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

[polen]

EP,

Great addition to SageTV. You will go down in History as the person who single handedly took down the Cable/Satellite TV industry.

I read back at the beginning of this thread that Multiple Streams should not be a problem and in fact people also posted that they could and I to have successfully had two streams going through the PlayOn server also.

I have a problem when trying to use both of my HD Extenders at the same time with your PlayOn plugin. I can use my HD200 by itself and also my HD100 by itself, but when I start a stream with one of my extenders and then start a stream on my other extender, the first extender’s video stops after about 2 - 3 minutes and sometimes goes back to the Hulu video list. The second extender keeps going fine.

Multiple streams work because I streamed with my HD200 in standalone mode and then streamed with my HD100 with your PlayOn Plugin and it worked fine.

It looks like something is conflicting on the SageTV server. I noticed you added the MAC address to the Tempfeed files, but maybe there’s another conflict somewhere.

I noticed from your sig you only have one extender. You might be able to reproduce this with place shifter.

Thanks again for this plug in. This thread might be another firewire thread.

[wacole]

Hello,

Am running the following:
STV 2009120901 [which seems to be the latest version]
PlayOn 2.58.3614.60 [which seems to be the latest version]
STVi for PlayOn Plugin 1.6 [which is the latest version]
OS XP Pro SP3
Silverlight 3.0.4818.0 [which seems to be the latest version]

From STV: Online Services | Browse Netflix | Instant Queue | Browse Netflix Instant Queue | <<Click on a Movie>>

I can see my instant queue, but when I click on a movie to watch I get from Windows:

Please wait while Windows configures PlayOn

Which finishes without my having to do anything and takes my PlayOn server off-line [I've checked: PlayOn is online before I do any of this]. Then STV displays:

There was an error playing c:\docume~1\Sage\locals~1\Temp\OnlineVideo 861417 3032390418572.flv:
Error (-2) Files selected for playback are no longer on disk.

Which, of course, makes sense because PlayOn isn't available to download anything.

Would be grateful for some guidance on fixing this problem, please.

Thanks very much,

Bill Cole

[polen]

Originally Posted by wacole

Hello,

I can see my instant queue, but when I click on a movie to watch I get from Windows:

Please wait while Windows configures PlayOn

There was an error playing c:\docume~1\Sage\locals~1\Temp\OnlineVideo 861417 3032390418572.flv:
Error (-2) Files selected for playback are no longer on disk.

Sounds like a problem with your PlayOn server. Has it worked before? Does Hulu work? Do you have a firewall on the PlayOn server?

[wado1971]

I'm getting "No Videos were Found" message when navigating to 'Browse Hulu' -> 'User Queue'.
Every other item under online services works fine including the netflix queue. Hulu password in Playon is OK - 16 videos are in queue.
Is anyone else seeing this issue?
TIA

[GKusnick]

Did a quick search through the thread but was unable to determine whether there's ever been a fix/workaround for the problem of filling up the C: drive with massive temporary .flv files that never go away.

This is a problem for a couple of reasons. Aside from crashing when the disk gets full, performance is probably suffering from the fact that my boot drive is not formatted in 64K clusters. Sage really ought to be putting these files in a temp directory on a recording drive, and marking them for auto-deletion.

Any update on this?

[evilpenguin]

Its a Sage issue which occurs when you power down your client/extender while playing back any online services video. They're aware of it and I'm sure it'll get fixed in the next beta cycle.

[sic0048]

Just thought I would throw out another big THANK YOU.

I used an Amazon VOD credit that I had yesterday and watched a rental of Star Trek (2009) on my HD TV using a Sage HD-100 extender. It worked well and certainly was a much better solution than watching it on my laptop.

I had full control over fast forward and rewind, pause, stop, etc. from my remote. Loved it!

[russellnewman]

I ran across this when I first setup PlayOn. It turned out to be a setting on the Hulu queue. With Hulu, you can mark your items as "private" or "public". All of mine were marked as private. As soon as I changed them to public, then PlayOn was able to read my queue properly. Using the UPnP Inspector tool very very helpful in discovering this solution. Screen prints attached.

