Plugin :: PlayOn for SageTV v1.5

[wayner]

Thanks for the update EP - this confirms that I am not going crazy!

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

What Will Get Better:

• Linux, Mac, and Windows will all work right out of the box.
• No more text encoding issues where special characters like accent marks and apostrophes show up as crazy symbols or crash my code.
• Slight speed improvements in navigation since I no longer need to run an external .exe, collect UPnP data, write it to an XML file, and then read that data into back into Sage.
• Simplified API for anyone to write their own plugins that interact with PlayOn.

Thanks for getting this to work under Linux!

Can you provide a little technical overview of of how this will work? When you first mentioned using Java I assumed you were going to rewrite UPnPBrowser.exe and still use the same basic methodology of creating the podcast xml and feeding that back into Sage, but it sounds like you will be doing something completely different.

Thanks,

Tom

[panteragstk]

I'm interested in what functionality the API will have. I'd really like to be able to grab pandora streams and do something within the music ui.

[panteragstk]

What upnp sdk are you going to be using?

[evilpenguin]

I'm using the Cling UPnP library and its though it's a bit complicated, i'm getting the hang of it. As for my API, i've boiled it down to just 4 simple functions that should get the job done for us as far as using MediaServers like PlayOn and TVersity in the STV.

// Test #1: Get list of all UPnP Devices (i.e. PlayOn)
returnHash = new HashMap<String, HashMap<String, String>>();
int SearchTime = 5;
getUPnPDeviceList(returnHash,SearchTime);

// Test #2: Get all items at a given path w/o initial UID       
returnHash = new HashMap<String, HashMap<String, String>>();
String Path = "Hulu::Popular::Popular Shows::30 Rock::Full Episodes";
int Depth = 1;
getUPnPDirectoryForPath(returnHash, UPnPDeviceRegEx, Path, Depth);

// Test #3: Get all items at a given UID, path just passed for reference.
returnHash = new HashMap<String,HashMap<String,String>>(); 
Depth = 2;
getUPnPDirectoryForUID(returnHash, UPnPDeviceRegEx, UID, StaticPath, Depth);

// Test #4: Grabs a single MediaItem when given the full path to it
returnHash = new HashMap<String, HashMap<String, String>>();
String Fullpath = UPnPDeviceRegEx + "::Netflix::Instant Queue::Queue Top 50::Psych::Season 1::01: Pilot";
returnHash = new HashMap<String,HashMap<String,String>>();
getUPnPMediaForPath(returnHash, Fullpath);

I just started integrating this with STV code a few days ago so I already know a few ways i'm going to simplify things even more.

[Optix]

Hi all, first thanks for a great program. I have been having some issues with Hulu and playon on the sage. For some reason it does not appear to pull all the shows available. For example, my kid can watch Naruto on the hulu website but when he tries to watch the latest episodes on the sage, he simply gets the message "no video" Not all the shows are like this, my wife watches faithfully her Soap "days of our lives" every day as it updates. Sot it appear to be pulling osme of the content but not all of it.

At any rate I am including the upnp file and hope someone can point me on the right direction.

P.S. I even upgraded to the hulu plus thinking this was the problem.

Thanks

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Optix

Hi all, first thanks for a great program. I have been having some issues with Hulu and playon on the sage. For some reason it does not appear to pull all the shows available. For example, my kid can watch Naruto on the hulu website but when he tries to watch the latest episodes on the sage, he simply gets the message "no video" Not all the shows are like this, my wife watches faithfully her Soap "days of our lives" every day as it updates. Sot it appear to be pulling osme of the content but not all of it.

At any rate I am including the upnp file and hope someone can point me on the right direction.

P.S. I even upgraded to the hulu plus thinking this was the problem.

Thanks

That's due to a known issue where shows with certain characters in the description/titles are crashing my code. I'll definitely have a fix out this weekend.

[Optix]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

That's due to a known issue where shows with certain characters in the description/titles are crashing my code. I'll definitely have a fix out this weekend.

Ohh wao, awesome. I been going nuts looking for answer for about a week and finally broke down and posted. Sorry that somehow I did not notice this was a common problem.

[saltlyck2]

I'm not sure if it's just my system or if this is something anyone else has seen but when I try to view a Netflix show it sits there for a while and then times out without playing. The .flv file shows up in it's correct folder but it's 0 bytes. I have the latest version of the playon plugin for version 7 and the most recent version of playon installed. I've tried reinstalling both with no luck. Also, I'm using Diamond but I don't think that is the issue.

[robind]

Originally Posted by saltlyck2

I'm not sure if it's just my system or if this is something anyone else has seen but when I try to view a Netflix show it sits there for a while and then times out without playing. The .flv file shows up in it's correct folder but it's 0 bytes. I have the latest version of the playon plugin for version 7 and the most recent version of playon installed. I've tried reinstalling both with no luck. Also, I'm using Diamond but I don't think that is the issue.

