Boxee Box as an extender? (xbmc perhaps?)

[Slugger]

Well, I've taken the basic hello world app and simply modified the RSS feed that it uses and replaced it with an RSS feed of all my SageTV recordings. It works. It presents the full list of all my recordings, with the metadata I included in the RSS feed, and I can click on any of them and play back the video. It also seems to automatically find my edl files and use them to skip commercials as well. This basic app just lists every recording one by one instead of grouping shows together, etc. But for a first go round, I'd say it was successful. The interesting part: No python code at all. Just xml for the UI and I wrote some Java code against the Sage APIs to generate the RSS feed of my recordings and made the RSS feed accessible via the Jetty web server. As long as the RSS feed conforms to the Boxee spec then Boxee handles all the details of interpreting the playlist and allowing the user to select the video to be played back.

The playback is a little questionable on my laptop, but it's also not the most powerful beast, though not overly underpowered either. I'm really curious to see how the dlink device performs.

Some things I've noticed:

* I think some UI elements are going to be tough. From what I've read all the UI elements focus around interactive widgets (buttons, checkboxes, etc.) or video/media widgets (thumbnails, media lists, etc.). For example, I don't see an obvious way to represent the EPG grid, for example. With that said, UI isn't my strength nor interest so others may see things better than I do in this area.

* A simple playback engine is actually rather simple. Simply generate a bunch of RSS feeds of your media library and feed the data to Boxee and it'll let you play it back. I mean if my HDx00 devices died right now, I could replace them with a boxee and use this simple test app right now and I'd be rather happy. Manage Sage settings via placeshifter/web and watch via boxee.

* My gut tells me this maybe as simple as generating a series of appropriate RSS feeds and let Boxee deal with presenting the lists for playback. I think to achieve grouping of shows, etc. will require an app, but maybe it's as simple as writing two different apps? A "SageTV Playback App" that simply gets its RSS feeds from the Sage server/Jetty and a second "SageTV Management App" that allows for the basic management of Sage from Boxee?

* I think live TV is going to be a challenge. From what I'm reading it would require some kind of HTTP live streaming implementation to even work. Boxee works on the assumption of whole media files and assumes that the media is whole when playback is started. So a live tv recording isn't going to work right. I may be wrong, I haven't really tried it yet, but this is what I gather from my reading.

We need to get everyone interested together and maybe discuss what everyone's goals/vision is for this and see if we can't figure out a plan of attack? In the meantime, I'm going to continue to fiddle around with the basic app examples, etc. and see whatelse I discover, as time permits. The rest of my week is rather busy so might be the weekend before I can dive into this any further.

[PiX64]

for anyone using client pc for app building

put this in your descriptor of your app which is placed in ../boxee/userdata/apps

<test-app>true</test-app>

then follow this:

PC Client
Testing
Run Boxee in debug mode: Goto Settings > System > Advanced > Debug Level and setting it to DEBUG.
Add <test-app>true</test-app> tag to your descriptor.xml
Place your application folder under the /UserData/apps/ folder.
Boxee will automatically load the app in My Apps section within the Boxee client. To remove a test app, delete the folder from /UserData/apps or remove the test-app tag.

http://developer.boxee.tv/Applicatio..._.26_Debugging

[PiX64]

So whos working on what? i was going to tackle trying to get recordings into a app and playable with metadata, etc.

anyone trying to tackle that?

[tmiranda]

Slugger - I thought about doing the RSS trick as well but didn't know enough about how to do it. That's why we need you helping out

I'll focus on the UI stuff.

I don't think it's true that Boxee depends on whole files in every case. It obviously plays RSS feeds before the whole video downloads. This needs more investigating for sure.

[gplasky]

So the Sage Web server actually has rss feeds and xml lists for recordings, groupings of recordings, etc. Is there any way to leverage that as work already done and just point it to those?

Gerry

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by PiX64

So whos working on what? i was going to tackle trying to get recordings into a app and playable with metadata, etc.

anyone trying to tackle that?

Might be best to find out who wants to help and then when we know that we can figure out who wants to work on what area (UI, backend, etc.). But before diving in too deep, I'd really take the time to sketch out what you're aiming for as the end result. Do we want one big app that integrates playback with Sage management functions? Two separate apps? How is media going to be brought into the app? RSS feeds? Direct Sage API calls via sagex APIs using Python? A mix? Something different?

If you're eager to get started, I'd work on smaller PoC items. Like, how could one get an EPG widget into a boxee app UI? Getting the data via python isn't really the issue, but can such a widget be created for boxee?

Someone interested in the video playback area might want to start playing with live tv to see how that will playback on Boxee. Can it be supported? Will it require an HTTP live streaming implementation? If so, is that something to be taken on?

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by gplasky

So the Sage Web server actually has rss feeds and xml lists for recordings, groupings of recordings, etc. Is there any way to leverage that as work already done and just point it to those?

Gerry

i dont' see why not... tmiranda can you try that quick? set one of your rss feeds to the recordings rss feed on the webserver?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Slugger - I thought about doing the RSS trick as well but didn't know enough about how to do it. That's why we need you helping out

I'll focus on the UI stuff.

