Plugin: PlayOn in Online Services (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon VOD, etc.)

[jperquin]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Correct-I forgot about the additional plugins. (Which I also have but have yet to configure) With UPnPInspector program and analyzing the current customlink files for each source of videos it shouldn't be that difficult.

Gerry

.......it shouldn't be that difficult.

Maybe, but it is certainly quite tedious. A tool that would scan the Playon server on a regular basis and create custom link files for all the standard feeds plus the custom plugins would be a great improvement to this absolutely fantastic new development to Sage.

JP

[wayner]

This looks good but I live in Canada and most of these services require a US IP address. Has anyone tried using this with a VPN service that spoofs a US IP?

[valnar]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

So PlayOn will transcode video that does not need to be transcoded instead of just streaming it?

Just want to understand fully what your saying. If so that is a true weakness with their product.

dave

EDIT: Nevermind found it myself:

http://www.themediamall.com/forum/me...oding-optional

I just read that article in the link. So it sounds like DLNA is a dumbed down version of UPnP. But a PC and Sage are not true DLNA clients. Quite the opposite- they have the horsepower to handle a much larger superset than the minimal DLNA specs.

So the question is: Can somebody tug on the ears of the PlayOn developers and ask them to make their product a UPnP Server, not just a DLNA Server thus opening up the extra resolution possibilities for direct streaming? Or make it a toggle within PlayOn for people who don't use a "lowly" PS3 or Xbox360.

Does that make any sense? Is it even possible?

[gplasky]

Playon is actually a Upnp server that adheres to the DNLA specifications.

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) is a set of networking protocols promulgated by the UPnP Forum. The goals of UPnP are to allow devices to connect seamlessly and to simplify the implementation of networks in the home (data sharing, communications, and entertainment) and in corporate environments for simplified installation of computer components. UPnP achieves this by defining and publishing UPnP device control protocols (DCP) built upon open, Internet-based communication standards.

UPnP AV MediaServers store and share digital media, such as photographs, movies, or music. These media servers use the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) protocols to communicate with other devices.

UPnP AV MediaServers on their own provide UPnP AV ControlPoints to browse the music content of the server and request the MediaServer to start streaming that file to the ControlPoint for local playback. The UPnP AV other device categories and protocols outlines the various components

Digital Living Network Alliance) is a standard used by manufacturers of consumer electronics to allow entertainment devices within the home to share their content with each other across a home network.

Gerry

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by jperquin

.......it shouldn't be that difficult.

Maybe, but it is certainly quite tedious. A tool that would scan the Playon server on a regular basis and create custom link files for all the standard feeds plus the custom plugins would be a great improvement to this absolutely fantastic new development to Sage.

JP

Yeah, editing the custom feed files by hand is not something I recommend for the faint of heart as they are incredibly complicated, especially when you are dealing with a lot of content and subcategories.

Right now, how I do it is I have custom scripts written for Netflix and Hulu that automatically generate the feeds. For Hulu, I have some webpages saved in HTML format that I parse and use to generate the feeds. And for Netflix, I used a script (as you mention), to dump the PlayON folder structure, manually edit that by hand, and then used the modified output to generate the script. I'd say overall its 98% automatic and 2% manual.

I could try and package them up for full automation so that everyone could periodically refresh their own configuration, but its that 2% actual thought that makes the navigational structure feel good. (Also, parsing the entire PlayON directory structure is a process that takes multiple hours).

The idea i'm leaning towards right now is to make my feeds auto-updating. I'd store them on a webserver and every once and a while when you load up a PlayOn feed the tool would also check for available updates and download them. That way, as I do bug fixes and finish up custom feeds for more sources (built-in and plug-ins) they could automatically be added to your system without me having to do a full release.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Playon is actually a Upnp server that adheres to the DNLA specifications.

Yah, tell me something I don't know. The question is can they lighten up on the DLNA requirements so that transcoding is not required.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by valnar

So the question is: Can somebody tug on the ears of the PlayOn developers and ask them to make their product a UPnP Server, not just a DLNA Server thus opening up the extra resolution possibilities for direct streaming? Or make it a toggle within PlayOn for people who don't use a "lowly" PS3 or Xbox360.

