HuLu/Netflix Queue as RSS Feed - Alpha release

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

A few things random things I know right now:

a) The video links change fairly often, I think they use the current time as a seed to randomize the name. Once its given you a link, its only good for a small period of time to access it before the link goes bad.

If you're getting "video not found on server error" check the following things

• Check the PlayOn config and it should help you with setting your firewall
• Make sure you've got PlayOn updated to the lastest version.
• Open up the .xml files and verify that the links are real IP address's and not 127.0.1.1 or localhost
• Try opening the link in a browser. If it asks you if you want to download the video then the link should be good, but if it gives you a 404 your link went stale and you need to re-run the batch file.

B) I've been emailing Sage about this and they mentioned that progressive downloading a podcast of an MPEG-2 isn't really a use case they anticipated so they aren't surprised that the timebar is acting strange. It a little annoying but it certainly works good enough for everyday use. Once we iron out all of our other problems I'll put together a bug report for them.

Which IP should I use?
Sage Server
PC Playon is installed on?
Extender(s)

[I] can log into hulu and watch video from the PC Playon is installed on. I don't think I can view on Sage, but complicating troubleshooting is Sage is on a WHS PC which is not setup to play video. I don't even think media player is loaded.
Playon settings list that the Windows Firewall is "enabled" and I have turned the firewall off with the same results. Here is a paste of the IP line in the hulu vbs
strNewText = Replace(strText, "127.0.0.1", "192.168.123.38")

I edited it in Wordpad, could that be the issue? It still says it is a vbs file

Using Playon version 2.59.3555.48 which I dowloaded and installed yesterday.

I would also like this to run in extender standalone mode, but since I can't even get it running on the Sage I won't complicate things.

When I run the batch file it pops up the hulu.vbs in Wordpad and hangs until I close it. The the Netflix.vbs pops up in front of the dos box which I leave as I go test on the extender. Since I can't get it running I don't know what is normal behaviour.

Here is a paste from the hulu.xml file which appears to show that my local IP is identified correctly

<rss version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"
xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
<channel>
<title>Sort By Name</title>
<description>Sort By Name</description>
<language>en-us</language>
<itunes:summary>Sort By Name</itunes:summary>
<itunes:subtitle>Sort By Name</itunes:subtitle>
<item>
<title>American Dad!: Black Mystery Month</title>
<description>Season 02 Episode 013 - </description>
<pubDate>2007-01-28T00:00:00</pubDate>
<itunes:subtitle>Season 02 Episode 013 - </itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:duration>0:21:54</itunes:duration>
<enclosure url="http://192.168.123.38:63478/hulu-1a0138ec-47e4-40ed-843e-caa2202d587e/1-hulu-1a0138ec-47e4-40ed-843e-caa2202d587e.mpg" length="1002936000" type="video/mpeg2" />
</item>
<item>
<title>Family Guy: 420</title>
<description>Season 07 Episode 012 - </description>
<pubDate>2009-04-19T00:00:00</pubDate>
<itunes:subtitle>Season 07 Episode 012 - </itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:duration>0:21:53</itunes:duration>
<enclosure url="http://192.168.123.38:63478/hulu-c518d4fd-5d63-4818-8006-44537eaa7e0f/1-hulu-c518d4fd-5d63-4818-8006-44537eaa7e0f.mpg" length="1002412000" type="video/mpeg2" />
</item>
<item>
<title>King Of The Hill: To Sirloin With Love</title>
<description>Season 13 Episode 018 - </description>
<pubDate>2009-09-13T00:00:00</pubDate>
<itunes:subtitle>Season 13 Episode 018 - </itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:duration>0:22:08</itunes:duration>
<enclosure url="http://192.168.123.38:63478/hulu-d605ce43-d4b4-4b44-adfd-32c7cfa70f15/1-hulu-d605ce43-d4b4-4b44-adfd-32c7cfa70f15.mpg" length="1010272000" type="video/mpeg2" />
</item>
<item>
<title>King Of The Hill: The Boy Can't Help It</title>
<description>Season 13 Episode 018 - </description>
<pubDate>2009-09-13T00:00:00</pubDate>
<itunes:subtitle>Season 13 Episode 018 - </itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:duration>0:22:05</itunes:duration>
<enclosure url="http://192.168.123.38:63478/hulu-71093d11-ffbf-43ac-a2bf-2dba57998d82/1-hulu-71093d11-ffbf-43ac-a2bf-2dba57998d82.mpg" length="1008700000" type="video/mpeg2" />
</item>
<item>



192.168.123.38 is the PC that Playon is located on Sage is .37
Any clues for the experts?