[wacole]

Originally Posted by polen

Sounds like a problem with your PlayOn server. Has it worked before? Does Hulu work? Do you have a firewall on the PlayOn server?

The server has never worked properly, though I had been able to get Netflix to start a movie, but it usually either hung up or crapped out right after the movie started. Now I get nada. Hulu either returns something like "video not found on server" or "no videos found".

I shut down the firewall [Zone Alarm] just to make sure that wasn't the problem, and ... it wasn't. Still getting the same results. A big mystery.

Thanks for helping think this through.

Bill Cole

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Sage really ought to be putting these files in a temp directory on a recording drive...

Answering my own question, here's a quick-and-dirty STVI I whipped up that lets you specify a target directory for downloaded videos. Add the following property to Sage.properties and/or SageClient.properties (both if you run Sage as a service):

seeker/video_download_path=directory path

and point it to one of your recording drives. (Don't forget to double up the backslashes in the directory path.)

This STVI doesn't do anything about auto-deletion, but at least it lets you put the files where they're not going to fill up your boot drive.

[polen]

Originally Posted by wacole

The server has never worked properly, though I had been able to get Netflix to start a movie, but it usually either hung up or crapped out right after the movie started. Now I get nada. Hulu either returns something like "video not found on server" or "no videos found".

I shut down the firewall [Zone Alarm] just to make sure that wasn't the problem, and ... it wasn't. Still getting the same results. A big mystery.

Thanks for helping think this through.

Bill Cole

Did you restart your PlayOn service or restart your server after turning off the firewall. From what you have said so far, it's looking like a problem with the PlayOn service, so you should be looking in that area.

[profit]

Did you check your system cpu and memory usage? Playon is a hog. Last time I checked it was using over 1GB of memory alone.

[wacole]

Originally Posted by polen

Did you restart your PlayOn service or restart your server after turning off the firewall. From what you have said so far, it's looking like a problem with the PlayOn service, so you should be looking in that area.

Yes, I did restart the service. I've checked to make sure that Zone Alarm has the correct authorization for PlayOn and it does.

Here's what I'm noticing. If I restart PlayOn as soon as I click on say, one of ESPN's shows, PlayOn stops and I get an "Error: The requested video is not found on the server." from STV. It's like PlayOn is acting like an Off switch.

Let's use ESPN as an example. If I click on ESPN, STV displays a screen with logos of all of the shows; call this screen 1. If I click on a show logo, STV displays a screen with thumbnails of all of the episodes that it has for that series; call this screen 2.

Now, PlayOn server is active and I go to screen 1. No problems. I click on a show series and go to screen 2. If I click on a show episode on screen 2, PlayOn is turned off and STV displays the "Error: The requested video is not found on the server." message.

If I close the message and, while staying on screen 2, restart PlayOn. I get the same error message again, but PlayOn remains active.

If, however, I return to screen 1, restart PlayOn, then return to screen 2 and click on a show episode, PlayOn turns itself off.

Go figure. I guess I need to get w/PlayOn's forum.

Thanks,

Bill Cole

[wacole]

Originally Posted by profit

Did you check your system cpu and memory usage? Playon is a hog. Last time I checked it was using over 1GB of memory alone.

Thanks. I've got 2gb with the system using just under 1gb when PlayOn and STV are running. CPU usage is nominal at about 8%.

Bill Cole

[wado1971]

Originally Posted by russellnewman

I ran across this when I first setup PlayOn. It turned out to be a setting on the Hulu queue. With Hulu, you can mark your items as "private" or "public". All of mine were marked as private. As soon as I changed them to public, then PlayOn was able to read my queue properly. Using the UPnP Inspector tool very very helpful in discovering this solution. Screen prints attached.

Thanks russellnewman - although my queue items were already set at public .... it looks like I also needed to change all my "hulu activities" to public. My hulu queue works once again!!

[wacole]

Originally Posted by wacole

Yes, I did restart the service. I've checked to make sure that Zone Alarm has the correct authorization for PlayOn and it does.

Here's what I'm noticing. If I restart PlayOn as soon as I click on say, one of ESPN's shows, PlayOn stops and I get an "Error: The requested video is not found on the server." from STV. It's like PlayOn is acting like an Off switch.

