Plugin :: PlayOn for SageTV v1.5

[DMT]

First, thanks for PlayOn. I'm in Canada and use it for Netflix - we don't have Queue but New Arrivals and Browse Genres work fine. Default UI, still on 7.0.23

Couple of problems with the new version(s).

1.) Weather and Channels.com seem to go missing from the menu if you select Online as the PlayOn location.

2.) Missing titles. Has something changed in how the content links are handled? For example there are missing titles in this link PlayON\Netflix\Period Pieces\20th Century Period Pieces\A-B

Everything works fine in version 1.4

EP, your work on this plugin is appreciated.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by bits

I deleted the UPnP plugin, downloaded and installed the UPnP plugin as instructed. I still get: "The external feed was empty" when I try to play anything using the new PlayOn plugin.

Here is the log:

[I]Welcome to UPnPBrowser v1.1 (Built on 16:56:25.82 07-22-2010 )! (Sat Mar 26 07:13:06 2011

Looks like your plugin didn't update correctly, you've still got the old version of UPnPBrowser.exe

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by DMT

1.) Weather and Channels.com seem to go missing from the menu if you select Online as the PlayOn location.

Its just a matter of space which is why I moved PlayOn to its own menu in the first place. You can have the full Online menu back if you replace search, music, or photos with PlayOn.

Originally Posted by DMT

2.) Missing titles. Has something changed in how the content links are handled? For example there are missing titles in this link PlayON\Netflix\Period Pieces\20th Century Period Pieces\A-B

Sounds like a PlayOn issue and its just coincidence it broke when you updated. But just to be sure you can check with UPnP Inspector to see if the videos show up in it.

[randyth]

Originally Posted by bits

I deleted the UPnP plugin, downloaded and installed the UPnP plugin as instructed. I still get: "The external feed was empty" when I try to play anything using the new PlayOn plugin...

I had the same "...external feed was empty" problem with this recent release and found that Norton was disabling upnpbrowser.exe due to suspicious behavior. From scanning previous posts, it sounds like other virus-protection programs, such as AVG, are doing the same thing.

Despite the author's "evil" handle , I tend to trust the program , so I told Norton to ignore it and everything works again.

Sure would be nice to figure out what behavior these virus checkers are complaining about and find a work-around it in future versions of upnpbrowser.exe.

-Randy

[evilpenguin]

I'm still investigating what's going on, but my working theory is that I'm compiling in the Perl LWP web services which I imagine are pretty popular with hackers. The good news is I may not need them anymore (used to use it for checking for profile updates) so i'm going to do a little modification, recompile, and see if AVG still complains.

Edit: Bah, no go. The UPnP Module depends on LWP so I can't get rid of it. Hmm...

[evilpenguin]

OK, I think I've got a workaround for the Anti-virus issue so I've updated the plugin again. Sorry for the confusion, let me know if people still have issues.

[clayfree]

Just wanted to say THANK YOU for the great work on this. Playon now accounts for the majority of our Sage viewing. Love the higher level menu configuration!

[bits]

AVG is still reporting UPNPBROWSER.EXE as a problem but as long as I keep telling AVG it is ok the latest plugin works quite nicely.

Thank you!

[tmiranda]

I didn't want to remove AVG from my test machine so I bit the bullet and installed it on my production machine that has no antivirus on it at all. Worked fine

[evilpenguin]

I think its probably still complaining about the old file and possible preventing Sage from updating it properly. The new one should be squeaky clean and I've installed it without issue on a system with AVG.

[batwater]

This is a slightly different UI issue. Prior to updating to today's release (1.54) when entering the Setup menu I was able to scroll backwards to the Messages link. Now the UI drops back to the prior level so I am forced to scroll down to read / clear messages. All other menu hierarchies behave as they did before, scroll works either direction and wraps around as expected.

Not a deal breaker but wanted to share, is anyone else seeing this?

If you have not updated to 1.54 can you confirm that wrap on the setup menu works correctly (sanity check to make sure I'm not just now noticing this and was caused by another update applied several days ago)

Thanks

[evilpenguin]

Bah, nice catch. And now we're up to v1.55, though sadly I think this still may be my smoothest release to date

[jptheripper]

OK i just updated playon to v1.55(skipping 1.54).

I had set it to replace the "online" menu, but now online is back and playon is gone?

