Hulu/Netflix please!

[Fuzzy]

I'm hoping the USB Server might actually increase the user base a bit.. but only if a few 3rd party hardware manufacturers make some cheap server hardware for it to run on. A tiny atom based board, with a video capture card, and a modest HDD would be enough to get anyone up and running for a couple hundred dollars, and be very stable from the get-go. Might be a path towards higher numbers, and therefore, a path to better content.

[simonen]

We need something like this: vmcPlayit for WindowsMC

I hate to say this, but lack of UPnP client support in SageMC is making it really hard for me to stick with Sage, because I want to drop cable altogether. I could buy some xbox 360's for extenders to Win7 media center and still save money by dropping cable. I would rather stick with Sage though.

[Fuzzy]

you're thinking of ditching sage strictly because of lack of UPnP support? what device are your trying to stream to/from? aren't most UPnP devices just serving up files on the network, in which case, can't you just serve them with sage?

[simonen]

PlayOn. Hulu support is the last thing I want to ditch cable. The thing is, I want it available to all extenders and SageMC. It is silly to have to switch the HD200 to extender mode to connect to UPnP and I am not going to by more HD200's to replace my HD100s either.

I have looked into the method for using a tuner to capture hulu streams, and I am not sure that will work for me. But it could be a short term option.

[brainbone]

How many SageTV users would purchase PlayOn in order to use netflix/hulu on SageTV?

I played around with PlayOn awhile back, but the low quality of the transcode, the apparent inability to navigate the timeline of a show (jump to the middle without waiting for it to buffer to that point), and its reliability (Netflix is up! YAY! Hulu is down... Boo... Hulu is up! YAY! Now Neflix is down... boo...) turned me off at that point.

For Netflix, it seems like the obstacle is the PlayReady DRM SDK, and/or getting approval from Netflix (possibly a good deal of BSing could help us here?). For HULU the obstacle appears to be HULU, Adobe and the DMCA. There are still ways to grab the HULU stream, but doing so does not make HULU or Adobe happy. Amazon? Not sure.

PlayOn appears to get around this, but paying $40 for a hack/kludge, plus having to make an application to get it working in SageTV... I suppose its the only viable (legal?) option until Netflix and HULU pull their, well you know... but I need some convincing, and some spare time.

[mbowe]

I would purchase PlayOn in order to use netflix/hulu in Sage, namely extenders. And, I would donate $$'s and/or testing time to who/what ever helped make that happen.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by brainbone

PlayOn appears to get around this, but paying $40 for a hack/kludge, plus having to make an application to get it working in SageTV... I suppose its the only viable (legal?) option until Netflix and HULU pull their, well you know... but I need some convincing, and some spare time.

I'm not a huge PlayOn fan. But I think they're getting better. And while I can't give you more time (don't even have enough myself) I'd be willing to throw in $20 to you for the cause if you even try tackling it. Just DM me at any point if interested. Maybe others would throw any some beer money to help defray the cost of the PlayOn license in hopes that it might bring us a SageTVPlayOn Add-on within the HTPC UI.

EDIT: By the way, I'm seriously considering picking up a Roku for my online video wants. Wish it were available in the HD200 though.

[simonen]

I would definitely donate for a working solution!

[brainbone]

I just gave PlayOn another try...

The video quality is terrible. Granted, the server its on isn't the fastest (AM2 X2 4000+), but it should be fast enough.

I'm guessing that the loop-back hack with the current SageMC Netflix plugin would give better quality (though I haven't used it).

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by brainbone

I just gave PlayOn another try...

The video quality is terrible. Granted, the server its on isn't the fastest (AM2 X2 4000+), but it should be fast enough.

I'm guessing that the loop-back hack with the current SageMC Netflix plugin would give better quality (though I haven't used it).

For really good quality, I suppose you could loopback into an HD-PVR... considering the cost some are looking at dropping on a Roku or Boxee, it doesn't sound too ludicrous...

[cncb]

I just tried Playon and while I was pleasantly surprised by the video quality browsing on the HD200 was incredibly slow. I also had several lockups (endless spinning wheel) that I had to unplug to get out of. I don't think this solution will work for me as is.

[simonen]

I tried PlayOn with windows 7 media center and the video quality is just as good as the hulu desktop application, not to mention that everything loads quickly (very snappy) with thumbnails and show descriptions, no lockups either. That was done on an old celeron PC I had laying around too!

To be honest, I do not think that PlayOn is the problem. I think the processing that needs to be done to navigate UPnP folders and show the extra content (which the HD200 does not do) is better suited to a regular PC. IMHO, I don't think the HD200 is up for the task to do all the work itself. I don't think this is a fault or anything, which is why I suggest moving all of those tasks to be done on the server and let the HD200 simply play the stream and let the server do the rest.

I imagine that win7 MC loads most of the content at once so you can navigate quickly, whereas the HD200 probably loads as it goes so to speak, which maybe why it takes so long to navigate. another benefit for using a PC for these tasks, because they have a lot more memory to work with.

I wonder if it is possible to have sage retrieve the folder list from PlayOn with a list of files within those folder. After using Intel's UPnP tools, I noticed that PlayOn generates an http link to play the stream. I have pasted that link into mplayer and have gotten it to play the stream from PlayOn. I don't see this as being that much different than the "Online" section in Sage, but I guess the real trick is how to populate it.

