UPnP (PlayOn) Browser

[tmiranda]

Here is the first rough draft of a new PlayOn plugin I've been working on. It has minimal functionality right now and the videos must be downloaded before they can be played.

Unzip and then copy the attached manifest to the install directory of your SageTV server then look for a UI Mod plugin called "UPnP (PlayOn) Browser". After installation go to Online -> UPnP Browser. Your PlayOn server will show up there.

As you will see, it's a generic UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) browser. I will focus on PlayOn but I may also dabble getting it to work with some other UPnP devices.

This should be considered an alpha release.

[EnterNoEscape]

I am so glad to see someone working on this. I've been working with Cling a lot in OpenDCT and had plans to eventually get around to a new UPnP plugin for SageTV that is based on Cling so it will run on Linux too. I think this was my last real hangup on switching over to Linux.

I love the speed of browsing with your version. I know this is alpha and it even allowed me to browse my Prime tuner, but was unable to play anything. I know that's not a focus, but I just thought it was neat that it worked at all.

With actual PlayOn content I noticed that it downloaded the entire video. I just want to make sure that's expected or if it was supposed to stream live instead.

[tmiranda]

Thanks.

Right now you do need to download the entire video. I still haven't figured out how to do progressive playback. I should work, but doesn't

I'm not sure how far I'll get on other devices. UPnP is all very new to me and the documentation is crappy. I get the impression that UPnP is a "general guideline" for developers and not a standard

If you want to help on the plugin I am more than willing.

[EnterNoEscape]

You'll find a few situations in the Cling source code where they accommodate a particular vendor. That's one reason why they have so many factory methods to keep things flexible. The factory method defaults are strict. I had to make my own to correctly get a particular value from Ceton tuners. Hopefully you don't find yourself in a similar situation.

I really would love to help, but I still have a very large amount of work left to do with OpenDCT. We seem to have a developer shortage. One of my hopes with the project was to bring some network encoder projects under one robust project, but it needs to get to a certain level before that can be a reality, so I'll just keep coding until it gets there.

I will certainly be a tester, but at least for now I won't be able to be much more.

[tmiranda]

New version can be installed using the attached manifest. This version adds the ability to record from PlayOn.

It still can't do progressive playback but at least you can set things to record and then watch them later.

[EnterNoEscape]

Perhaps I'm missing something everyone else knows about recording online content. I tried Ctrl-Y, Ctrl-I and Esc. I can't figure out how to tell it to record. When I hit enter, it just goes straight into downloading.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

New version can be installed using the attached manifest. This version adds the ability to record from PlayOn.

It still can't do progressive playback but at least you can set things to record and then watch them later.

Is this using PlayLater, or is it recording via something similar to the Podcast Recorder plugin?

Also, (if it were doing PlayLater it would), if your answer to above is the latter, is it able to do HD (like Fuzzy's v9 trick)?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Right now you do need to download the entire video. I still haven't figured out how to do progressive playback. I should work, but doesn't

Finally found a solution to this problem. In case anybody is ever experiencing this; in order for the file downloader to do progressive playback the extension of the growing file must be .flv or the downloader will not detect its complete size. If you are trying to do progressive playback on .mpg files simply ensure the growing file has a .flv extension.

[rnadeau]

How would I check this or where is this setting?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by rnadeau

How would I check this or where is this setting?

It's not a setting, it's in the code.

I'll try to get a new version out in the next couple of days. I'm working out a few more kinks.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Finally found a solution to this problem. In case anybody is ever experiencing this; in order for the file downloader to do progressive playback the extension of the growing file must be .flv or the downloader will not detect its complete size. If you are trying to do progressive playback on .mpg files simply ensure the growing file has a .flv extension.

Thanks for the tip. That sure seems counter-intuitive, considering SageTV is very much used to the idea of .mpg files growing. Does the underlying file need to actually be using a .flv container or does it just need to have .flv for an extension?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Thanks for the tip. That sure seems counter-intuitive, considering SageTV is very much used to the idea of .mpg files growing. Does the underlying file need to actually be using a .flv container or does it just need to have .flv for an extension?

I can't say for sure, I'd have to look at the code in the core. There is an API, StartFileDownload() that takes several parameters including source file and destination file. In my case the source file is http://....../name.mpg. If you specify xxxx.mpg as the destination file progressive playback fails. If you specify xxx.flv progressive playback works. I'm not sure what the core does to the stream as it's downloading.