Live streaming of apple.com based movie trailers

[mkanet]

As some of you know, I made my very first SageTV import (Koelec) from our forums is my mentor/brains behind it.

Movie Trailers Search for SageMC : Movie Trailers Search for SageMC

Like most sageTV addon developers, my motivation at first was purely selfish. I have always wanted to be able to watch the movie trailer to the TV movie/show I'm thinking of recoding with a click of my sageTV remote control button in the Program Info Screen. I made something with Chris which was relatively easy; by just doing a movie title search via youtube.

The users love the idea, however, they dont like the fact that it's not fully automatic; and consider it non-WAF friendly. They have to click n the trailer search button, then select a trailer to watch; instead of just clicking on the trailer button and getting an HD trailer (or SD depending on the user preference). Believe it or not, I sincerely want to make these users happy; and I think many more people would probably want to use it if they're trying to quickly decide what movie to watch.

Is it possible to do a live stream of apple or yahoo trailers via sageTV; or do I need native support from sageTV (like we have now for you tube and google).

Is it possible to somehow make a system that uses mtsa.exe for live streaming? Then, all I would have to do to maintain this every time apple changes their website, to swap out mtsa.exe (which is always kept up to date).

Sorry if these questions sound really stupid. I'm just trying to learn... and could use all the encouragement I could get.

It would be so nice if someone wanted to join me and Chris to take this to the next level (if possible).

-Michael

[evilpenguin]

I looked into that a few weeks ago and its actually pretty impossible right now. Apple's servers will only let you download/play the trailers if you're download user agent matches quicktime/itunes. The only way for that to be possible within Sage would be for them to allow user agent spoofing, and I've already submitted a feature request for it

[Fuzzy]

A simple proxy app might be able to be used to spoof the user agent, and would just have to be run on the server, and sage's built-in streaming point towards that proxy... not sure on how well that would work though.

[mkanet]

Is this something we can do externally without sageTV being involved. I doubt sageTV will spoof anything. Is anyone here good enough to make such a spoofing agent and proxy (as Fuzzy said). That would make the most sense. Whoever is talented enough, I'm willing to pay them market rate per hour for that component (as long as its not a big project). Also, I'm curious if there's anything that can be done with the mtsc.exe; or is that ONLY possible for pre-downloads; not live streaming. I would like to incorprorate this int the trailer plugin. From the feedback from prominent sageTV developers and users, that's the only thing holding them back from using the trailers plugin; I'm guessing even on a daily basis. I mean, who wouldnt want to just click a button a just play a streamed HD apple trailer of any movie youre trying to decide to watch or not without any commercial introductions or re-encoding of the original 1080p/720o/480p video.

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

I looked into that a few weeks ago and its actually pretty impossible right now. Apple's servers will only let you download/play the trailers if you're download user agent matches quicktime/itunes. The only way for that to be possible within Sage would be for them to allow user agent spoofing, and I've already submitted a feature request for it

[PLUCKYHD]

I would also caution using Apple. Some Windows Media Center apps use them and have allot of issues as it seems Apple is constantly shifting stuff around.

[mkanet]

Yeah, I know, thats why I wanted to see if I could use MTSA.exe as a plugin for this kind of solution... (used in our Movietimes addon which I use ever day). If I could, then someone else could keep up on these changes; and, seems pretty good at it.

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

I would also caution using Apple. Some Windows Media Center apps use them and have allot of issues as it seems Apple is constantly shifting stuff around.

[Fuzzy]

I don't think MTSA has the ability to present a stream, only can download a file. Now, sage certainly seems to have the capability to playback from a file as it's being written, but it would depend on how MTSA is writing to the file. If it doesn't lock the file from reading, then you very well could have mtsa start a download, wait a time, and then start playback from in sage. A quick check might be to start an MTSA download, and browse to the file with sage's media library, and try to play it. If you get a filesystem error, then it won't work.