If you try viewing the same movie from IE on the same PC does it take a long time (a minute or more) before it starts playing? PlayOn times out after a minute. I've had a similar problem in the past and in my case it was due to my network router/firewall. It has a transparent web proxy running on it (all traffic is rerouted through the proxy even if the client software is set to not use the proxy) and I discovered by looking at its logs that the netflix movie servers were taking a very long time to respond to the requests, if at all, but their main UI servers were fine.

So I reconfigured the proxy server to let traffic from my PlayOn PC to bypass the proxy. Once I did that then playing a movie from IE worked fine, but playing one via PlayOn still had the time-out problem. Looking at the logs the PlayOn traffic was still going through the proxy server but everything else was not. It turns out that the way PlayOn fetches the movies actually uses a different set of Internet Options than that which is configured for the user running PlayOn, and it was still doing the auto-detect of the proxy settings. I was able to fix it by setting the "System-wide proxy settings" (google for that string) to turn off the proxy auto-detect for the whole system. IIRC you can do it via the groups policy editor or directly in the registry.

[mkanet]

Two questions:

Question #1:
EP, maybe I misunderstood, but I vaguely remember one of the enhancements in your all-java playon version would be to treat browsed items (before playback) as if they were real media files already stored on disk. Maybe you've already thought of this, but it would be great to have convenient access (through right-click or something like that) to plugins menu options (from 3rd party plugins meant for TV and Imported Videos) such as "IMDB Search" and "Movie Trailers" by passing the movie/TV title to them.

Question #2:
Maybe I should've asked this in the general sageTV 7 form.. But, maybe someone knows the answer to this... how can I change the font size for the description of each Playon movie/TV show to be smaller? Currently the default font is so big that there's only room to fit part of a sentence before it's truncated with a "...". It would be great to be able to read as much as possible of the description before it runs out of room. This would also help non-playon Online video items as well.

Thanks so much,
MKANET

[frizat]

Any chance to get ESPNNetworks added under the Sports > ESPN heading? Right now I have to use Browse Playon and navigate to ESPN, it would be much more convienient to have it listed right next to the ESPN Shows / Digitals

[appelm]

I've been having a problem lately where I'll be watching a Netflix movie and the playback will suddenly turn black with no sound. I get no message of an error. If I hit info, it shows that its still playing but there's no picture or sound. This happens on various movies at intermittent times. I can actually rewind to the point where the movie was still playing and see picture/sound and then it blanks out at the same place. Any thoughts on this? How do I debug this?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by appelm

I've been having a problem lately where I'll be watching a Netflix movie and the playback will suddenly turn black with no sound.

That's a PlayOn issue, you'll need to contact their support.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by frizat

Any chance to get ESPNNetworks added under the Sports > ESPN heading? Right now I have to use Browse Playon and navigate to ESPN, it would be much more convienient to have it listed right next to the ESPN Shows / Digitals

I don't know what ESPNNetworks is? I've got ESPN and ESPN3 already available under sports.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I don't know what ESPNNetworks is? I've got ESPN and ESPN3 already available under sports.

It would seem it is live streaming of ESPN shows.

[frizat]

If you browse to ESPN under Playon you have
ESPN Networks
TV Shows
Categories
Original Digitals

If i select to show ESPN under sports I just get
ESPN TV shows
ESPN Sports
ESPN 3

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by frizat

If you browse to ESPN under Playon you have
ESPN Networks
TV Shows
Categories
Original Digitals

If i select to show ESPN under sports I just get
ESPN TV shows
ESPN Sports
ESPN 3

I don't see ESPN Networks anywhere, I see...

PlayOn\ESPN\TV Shows (Sports->ESPN TV Shows)
PlayOn\ESPN\Categories (Sports->ESPN Sports)
PlayOn\ESPN\Original Digitals (Not in main menu)
PlayOn\ESPN3 (Sports->ESPN3)

[evilpenguin]

K, should be in the plugin menu. Let me know if you have any problems. Also,

SUPER NOTE:: There were some serious Queue Importer issues and I had to make a lot of changes to fix them all so you'll need to manually delete your old queue importer videos other wise you'll end up with doubles

v1.60

• UPnPBrowser: Fixed issue where some charactors were crashing scraper
• Queue Importer: Updated Queue Importer to work with new Netflix TV format
• Queue Importer: Fixed issue with Queue Importer files being overwritten every night
• Queue Importer: Worked around issue with Queue Importer files with special characters

[Mitch G]

I suspect this has been asked and answered before, but I can't seem to find the answer:
Is there a way to have the plugin show my entire instant queue and not just the first 50 items?

Thanks,


Mitch