Plugin: PlayOn in Online Services (Hulu, Netflix, Amazon VOD, etc.)

[trueno]

How would I add a feed for the SyFy (formerly Sci-Fi) PlayOn plugin and keep it updated?

This addon is fantastic :-)

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by trueno

How would I add a feed for the SyFy (formerly Sci-Fi) PlayOn plugin and keep it updated?

This addon is fantastic :-)

Why? AFAIK, Hulu already carries all of the SyFy content and is already available in PlayON without the plugin.

[trueno]

While that is true, the videos on syfy.com/rewind available through the syfy plugin are a lot better quality than the hulu available videos :-(

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by trueno

While that is true, the videos on syfy.com/rewind available through the syfy plugin are a lot better quality than the hulu available videos :-(

While the online video from Syfy may be higher quality than Hulu PlayOn transcodes the video.

I originally tried the SyFy plugin but the quality sucked. For whatever reason the video through PlayOn was stuttery while the Hulu video wasn't. Not sure why. I abandoned it after the feeds were updated to include the Syfy content from Hulu.

Whatever the difference between the two the SyFy transcodes come out bad compared to those from Hulu.

[trueno]

Hrm I wonder if that is a problem with the transcodes playon sends sage? looking at the same video through playon via a ps3, hulu vs rewind, the rewind version looks worlds better

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by trueno

Hrm I wonder if that is a problem with the transcodes playon sends sage? looking at the same video through playon via a ps3, hulu vs rewind, the rewind version looks worlds better

I don't know.

I just went to the SyFy website to see this quality and I have to say I'm unimpressed. The Hulu video is much better looking, at least on the web. Now I understand why the Syfy plugin video was so bad. Syfy doesn't bother to deinterlace their videos. They're full of combing. It all gets worse once the video is transcoded. Which explains the stuttering. Not sure why this doesn't happen with the PS3.

[simonen]

I have been looking into adding some TVersity feeds into Sage, because I would like to get WB content which PlayOn doesn't have.

Working under the assumption that EP's plugin should be able to read the UPnP structure, I followed the same protocol as I would for adding a new PlayOn plugin.

My result was no videos and I think the problem lies in the UPnP device name for TVersity. With PlayOn, we simply use "playon", but TVersity uses Computer Name : TVersity Media Server (SAGETV : TVersity Media Server, in my case) as its name.

Question 1: Is there a way to wrap this with some tags so that it is taken literally, like ^SAGETV : TVersity Media Server$ so that EP's app won't treat them as 2 separate parts because of the ":"?

Question 2: This is basically the same as the first because one of the directory paths is "Intenet, RSS & Podcasts".

[evilpenguin]

For any special characters just use a '.' instead.

SAGETV . TVersity Media Server

The '&' is a little tricky because it shows up in the UPnP feed as '&'. Take a look at the brothers & sisters feed as in the Hulu links file as an example on how to handle that.

[pjpjpjpj]

EP (or anyone else knowledgeable), can you respond to my post #560? It was buried at the bottom of the previous page before the discussion went into another topic.

Thanks!

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Question:
Where do you find the name that goes in the first part of the line (i.e., where I have "RacingNews") before the "=xPodcastESPN..."? In UPnpInspector, all it shows is the name at the end, i.e. "Racing".

You're half way there. You've got the CustomOnlineVideoLinks properties file set. Now you have to setup the categories in the CustomOnlineVideoUIText properties file. That's where the RacingNews part comes in. Something like this would go in the VideoUIText properties file for the RacingNews link:

Category/RacingNews/LongName=Racing News
Category/RacingNews/ShortName=Racing News

Follow the same template for the other links you added, changing the name (RacingNews) between the slashes and changing the Racing News after the equal sign to match the proper category name for the link you are assigning to the category.

How do you know what it should be called? I am assuming that the first name is somehow what the website where you are getting the podcast is calling it? I also tried NASCAR without the "News" after it, and that didn't work either, but does that particular one use something else? Does "Page2" use "Page_2"?

You can call it whatever you like, as long as it doesn't conflict with an existing category name. The "Page 2" link where you have ^Page2$, I think that should be ^Page 2$ with a space before the 2. What you put between the ^ and $ is listed in UPnPInspector. Highlight the folder/category in the top pane, and in the bottom pane you need the name listed by dc:title, which should actually be the name of the folder/category you highlighted.

[simonen]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

For any special characters just use a '.' instead.

SAGETV . TVersity Media Server

The '&' is a little tricky because it shows up in the UPnP feed as '&'. Take a look at the brothers & sisters feed as in the Hulu links file as an example on how to handle that.