I don't think it's true that Boxee depends on whole files in every case. It obviously plays RSS feeds before the whole video downloads. This needs more investigating for sure.

Yeah, see my last post. I think all interested parties need to have a get together somehow and discuss the big picture before everyone runs off and starts tackling the end result. The PoC type items on their own would be a good thing for people to investigate right off the bat.

Originally Posted by gplasky

So the Sage Web server actually has rss feeds and xml lists for recordings, groupings of recordings, etc. Is there any way to leverage that as work already done and just point it to those?

Gerry

The RSS feeds provided by the web server are missing a lot of Boxee specialized elements that are required for Boxee to use the RSS feed (and provide metadata). With that said, I think the script I wrote to generate the RSS feed this morning is 70 lines of code. Not a huge deal. But I think if the RSS route is chosen as the way to get media details into Boxee then we'd actually want to end up writing some kind of servlet that can generate all kinds of different feeds on the fly (i.e. feeds for specific shows, to allow the Boxee UI to group recordings by show, etc.). But dynamic python code in the Boxee app is also another way to tackle this issue.

[PiX64]

u can use this to play the video back too

<media:content url="https://sageserver:8080/...." type="video/quicktime">

can u send me your script on RSS feeds so i can see what youre doing?

[PiX64]

one other thing that comes to mind based on what gplasky said is that we could use the xml version of the page from the sage webserver.

parse it and then add the media playback tags specific to boxee. it has everyting in it already for metadata, etc.
If you look at the boxee example for media library playback. its just an xml file with specific tags for playback....

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by Slugger

If you're eager to get started, I'd work on smaller PoC items. Like, how could one get an EPG widget into a boxee app UI? Getting the data via python isn't really the issue, but can such a widget be created for boxee?

Well, since Boxee is built on XBMC, there has been quite a bit of UI development that we should be able to use as a reference. I was able to find an EPG plugin that, at the very least, proves it's possible.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by Slugger

We need to get everyone interested together and maybe discuss what everyone's goals/vision is for this and see if we can't figure out a plan of attack? In the meantime, I'm going to continue to fiddle around with the basic app examples, etc. and see whatelse I discover, as time permits. The rest of my week is rather busy so might be the weekend before I can dive into this any further.

Maybe start a g+ huddle with everyone interested?

[aflat]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Some things I've noticed:

* I think some UI elements are going to be tough. From what I've read all the UI elements focus around interactive widgets (buttons, checkboxes, etc.) or video/media widgets (thumbnails, media lists, etc.). For example, I don't see an obvious way to represent the EPG grid, for example. With that said, UI isn't my strength nor interest so others may see things better than I do in this area.

But the EPG is a series of buttons, since clicking onthem brings you to a new menu, to watch, record, etc.

Also, thanks for all the devs on this, I can try to supply something, since I am a release engineer by trade, python is my game. Unfortunately I never got into the SageAPI's too much. Testing this might be more up my ally. In addition, if you guys get this working, I would consider replacing my HD200 with a Boxee Box. Imagine, Sage's recording power, and Netflix in HD. Something many people have been clamoring for.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by aflat

But the EPG is a series of buttons, since clicking onthem brings you to a new menu, to watch, record, etc.

But you have to support children channels with a bunch of 5 to 15 minutes shows, starting at odd times and all, it does get tricky fast...

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by gplasky

So the Sage Web server actually has rss feeds and xml lists for recordings, groupings of recordings, etc. Is there any way to leverage that as work already done and just point it to those

Yes, Boxee lets you add the SageTV's web server's RSS feed URL to your online profile, and then you simply stream files from the RSS list via http.

Martin

[PiX64]

whats the rss feed url?

[gplasky]

I don't know if this helps at all but with SageTV 7 it actually allowed you to take a XBMC skin.xml file and open it in Sage to get a semi-working sort of SageTV stv. Some parts weren't fully functional but a lot of it did work. I wonder as we go further down this road if some analysis can be done to see if we can go the other way. If we start to look at a fuller implementation under Boxee maybe this might help. (Just spitballing here so don't shoot the spitballer.)

Gerry

[emveepee]

Originally Posted by PiX64

whats the rss feed url?

I am not sure if it supports @usernameassword in the url, without the http authentication it would be.

http://sageip:port/sage/public/Rss/Search?searchType=TVFiles&SearchString=&sort2=episode_asc&TimeRange=-999&pagelen=100&sort1=airdate_desc&filename=&Video=on&search_fields=title

You can play with the TimeRange, pagelen, sort etc.

Martin

[PiX64]

Cool thanks. i should have know that already!

so i put that in boxee in my feeds, and everytime i go in there on boxee app i get an error. however accessing the link from the boxee user webpage the link returns my xml..

i thought you mentioned that you had this working and were able to retrieve your recordings

[tmiranda]

I agree with Slugger in that we need to decide the basic structure first. From what I've seen Boxee is RSS-centric so IMHP we should use that as a starting point.

As a POC and to get more familiar with the Boxee UI I am going to work on the main screen. This will not require any backend work so it gives Slugger and whoever else wants to muck with that think about things a little.