Take it for what its worth (maybe nothing).

[Brent]

Originally Posted by cncb

I just tried Playon and while I was pleasantly surprised by the video quality browsing on the HD200 was incredibly slow. I also had several lockups (endless spinning wheel) that I had to unplug to get out of. I don't think this solution will work for me as is.

I get very good video quality from PlayOn via the HD200 media player mode. But the UI is slow, doesn't always work and isn't designed well. So no, I don't and wouldn't use it as is either

Originally Posted by simonen

I tried PlayOn with windows 7 media center and the video quality is just as good as the hulu desktop application, not to mention that everything loads quickly (very snappy) with thumbnails and show descriptions, no lockups either. That was done on an old celeron PC I had laying around too!

To be honest, I do not think that PlayOn is the problem. I think the processing that needs to be done to navigate UPnP folders and show the extra content (which the HD200 does not do) is better suited to a regular PC. IMHO, I don't think the HD200 is up for the task to do all the work itself. I don't think this is a fault or anything, which is why I suggest moving all of those tasks to be done on the server and let the HD200 simply play the stream and let the server do the rest.

Agreed. I think a well implemented add-on COULD be done much like the one for MediaCenter was and work nicely on the HD200. If only...

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by cncb

I just tried Playon and while I was pleasantly surprised by the video quality

Originally Posted by simonen

I tried PlayOn with windows 7 media center and the video quality is just as good as the hulu desktop application

Originally Posted by Brent

I get very good video quality from PlayOn via the HD200 media player mode.

Sounds like I'll need to look over my settings and give it another shot.

The browsing speed of PlayON and general UI of DLNA without Remote UI is miserable.

For HULU and Netflix, it should be possible to use the APIs provided by them to browse titles, then when selecting to play a title, automate the process of adding it to the user queue, and use DLNA to pull the appropriate stream from PlayOn... the only question is how long it takes a title to show up in PlayOn after its added to the queue in Netflix or HULU, so there may be a very long delay before any video is displayed after selecting a title to play. Now, getting SageTV to easily play the stream is another hurdle...

[simonen]

That is an idea that would save a lot of hassle, because you would not have to worry about creating/refreshing the folder structure. Since the HuLu queue coming out of PlayOn is probably flat, it may be possible to create an intermediary between SageTV and PlayOn.

Idea: Perhaps we could use the built in CustomOnlineVideoLinks.properties file to point to an internal webpage file that contains the http links to the files stored in the playon hulu queue/netflix queue folders (kill 2 birds with one stone). The hard part is creating the intermediary outside of sage that would connect to playon create the file and refresh it periodically. This was my original idea, but I was not thinking about just handling the queue(s) alone, so I wrote it off since I think it can only handle a flat xml type structure.

I am assuming that PlayOn can only handle one stream at a time, so whether you have multiple extenders/clients or not, only one could probably pull in the stream. Better than nothing if that is how it works.

[brainbone]

The problem with using SageTV's custom online videos is that SageTV seems to cache the RSS responses it gets, and from my initial testing SageTV didn't appear to honor a no-cache HTTP response header - so you need to restart the SageTV client in order to get fresh content. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong here. If I am wrong, it may not be that difficult to make an RSS wrapper, at least for an interim solution)

[simonen]

I have figured out a way to bring the HuLu queue via PlayOn into the custom online feeds in SageTV. I can confirm that it also works for the extenders as well. In fact, the video quality is exceptional.

I am currently working on a vbscript (might need help on this from someone with experience) that will translate the PlayOn HuLu queue folder info into a readable rss feed xml file that Sage can recognize. The other option is to create a live web translator, however this would require the user to have IIS or some other web service running on their server. The advantage is that it would be realtime instead of having to wait for a scheduled script to run every so often for queue updates.

In regards to the caching of the online feeds, I can confirm that this is not the case on the Sage server. I can edit the xml feed file while running Sage and if I back out of the online feed and go back in, it refreshes so you do not need to restart sage or anything like that. I am not sure if the clients/extenders are caching this or not.

The only thing that I noticed which doesn't work is the use of placeshifter outside of your network, since the rss xml file is stored at a local IP address.

Once I can get a usable script running, it should be easy to duplicate the script and use it for the Netflix queue via PlayOn as another separate feed.

This could be a workable solution until Sage implements some kind of UPnP/DLNA browser into the media center software like they did with the HD200.

EDIT: If playback is to be done on the extenders, the xml file needs to be shared on the network so they can access the feed. I am using IIS right now to do that and it works fine.

[CyRex]

Originally Posted by simonen

I have figured out a way to bring the HuLu queue via PlayOn into the custom online feeds in SageTV. I can confirm that it also works for the extenders as well. In fact, the video quality is exceptional.

Awesome! I don't know why I didn't think of that!!!

-Dan

[reggie14]

Does the PlayOn server have to transcode stuff for the extenders? If so, how powerful does your server need to be?

[simonen]

That is a good question. I have no idea what it is doing. I guess I could look for a CPU spike when the extender starts to play the video. I suspect it would not be any different than playback on the server though. They are mpg files coming from PlayOn, so I suspect they have to convert them from flash into mpg (in the case of HuLu) no matter what you are using to play them.