Thanks EP, turns out I finally got TVersity to work with your plugin, but I had to use UPnP2podcast.exe ver 1.0. The latest versions don't seem to output the rss correctly. TVersity seems to output their UPnP fields in a different order than PlayOn does if that makes any difference.

Anyways, I simply renamed UPnP2pocast.exe (ver 1.0) to UPnP2podcast2.exe and placed it in the same folder as UPnP2podcast.exe (ver 1.5) is. When adding the custom feeds, I simply used:

xFeedPodcastCustom/WB_Smallville=xPodcastUPnP_Recent,xPodcast_WB_PlugIn;external,UPnP2Podcast2,TVersity:Video:All:Smallville:+2

for example.

In addition, I had to edit the TVersity config.xml file to display more than 15 videos and edited another xml file so that the UPnP device name would simply be "TVersity" instead of "Computer Name : TVersity Media Server". This was just to make it easier to use the UPnP2podcast plugin.

One other thing worth mentioning is that you should select "MPEG1/2" Generic Device" in the TVersity settings so that it outputs the full video path.

I am having issues with video playback of Smallville, because the timeline only goes to 12 seconds. The outputted RSS feed has no value for duration and UPnP inspector shows no duration value, so this might be an issue.

There may be a setting in the TVersity config files to display duration, but I have not found it, if there is one. A possible work around may be to simply set a default value of 2 hours or something, but I can't believe that TVersity doesn't give the duration.

[wado1971]

Originally Posted by simonen

Thanks EP, turns out I finally got TVersity to work with your plugin.....

Are you using the Pro or free version?

[simonen]

I am using Pro, but you can download it free. They request that you make a donation if you like it.

[tmiranda]

EP,

When I call version 1.5 of UPnP2Podcast.exe from my STVi it hangs. (i.e. It never returns control back to the STVi). If I use the version that was included with 1.3a it works fine. Did the parameter requirement change? What do you need to help debug the problem?

Thanks,

Tom

[evilpenguin]

Is the UPnP2Podcast.log getting created?

[tmiranda]

Yes. Here it is. I have to kill the .exe to get it to terminate.

[robogeek]

OK, here are a few more modified scripts for the PlayOn Scripts Plugin and their accompanying properties files. First, if you don't have the Scripts Plugin installed in PlayOn then you'll need to get that from the playonplugins.com forum and install it. Then open the attached zip, copy the *.lua files to the MediaMall\plugins\scripts directory, copy the *.properties files to the SageTV\STVs\SageTV3\OnlineVideos directory, and restart the PlayOn MediaMall Server service.

This will add 5min, Top Tracks, Top 20 Music Videos, and Public Domain Flicks categories to your Online Services menu.

Known issue: 5min, Top Tracks, and Top 20 Music Videos parse web pages for videos. Due to the parsing, the 'video list is downloading' popup can display for one to five minutes (possibly longer in some cases) while the parsing is going on before continuing to the actual list.

[simonen]

Ok, it looks like TVersity works now with version 1.0 of the UPnp2podcast app. I used the PS3 setting which sets the duration at 10 hours, and I have successfully added Smallville from the WB network and watched an entire episode. The video quality is pretty good.

I will work on my custom feed files and post them when ready as soon as I add other shows from the WB unless EP has some better ideas on how to handle this.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by robogeek

OK, here are a few more modified scripts for the PlayOn Scripts Plugin and their accompanying properties files. First, if you don't have the Scripts Plugin installed in PlayOn then you'll need to get that from the playonplugins.com forum and install it. Then open the attached zip, copy the *.lua files to the MediaMall\plugins\scripts directory, copy the *.properties files to the SageTV\STVs\SageTV3\OnlineVideos directory, and restart the PlayOn MediaMall Server service.

This will add 5min, Top Tracks, Top 20 Music Videos, and Public Domain Flicks categories to your Online Services menu.

Known issue: 5min, Top Tracks, and Top 20 Music Videos parse web pages for videos. Due to the parsing, the 'video list is downloading' popup can display for one to five minutes (possibly longer in some cases) while the parsing is going on before continuing to the actual list.

Jason,

Many thanks for your hard work on modifying these scripts!

[gabe1475]

Does anyone experience issues with Netflix starting movies from somwhere in the middle. Most movies start from the beginning, but a couple do not. Bolt did not start from the beginning until I updated to version 5, but now it does. Also is there any way to fast forward in Netflix, it seems like this is not working consistently either. Great work EP, this is an awesome addon to Sage.