robb with Morgan's plugin & help looks very good for SageTV users. I'll be trying it this weekend hopefully.

[snapdaddy]

Originally Posted by sjrx0213

Woo-hoo! Thanks to this post in the Studio forum, I can now get the NetFlixViewer to spawn a GUI when Sage is running in service mode (Windows XP).

I had been running it under my login account. I just changed the "Log On As" property to Local System and checked the box to "Allow Service To Interact With Desktop", and voila! Clicking Watch It Now on the MVP kicks off the viewer on the server, and the loopback kicks in.

1. Open the Services window under Administrative Tools
2. Right-click on the SageTV service and select Properties
3. Stop the service (unless you already did with the Sage control panel)
4. Click on the Log On tab
5. Select Local System account and check the box to Allow Service To
   Interact With Desktop
6. Restart the service

I'll be curious to see if this works for other folks.

--Steve

Doesn't running Sage as the local system account disable the ability to access UNC pathed recording directories on other machines? (This might not be a problem for most, but it would be for me.)
I have 2 machines running server with one as a network encoder, as I ran out of slots (and HD bays) in my server and am too cheap to get a new motherboard or case right now.
I really need to get a sig w/ my setup.

[sjrx0213]

Doesn't running Sage as the local system account disable the ability to access UNC pathed recording directories on other machines?

D'oh! I knew there was a reason I made that change in the first place but I couldn't remember. My PC client wasn't able to see the comskip EDLs until I configured for UNC paths.

I'll have to delve into this further.

--Steve

[Morgan111]

I did some more testing on my extender and found that I really had to re-do the screen setup to get it to work right there.

I have an update here that should take care of the problems and work fairly reliable.
The garbage is gone. It should work on channels other than 1. It should work with manual or auto selected bitrate.

I do have some issues with the player on the server which are a problem whether I play it from the server or from the extender. It does much more buffering before it starts to play (it's really fast to start playing on two other clients) and I cannot FF/REW until the download has been finished. I'll have to see if there are some settings in the WMP (Tools->Options...) that cause it to respond differently on that PC. The OSD status line is cut-off on 4:3 videos but maybe I can make some adjustments to my S-Video out to fix that. It is not as good quality as it could be if we could just play the file and the OSD text is a bit fuzzy, but the quality is fine until we have a better solution from Sage.

So install these files with Sage shut down and re-import on a clean or pre-Netflix STV and see how well it works.

[spvoyek]

This is very interesting. I'm thinking that this approach could also be used to play MAME on an extender using a wireless controller connected to the server PC. Brilliant!

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by spvoyek

This is very interesting. I'm thinking that this approach could also be used to play MAME on an extender using a wireless controller connected to the server PC. Brilliant!

In theory, yes. In practice, doubtful... There is a slight delay in what is being recorded vs what you are actually seeing, which would render most/all games unplayable.

-Dan

[spvoyek]

Originally Posted by CyRex

In theory, yes. In practice, doubtful... There is a slight delay in what is being recorded vs what you are actually seeing, which would render most/all games unplayable.

-Dan

Shoot, that's a good point.

[snapdaddy]

Originally Posted by Morgan111

I did some more testing on my extender and found that I really had to re-do the screen setup to get it to work right there.

I have an update here that should take care of the problems and work fairly reliable.
The garbage is gone. It should work on channels other than 1. It should work with manual or auto selected bitrate.

I do have some issues with the player on the server which are a problem whether I play it from the server or from the extender. It does much more buffering before it starts to play (it's really fast to start playing on two other clients) and I cannot FF/REW until the download has been finished. I'll have to see if there are some settings in the WMP (Tools->Options...) that cause it to respond differently on that PC. The OSD status line is cut-off on 4:3 videos but maybe I can make some adjustments to my S-Video out to fix that. It is not as good quality as it could be if we could just play the file and the OSD text is a bit fuzzy, but the quality is fine until we have a better solution from Sage.

So install these files with Sage shut down and re-import on a clean or pre-Netflix STV and see how well it works.

Great work Morgan!

Initial testing shows that things are working quite well! Channel changing works - display is good - controls work (except FF and RR, as you noted above).

Rockin.

Robb

[Morgan111]

I did update the patch file that may help if the player does not start correctly for some.

[bialio]

So is there any known way to make this work without using the Local System Account to run Sage Service from?