Well, there are a few problems with this and they are actually to PlayOn's credit.

First of all, putting everything into standard MPEG-2 makes supporting multiple devices easier because all UPnP media player have to * at least* support that. And secondly there are compilations specific to the source that PlayON has to deal with...

Hulu:
Getting at Hulu's videos is pretty simple for someone who is persistent enough and knows what they are doing. They're just stored on a server somewhere in .flv format and if you know how to generate the link you can just download them w/o commercials. But if PlayOn tried to distribute the videos w/o the commercials, they'd get sued out of existence. So to add in the commercials/intros, PlayON has to manually splice them into the videos. But since the commercials/intros have different bitrates and resolutions from original videos so they just have to re-encode the whole thing into a new video.

Netlix:
This ones actually pretty cool. So one of the big benefits of Silverlight for Netflix is the added security. There's pretty much no way to download the original movies, so what PlayOn does is open up an IE browser in an invisible window, play back the movies like if you were watching it in a browser, and then encode that window as a mpeg-2 screencast for streaming. The biggest benefit of this is that its future proof, as long as you can watch it in a browser PlayOn will be able to stream it. However, it also has the problems of being...

a) Insanely complicated which is why they had so many a/v sync issues.
b) Very processor intensive because they need to both playback *and* encode the videos at the same time.

So basically, streaming the videos w/o transcoding is never going to happen but its OK because they have good reasons.

[valnar]

I understand the Netflix limitation. Browser based, yep.

But the Hulu feeds could be fed natively, could they not? If PlayOn didn't care what the end device was, let it figure it out. Play show ABC in one format, then commercial XYZ in another format, back to ABC in the original format. My Sage HD200 could probably understand all those formats, so all the PlayOn server would have to do it stitch them together in a timeline without transcoding.

Yes, no?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by valnar

But the Hulu feeds could be fed natively, could they not? If PlayOn didn't care what the end device was, let it figure it out. Play show ABC in one format, then commercial XYZ in another format, back to ABC in the original format.

Nah, and if it did work like that then this plug-in wouldn't work

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The idea i'm leaning towards right now is to make my feeds auto-updating. I'd store them on a webserver and every once and a while when you load up a PlayOn feed the tool would also check for available updates and download them. That way, as I do bug fixes and finish up custom feeds for more sources (built-in and plug-ins) they could automatically be added to your system without me having to do a full release.

I love this idea!

[-=Jeff=-]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The idea i'm leaning towards right now is to make my feeds auto-updating. I'd store them on a webserver and every once and a while when you load up a PlayOn feed the tool would also check for available updates and download them. That way, as I do bug fixes and finish up custom feeds for more sources (built-in and plug-ins) they could automatically be added to your system without me having to do a full release.

Originally Posted by HuMan321

I love this idea!

Yeah me too..

[jperquin]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The idea i'm leaning towards right now is to make my feeds auto-updating. I'd store them on a webserver and every once and a while when you load up a PlayOn feed the tool would also check for available updates and download them. That way, as I do bug fixes and finish up custom feeds for more sources (built-in and plug-ins) they could automatically be added to your system without me having to do a full release.

That would be brilliant!

Many have said this before, but this plugin takes Sagetv to the next level. Many thanks for pulling this off.

JP

[mgillies]

Hi there,

I'm trying to get the plugin working, fresh install of the latest version of Sage, and using the latest d/l of the plugin ( 1.3a )

It looks like the temp file contains 'fake' entries, rather than the correct IP and URL to the content:

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
<channel>
<title>No Videos Found</title>
<description>UPnP2Podcast v1.2</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<itunes:summary>No Videos Found</itunes:summary>
<itunes:subtitle>No Videos Found</itunes:subtitle>
<item>
<title>No Videos Found</title>
<description>There were no videos found with the search string (PlayOn:Hulu:TV Episodes:F:^Family.Guy$:+2). Since online videos are constantly being removed and added this probably indicates that there are none available at this time.</description>
<itunes:subtitle>No Videos Found</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:duration>00:01:00</itunes:duration>
<enclosure url="http://127.0.0.1/fake.mpg" length="10000" type="video/mpeg2" />
<media:content duration="60" medium="video" fileSize="10000" url="http://127.0.0.1/fake.mpg" type="video/mpeg2">
<media:title>No Videos Found</media:title>
<media:description>No Videos Found</media:description>
<media:thumbnail url="http://127.0.0.1/fake.jpg"/>
</media:content>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>




Any thoughts?



