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

[petereader]

Joe,
Just to make sure, you say you purchased playon. Did you install the playon program and have it running on a machine in your network?

[joe123]

Originally Posted by petereader

Joe,
Just to make sure, you say you purchased playon. Did you install the playon program and have it running on a machine in your network?

Hi. Yes, I downloaded it and it starts as a Service on my PVR - Same PC which runs SageTV.

I have NOD32 security software and I temporarily turned it off and I was able to get a listing of SG1 - I have to do more testing with SG-Atlantis, but I think it was my NOD32 firewall.

Now I have to figure out how to not have NOD32 block UPnP.

[joe123]

Another update: YES, it's NOD32 security firewall that was keeping the on-line movies from showing up in SageTV Online menus.

[joe123]

Can Playon software be placed on any PC on the home network to work with SageTV, or does Playon have to reside on the same PC which has SageTV server running?

[evilpenguin]

Any PC on the network should work as long as you sort out any firewall/networking issues that might block it.

[matt91]

Originally Posted by joe123

Can Playon software be placed on any PC on the home network to work with SageTV, or does Playon have to reside on the same PC which has SageTV server running?

this is how I have it setup and it works just fine

[joe123]

Originally Posted by matt91

this is how I have it setup and it works just fine

Ok thanks. Any problems installing it on two or more systems in my home network? How will SageTV know which one to work with if there is more than one PlayOn media server running on the other home PC's?

[inlvnv]

It's a great and must have plugin, works like a charm through extenders and clients.

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Answering my own question, here's a quick-and-dirty STVI I whipped up that lets you specify a target directory for downloaded videos. Add the following property to Sage.properties and/or SageClient.properties (both if you run Sage as a service):

seeker/video_download_path=directory path

and point it to one of your recording drives. (Don't forget to double up the backslashes in the directory path.)

This STVI doesn't do anything about auto-deletion, but at least it lets you put the files where they're not going to fill up your boot drive.

I feel really stupid for asking this but can you please elaborate on how to use this STVI? I am using WHS and I use sageMC and I can't seem to figure out how to load this. I tried going back to the defaultSTV but when I load this, nothing happens.

Thanks,
Peter

[petereader]

Originally Posted by joe123

Ok thanks. Any problems installing it on two or more systems in my home network? How will SageTV know which one to work with if there is more than one PlayOn media server running on the other home PC's?

Not sure about the technical ramifications of installing playon on more than one machine in the same network, but you may want to consider the legal one:
http://www.playon.tv/forum/feedback/...puter-installs

Essentially, one license can only be used on one machine at a time. It doesn't sound as though Sage would be very happy with it either. There's no way that I know of to point Sage to a specific instance of playon.

What are you trying to do by having two instances of playon running at the same time?

Glad you got your other issue worked out.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by petereader

Essentially, one license can only be used on one machine at a time. It doesn't sound as though Sage would be very happy with it either. There's no way that I know of to point Sage to a specific instance of playon.

While I can't think of a good reason to have more than one PlayON installed on your network (One PlayON server can provide content for multiple devices simultaneously provided the server is beefy enough), I don't think it'd be a problem for the plug-in. I'd think it would just ask for a PlayOn server and the first one that responded would get used for that particular video/navigation command.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

I feel really stupid for asking this but can you please elaborate on how to use this STVI? I am using WHS and I use sageMC and I can't seem to figure out how to load this. I tried going back to the defaultSTV but when I load this, nothing happens.

Thanks,
Peter

This won't work for SageMC.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

While I can't think of a good reason to have more than one PlayON installed on your network (One PlayON server can provide content for multiple devices simultaneously provided the server is beefy enough), I don't think it'd be a problem for the plug-in. I'd think it would just ask for a PlayOn server and the first one that responded would get used for that particular video/navigation command.

My current SageTV while recording and running showanalyzer, it's maxing out on the CPU with PlayON.

We have two HD200, so I thought of having two PlayON installed on different PCs. As for licensing, I don't mind paying an additional license for 2 PlayOn.

How does SageTV with your plugin determine which PlayOn to use if there are more than one PlayOn on the home network?

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

This won't work for SageMC.

That's a bummer. Is there an alternative workaround for the space issue on the boot partition for users with SageMC?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by joe123

We have two HD200, so I thought of having two PlayON installed on different PCs. As for licensing, I don't mind paying an additional license for 2 PlayOn.

Like I said, there's not special logic behind it. UPnP works by sending out a request for all UPnP servers to check in, and I just take the first one that identifies itself as PlayON and use that. In other words you can't pick which PlayON server you get to use.

For your case i'd say to just lose the PlayOn install on the SageTV server and just have it on the 2nd PC serving both HD200's. As for as processor usage, i'd recommend installing the Flash 10.1 beta to hardware accelerate the Hulu video decoding, that'll take a lot of pressure of the PlayOn machine.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

This won't work for SageMC.

SageMC automatically switches back to the default STV when you enter the online services menu. As long as everything is current it should work. I use it fairly often.

Aloha,
Mike

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

SageMC automatically switches back to the default STV when you enter the online services menu. As long as everything is current it should work. I use it fairly often.

Aloha,
Mike

As do I

But he was specifically talking about making it work with SageTV3.xml + an STVi that Greg wrote for cleaning up the %TEMP% folder, which we learned a the start of this plug-in is a pain to do and requires overwriting SageTV3.xml with a modified STV.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

As do I

But he was specifically talking about making it work with SageTV3.xml + an STVi that Greg wrote for cleaning up the %TEMP% folder, which we learned a the start of this plug-in is a pain to do and requires overwriting SageTV3.xml with a modified STV.

Oh.....nevermind.

(I didn't track back further than your quote of his question about SageMC, which didn't include Greg's original response. Sorry.)

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

I feel really stupid for asking this but can you please elaborate on how to use this STVI? I am using WHS and I use sageMC and I can't seem to figure out how to load this. I tried going back to the defaultSTV but when I load this, nothing happens.

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

SageMC automatically switches back to the default STV when you enter the online services menu. As long as everything is current it should work. I use it fairly often.

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

But he was specifically talking about making it work with SageTV3.xml + an STVi that Greg wrote for cleaning up the %TEMP% folder, which we learned a the start of this plug-in is a pain to do and requires overwriting SageTV3.xml with a modified STV.

Not a SageMC user myself, so I haven't tried it. If SageMC always loads the stock STV by name (i.e. "SageTV3.xml"), then right, it won't work out of the box.

But if SageMC gets the name of the target STV from the ui/plugin_manager/stv_name property (or can be STVI-modded to do so), then I don't see why you couldn't use the stock STV's STVI manager to add my STVI to the stock Online Services menu, and then jump into that modified menu from SageMC.

Edit: Also, just to be clear, my STVI posted above has no UI of its own and makes no visible change to the stock STV. You must also manually edit property files for it to have any effect.

[MeInMaui]

SageMC switches by name, I believe. However, you could import the STVi into the default STV and then rename it back to SageTV3.xml. This is how we did things when this plugin required an STVi.

I'll look into loading from that property when I get the chance. Might be a while though.

Aloha,
Mike