[simonen]

It appears that you have everything right. Did you try pasting the link into a browser and the PC sage is installed on? What did you get? Try running the run.bat first to refresh the links before you try.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by simonen

It appears that you have everything right. Did you try pasting the link into a browser and the PC sage is installed on? What did you get? Try running the run.bat first to refresh the links before you try.

I have tried that a few times. Here is one of the links I pasted
http://192.168.123.38:63478/hulu-fc0...0bfaa74418.mpg

It just appears to try an connect. on the task bar it says it is transferring data from 192.168.123.38...
I have left it for quite awhile and it goes no further. Could I need to open a port?

It also appears when I check hulu.xml the IP does not consistently change to my local IP from 127.0.0.1? I keep rerunning the bat file and checking. sometimes it is 192.168.123.38 and sometimes 127.0.0.1???
I deleted the hulu and netflix xml and run the bat file to regenerate them and they now list my local IP. I still get nothing but it trying to connect when I paste in the browser though..

[valnar]

Are there two customizations being developed for Playon support simultaneously? If I want Hulu/Netflix support on my HD200, do I use this or evilpenguin's method?

[matt91]

Originally Posted by HuMan321

Could I need to open a port?

I wonder if this is also my problem. I just bought/installed PlayOn this week. I tried using it with the HD200 in standalone, and I found that I can't play any videos via that method either. I have no software firewall, but do have a DDWRT router. I even turned off the router firewall to test, but couldn't get it to work.

Any ports that I can try out to ensure that PlayOn can get out on the internet?

[HuMan321]

On mine it is trying to use port 63478

[simonen]

Originally Posted by HuMan321

It also appears when I check hulu.xml the IP does not consistently change to my local IP from 127.0.0.1? I keep rerunning the bat file and checking. sometimes it is 192.168.123.38 and sometimes 127.0.0.1???
I deleted the hulu and netflix xml and run the bat file to regenerate them and they now list my local IP. I still get nothing but it trying to connect when I paste in the browser though..

If it is doing that, then the browser is finding the files. If it could not find it, you would get an immediate 404, page not found in my experience. So that is good.

Since your sage server is on a different IP than playon, the 127.0.0.1 won't work for you, that is for sure.

I have no way of testing WHS with those script, but it is odd that they are inconsistent like that.

I am at a loss on this one for the moment.

[simonen]

Originally Posted by valnar

Are there two customizations being developed for Playon support simultaneously? If I want Hulu/Netflix support on my HD200, do I use this or evilpenguin's method?

You now have 2 options, you can use stand alone mode as we have done in the past, but if you want hulu/netflix in the sage UI you can use evilpenguin's method.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by simonen

If it is doing that, then the browser is finding the files. If it could not find it, you would get an immediate 404, page not found in my experience. So that is good.

Since your sage server is on a different IP than playon, the 127.0.0.1 won't work for you, that is for sure.

I have no way of testing WHS with those script, but it is odd that they are inconsistent like that.

I am at a loss on this one for the moment.

Thanks
When I paste in the browser that playon is installed it keeps trying to connect as I listed. I sent the link to my Sage Server and because it ends in .mpg it asked to install WMP10 which I did. After installation putting the
http://192.168.123.38:63478/hulu-c51...537eaa7e0f.mpg into a browser on the WHS unit only wants to start media player and it responds that it cannot play the file.
Mitch brought up a point that makes me feel like I have something set up wrong. I am still unclear on the relationship of the WHS Sage system and the other PC with Playon? I added a custom online video entry into the Sage system which gets me the listing of our hulu queue, but I think I went around playon because I used the address of hulu.com/feed/queue/loginid in the custom online properties.
I am thinking this needs to point to the xampplite folder on the playon pc. If so, would I use a url something like //V8/C:\xampplite\htdocs? Where V8 is the name of the playon server 192.168.123.38.
As you can see I could use help with addressing the pointer...

[Mitch G]

For me setting up the custom links was one of the harder things to figure out.
So, in case anyone finds this helpful, here are links to the custom video configuration files I'm using.
(They include a link to Revision3's scam school. Plus a bunch of Photoshop related links from the template file.)
The IP, 192.168.1.101 should be changed to the IP where xampplite is running.

http://www.wowway.com/~jesslex/Custo...nks.properties
http://www.wowway.com/~jesslex/Custo...ext.properties

Mitch

[bialio]

I'm getting this error when I run the batch file :

C:\Playonsage>del D:\www\xampplite\htdocs\huluqueue.xml

C:\Playonsage>C:\playonsage\upnp2podcast.exe "PlayOn:Hulu:User Queue:Sort By Nam
e:+2" 1>>D:\www\xampplite\htdocs\huluqueue.xml
Archive/Zip.pm did not return a true value at -e line 359.