Cheers,


Matt.

[matt91]

Anyone see this Netflix error before (it's from my HD200)? It appears after I browse to a movie to watch, and after the movie downloads enough to where it should be starting to play.




Here is how I got to this point:
I tried running Playon on my Sage server. Hulu works great, but Netflix is a little choppy, even after setting playon to "low" quality. So I decided to install Playon on another computer (CPU #2) in the house which has a little more horsepower.

Playon runs fine, and I can get Hulu on the HD200 without any issue. However, when I try Netflix, I get the above error.

I have Silverlight installed on CPU #2, and can watch netflix streams fine through both IE8 and Firefox. I went to the silverlight site and confirmed that I'm running the latest version (Silverlight 3.0.40818.0).

Any thoughts about what might be causing this DRM issue? (CPU #2 is XP 64bit, while my sage server is XP32)

[gplasky]

Run your browser on the PC or server that is giving you the error. Go to the Betflix site and attempt to watch a "Watch Now" movie. It probably wants you to log in or something or the movie you're trying to watch has been in your quwuw for too long. They will expire after a while. Also make sure on your 64bit system it is using the 32 bit IE. Netflix doesn't function when a 64bit browser is used. And the plugin uses IE in an invisible window.

Gerry

[matt91]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Run your browser on the PC or server that is giving you the error. Go to the Betflix site and attempt to watch a "Watch Now" movie. It probably wants you to log in or something or the movie you're trying to watch has been in your quwuw for too long. They will expire after a while. Also make sure on your 64bit system it is using the 32 bit IE. Netflix doesn't function when a 64bit browser is used. And the plugin uses IE in an invisible window.

Gerry

Thanks. I visited the netflix site, and am able to watch videos. Still doesn't let me through on the HD200.

I'm not sure if I have the 32 or 64 bit version of IE, but the file resides here: "E:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" so I think that means 32 bit.

This is an account without a password - wonder if that matters?

[gplasky]

If you're running 64bit look for a E:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe. That is the 64bit version. On default for a 64bit OS that is the one usually called. That may be your issue. (Although I'm running Playon on Win7 64bit and don't have this issue.)Windows account without a password? Shouldn't matter. ARe you running the latest version of Sage with the latest STV? Make sure you're running the latest WIndows Media Player with all updates for DRM.

Gerry

[harrijay]

I have gotten this working on linux I believe with the latest version that EP has released . Thansk to jpwegas with his post to get me started Linux instuctions. In order to get this working I have done the following.

Install Net::UPnP for perl using CPAN or other tool. I have overwriten the files that are in that directory so I am not sure which version needs to be down for it to work or if you have to replace the files at all.

Install the UPnP2Podcast file I have attached in /usr/bin or any other location that you have in your path statement.

Install the Custom online video files that EP included in his zip. I have attatched them also to make it easier.

Make sure your STV has been updated to the latest version.

I have made very little changes from his perl scrip to this one. the biggest change that had to be made in order for it to connect is

Changed the line that says

my @dev_list = $obj->search();

to

my @dev_list = $obj->search(st => 'urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:MediaServer:1', mx => 2);

I could not get it to connect with the way he had it and I am not sure if this is even the correct value.

If anyone gives this a shot and runs into problems let me know and I will see what I can do.]

[jimandmaryfield]

I have added the foxnews plugin to playon. How do i get this to show up in sagetv online services?

Thanks,
Jim

[simonen]

fair and balanced