Let's use ESPN as an example. If I click on ESPN, STV displays a screen with logos of all of the shows; call this screen 1. If I click on a show logo, STV displays a screen with thumbnails of all of the episodes that it has for that series; call this screen 2.

Now, PlayOn server is active and I go to screen 1. No problems. I click on a show series and go to screen 2. If I click on a show episode on screen 2, PlayOn is turned off and STV displays the "Error: The requested video is not found on the server." message.

If I close the message and, while staying on screen 2, restart PlayOn. I get the same error message again, but PlayOn remains active.

If, however, I return to screen 1, restart PlayOn, then return to screen 2 and click on a show episode, PlayOn turns itself off.

Go figure. I guess I need to get w/PlayOn's forum.

Thanks,

Bill Cole

I checked the PlayOn forum and found this:

The issue is twofold: 1) bugs in the respective plugins, and 2) a "limitation" in .NET 2.0.

If any plugins perform illegal operations that aren't properly handled through error checking, the errors are propagated up to the hosting application -- namely, PlayOn. Unfortunately, since .NET 2.0, Microsoft made it impossible for a hosting program to not fatally crash whenever there are any unhandled errors, regardless of where they originate. Even though our hosting service can detect that a given plugin is not properly handling errors, we cannot stop our own application from crashing. The Windows OS then tries to restart the service, whereupon it crashes again, and so forth.

We are making a few changes such that we can more effectively isolate plugins from the main PlayOn application, so that crashes in a plugin will no longer end up crashing PlayOn as well.

This is from the PlayOn Administrator 12/14/2009. So, it sounds (a) like there is something causing an error condition in the plug-in which then (b) causes .NET 2.0 to inelegantly crash PlayOn. Maybe my best bet is to uninstall Sage and all the ancillary stuff entirely and rebuilt.

What do you all think?

Thanks very much,

Bill Cole

[Dreameriz]

Thank you EP for this add on

a couple things
on netflix and amazon the quilty isnt that great any way to fix this as of yet?

Hulu is asome and great quilty only things is closed captin for some anime does not show up but i guess that this is a playon issue.

I dont know if this is possible but when watching a tv series if it can go to the next one like Hulu Desktop does

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by wacole

This is from the PlayOn Administrator 12/14/2009. So, it sounds (a) like there is something causing an error condition in the plug-in which then (b) causes .NET 2.0 to inelegantly crash PlayOn. Maybe my best bet is to uninstall Sage and all the ancillary stuff entirely and rebuilt.

What do you all think?

Thanks very much,

Bill Cole

Bill,

If there is a plugin that is causing the Playon server to crash, it is a Playon Plugin that you have loaded. I don't think the SageTV plugin is the problem because it if that was the case, it wouldn't be working for any of us.

So before you go all crazy, make sure you unload any Playon plugins that you have loaded.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Bill,

If there is a plugin that is causing the Playon server to crash, it is a Playon Plugin that you have loaded. I don't think the SageTV plugin is the problem because it if that was the case, it wouldn't be working for any of us.

So before you go all crazy, make sure you unload any Playon plugins that you have loaded.

Yep, there's absolutely no way that Sage or this plug-in could be interfering with PlayOn. That post is definitely talking about PlayOn plug-ins so if you have any installed, remove them.

Then, once you're sure you have no PlayON plug-ins installed, try this.

1) Start up PlayOn
2) Try and play an episode of "Online Services->ABC->Better Off Ted"
3) Once you notice PlayOn crashed, use their tool and submit a bug.

That'll automatically send them all the logs they should need to fix the problem or point you towards what on your system is causing the problem.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

...once you're sure you have no PlayON plug-ins installed, try this.

1) Start up PlayOn
2) Try and play an episode of "Online Services->ABC->Better Off Ted"
3) Once you notice PlayOn crashed, use their tool and submit a bug.

That'll automatically send them all the logs they should need to fix the problem or point you towards what on your system is causing the problem.

And I'll add that the Playon support is really good. Had me up and running within 30 minutes of me turning in a support ticket, AFTER HOURS no less. So be sure to check your email often after sending in a ticket. You might be surprised at how quickly they respond.