C:\Playonsage>C:\playonsage\hulu.vbs

C:\Playonsage>del D:\www\xampplite\htdocs\netflixqueue.xml

C:\Playonsage>C:\playonsage\upnp2podcast.exe "PlayOn:Netflix:Instant Queue:Queue
Top 50:+2" 1>>D:\www\xampplite\htdocs\netflixqueue.xml
Archive/Zip.pm did not return a true value at -e line 359.

C:\Playonsage>C:\playonsage\netflix.vbs

C:\Playonsage>

[bialio]

Downloaded the latest version of unpn2podcast from EP's thread and now it works.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by bialio

Downloaded the latest version of unpn2podcast from EP's thread and now it works.

What version were you using?

[bialio]

Originally Posted by HuMan321

What version were you using?

I downloaded the package from the line on post 1 of this thread. Don't know for sure what version of upnp2*.exe it has though....

[HuMan321]

I am stuck on a point I should not be.

I have the vbs files edited to my playon server.
I have run the bat file over and over. Stoping and restarting playon, deleting the old xml files, etc.
I constantly get the 127.0.0.1 when I review the xml files. I downloaded the vbs files again and edited them without any luck. I reinstalled xampplite without any change.

What could be causing this?

I have playon and xampplite on a Windows 7 64 bit PC (192.168.123.38) with Sage on a WHS PC at (192.168.123.37)
The vbs files are edited to the playon pc of .38
When I open the vbs files everything looks good to changge the IP to .38, but it won't???

[simonen]

It is possible that they may not work in 64 bit, otherwise you do not have the correct file path specified for the location of the xml files.

Double-click one of the hulu vbscripts and see if the time stamp changes on the huluqueue.xml file. If it doesn't than this is your problem.

[wado1971]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

If you're getting "video not found on server error" check the following things

• Check the PlayOn config and it should help you with setting your firewall
• Make sure you've got PlayOn updated to the lastest version.
• Open up the .xml files and verify that the links are real IP address's and not 127.0.1.1 or localhost
• Try opening the link in a browser. If it asks you if you want to download the video then the link should be good, but if it gives you a 404 your link went stale and you need to re-run the batch file.

Any other suggestions to debug a 404 error?

I have success running run.bat, view the xml files, & see the correct queues... but always 404 when trying to paste the url into the browser.

BTW - I'm running all this entirely on a server (xp-pro). No windows firewall or antivirus stuff.

? Is XAMPP need to be running. I think the install of this app is where I went wrong. Although my xml files look good. & Double clicking the vbs file does update the xml timestamp.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by simonen

It is possible that they may not work in 64 bit, otherwise you do not have the correct file path specified for the location of the xml files.

Double-click one of the hulu vbscripts and see if the time stamp changes on the huluqueue.xml file. If it doesn't than this is your problem.

The paths are correct because I do see the timestamp change and I have also deleted the xml files and let the vbs script regenerate them.
I really thought this would have been easier on Windows 7 instead of trying my WHS and symlinking the large files away from my small 20GC c drive.

Every once in awhile the vbs files will load my local IP. If they don't I open the xml in Notepad and do a find replace all.

Still having issues pointing my custom online video to the xml files on the Windows 7 PC. I have opened everything up and can see and open the xml files on the WHS PC, but when I use an extender and point to the hulu menu it says no videos were found so it must not be seeing the xml file?

I think there is an xp emulator or something on Windows 7. I guess I will try that area.

Anybody have success with a 64bit system?

Thanks for the help.

[matt91]

I finally got mine working (I had a missing dll that was keeping playon from accessing the files. Support helped me through it.)

Can anyone help with how to format these commands?
I have the queue going, but I'd like to try some of these other feeds. I know EP posted a couple of others, but I don't know why some say "CBS" and others don't, for example. Is there something on hulu.com that tells me how I'd need to format the string?

Originally Posted by Slipshod

Fun! Playon has lots of interesting feeds. I added a "Twin Peaks" channel to my RSS Feed...

 C:\playonsage\UPnP2Podcast.exe "PlayOn:CBS:TV Classics:Twin Peaks:+3" > C:\xampplite\htdocs\twinpeaks.xml

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by matt91

I finally got mine working (I had a missing dll that was keeping playon from accessing the files. Support helped me through it.)

Can anyone help with how to format these commands?
I have the queue going, but I'd like to try some of these other feeds. I know EP posted a couple of others, but I don't know why some say "CBS" and others don't, for example. Is there something on hulu.com that tells me how I'd need to format the string?

Sorry, I don't have an answer to your question, but can you share the dll file issue in case that could help others?
Thanks,