SageTV (TV recording) & WMC (Netflix Streaming)

[anosis]

So for the past 6 months I abandoned SageTV because of issues getting my ceton card to work reliably, but then saw that a newer version of SageDCT was available and figured it was worth a try. It worked right away and even my client PC has no issues any longer when video used to stutter before.

Long story short… I then quickly realized that I will be missing on key advantage that WMC has which is the very well done implementation of Netflix.

Right away I came across one issue which was the remote. I used USB-UIRT before but that would mean I either have to use two remotes, one for Sage and one for WMC or make the existing WMC remote work. Obviously the green button and some other direct linked buttons invoke WMC and that is not what I wanted. So I found out that those buttons will always call ehshell.exe to start WMC. After taking ownership of the application it allowed me to rename it to wehshell.exe, then I found an exe file that that does not execute anything unless parameters are passed as a dummy file to replace the original ehshell.exe.

Now when I press any of the WMC remote buttons the focus stays with Sage. Inside sage I added a new menu item that allows me to launch wehshell.exe (the one that I renamed) and open WMC (Sage is sent to sleep mode). This way I can easily switch to WMC watch a Netflix movie and when all done exit WMC and Sage automatically opens up afterwards. All this with just one remote.

To make sure WMC will not interfere with Sage’s recording service, I have completely stripped the TV tuner setup and Ceton’s menu inside WMC. Also I disabled the cable advisor and any other components under the settings page to make sure no body accidentally sets something up.

Well if someone has a better way or method to get access to Netflix’s streaming service from SageTV, please let me know. The above surely is not very elegant and I would like to do it a more streamlined way. Otherwise, I hope this may have inspired someone else to use WMC for that purpose while using SageTV for what it really is good at, recording and sharing live TV.

[wayner]

Netflix needs something like the Hulu Desktop that can be run as a standalone App. Some folks also use Kylo as a 10 ft UI web browser.

[ranger]

You can can use the command line shown below to launch WMC directly into the Netflix application bypassing all the other menus to get there.

C:\Windows\ehome\ehshell.exe -launchcoded:{e6f46126-f8a9-4a97-9159-b70b07890112}\{982ea9d3-915c-4713-a3c8-99a4688b7c59}?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by ranger

You can can use the command line shown below to launch WMC directly into the Netflix application bypassing all the other menus to get there.

I created a menu item in sage that launches a .bat file with that command line to go directly into netflix. Works well. Pushing the "home" button (green button) on my remote closes that window and goes back to sage.