[terrencegf]

Ever since I upgraded to v.1.5.x (currently on v.1.5.5), I can no longer get my full Instant Watch Queue. I have 48 items in my Netflix instant queue. When using the default sorting (i.e. "Queue Top 50:+1"), I see 32 items in the list. When I change the sorting to "Alphabetical:+2" (as suggested in this post, which is how I had it configured before), I get 28 items in the list.

I don't know if this behavior is due to the updated plugin, or because of the Netflix outage/update from last week. Any suggestions?

[batwater]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Bah, nice catch. And now we're up to v1.55, though sadly I think this still may be my smoothest release to date

That did it, thanks for the quick turn around! Really appreciate what you have done. My wife noticed the "PlayOn" in the main menu, "Hey Honey, what's that PlayOn thingy in the main menu..?" Splained it was an improvement to make it easier to get to the online content, she liked it. Hey, she is paying attention and also appreciative of your efforts, what more can you ask for?

-Ben

[pingmustard]

I've ran through logs, looked through help, and now I must ask for help on here. First, I've uninstalled all plugins and re-installed Playon.

I've verified on my xbox 360 everything works fine. The big problem I'm running into now is that I can browse content, but whenever I try play video (seems like ANY video from Playon from STV), it will buffer, show the "Loading" image (or probably whatever image the Playon server renders back) and, and then just sits in "pause mode". It seems like data is being streamed to STV, but it's not able to play it? None of the content from Playon server seems to play (Youtube, HULU, pandora, etc. )

My normal tv/movies play fine so I believe the problem is related to Playon / UnPnP plugin?

Also, I did pull UPnPBrowser.txt to verify version:
Version=20100224
In STV, it's 1.52

I'm running the latest STV 7.1.5.252
Java Version: 1.6.0_24
OS: Win 7 64bit
VLC: 1.1.8
Playon Server: 3.2.7 (running locally on STV machine)

Attached are some log files.. can someone help?



---------

Side Problem/Bug that I fixed (hopefully correctly):

Upon first install, I noticed I had to change the path of

PlayonPlayback/ImportDirectory=/SageOnlineServicesEXEs\\UPnPBrowser\\PlayOn

to use absolute path with c:\\program files (x86)\\....

The Playon Importer option to change video path via GUI just didn't really give me the option to do so. Even after changing to valid full path, it would show only 1 item when the description said it would let cycle through video import paths (Playon > Playon > Queue Importer Setting)?

[touchstone]

Is there any chance of a linux version of this plugin in the foreseeable future?

It's a great plugin -- hate to see it go permanently Windows-only.

[sbeaulieu]

I can't believe how far this plugin has come. It was less than a year ago that I was updating text files to create the menus to view the content. It's great!

I like direct access to the major channels, but I didn't see YouTube there? I use it to create a playlist of my favorite music videos. Is there a Play All option so that I can sequentially play all videos in a folder?

[sacrament055]

Testing/feedback

Hey EP, I noticed the kids section only the bottom option seemed to work. I tried Nick, Nick toons, PBS kids, all show empty but if I browse through Playon they show to be working. Thanks for the outstanding work here.

One more item I'm curious about. In an effort to support multiple extenders via playon I purchased 2 licenses and have it running on two different servers. If I use the UPNP browser I can see both playon servers but when I attempt to browse/connect to my secondary (non colocated server) it says there was an error. If I use the Playon android app it works fine for either one so I know its working but the sage plugin only works with the local.

Thanks again

[DMT]

Playon with it's own menu is great !!!

Still can't figure out why I am missing some netflix titles. As a test, sage 7.0.23 using the default ui and playonstvi version 1.4 -- no problem. Soon as I upgrade for example I can't see PlayON\Netflix\Period Pieces\20th Century Period Pieces\A-B\Australia -- not all the titles are listed.

Revert back to version 1.4 and all is ok. As a further test on version 1.4 everything ok as usual on extenders so I updated only my client to 1.5x and the problem is as before; PlayON\Netflix\Period Pieces\20th Century Period Pieces\A-B\Australia -- title not there, skips from 'Angel' to 'Ararat'.

I wonder if it is specific to version 1.5x and netlix.ca since we don't have queue, only new arrivals and browse genres but my tests suggest the playon server (mediamall) is ok.

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Its just a matter of space which is why I moved PlayOn to its own menu in the first place. You can have the full Online menu back if you replace search, music, or photos with PlayOn.

Sounds like a PlayOn issue and its just coincidence it broke when you updated. But just to be sure you can check with UPnP Inspector to see if the videos show up in it.