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

[setherd]

OK I decided to try this as netflix isn't working with the old plugin for me anymore.

What the hell? Netflix works sort of. but the other things they offer for other channels it's all hit or miss for me.
I'd say that less than half works. I mean I goto CBS->it shows a list of shows. I select one. sometimes it will then show me episodes sometimes not. if it does show episodes, some of them will work some not.

Is this normal?
and so far I've tried adding plugins. they show up in the control panel but sagetv doesn't see them.

am I missing something?

[drewg]

In response to Comedy Central removing their shows from Hulu next week, somebody has written a Playon Scripts plugin (eg, a plugin for a plugin): http://www.playonplugins.com/index.p...18.0;topicseen

Once you've installed this, there is a new top-level "Scripts" source from playon. I get the daily show feed using:

UPnP2Podcast 'PlayOn:Scripts:Comedy Central:Full Episodes:The Daily Show With Jon Stewart:+4'

The +4 is due to them separating the episodes by week.

Their descriptions are much, much, much better, and the video quality is excellent (as good or better than Hulu was before the January changes where they had to start actually rendering flash video from Hulu rather than just transcoding it). So I'm again satisfied with my lowly amd CPU and no longer looking to get a core i7

And, as an added bonus, there are no comedy central or hulu logos, etc.

Drew

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by setherd

OK I decided to try this as netflix isn't working with the old plugin for me anymore.

What the hell? Netflix works sort of. but the other things they offer for other channels it's all hit or miss for me.
I'd say that less than half works. I mean I goto CBS->it shows a list of shows. I select one. sometimes it will then show me episodes sometimes not. if it does show episodes, some of them will work some not.

Is this normal?
and so far I've tried adding plugins. they show up in the control panel but sagetv doesn't see them.

am I missing something?

Sadly, not really

A few things going on here...

1. Hulu works great, Netflix works 90% of the time, and CBS is a crap shoot. Its not the plug-in, its PlayON, so theres nothing I can do about that.
2. A real UPnP browser will let you just browse PlayON like a folder tree which means 100% of what's available in PlayON is accessible. Unfortunately, due to limitations in the Online Servcies menu, I can't do this. I can only provide a limited, pre-determined, subset of the PlayON content available. I tried to do as good of a job as I could with Netflix/Hulu (my two favorites), but I just don't have the time to provide hard-coded navigation trees for PlayON plug-ins. Right now, if you really care about the plug-in, you'd need to generate you're own .properties file to support it. Sorry!

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by drewg

In response to Comedy Central removing their shows from Hulu next week, somebody has written a Playon Scripts plugin (eg, a plugin for a plugin): http://www.playonplugins.com/index.p...18.0;topicseen

Once you've installed this, there is a new top-level "Scripts" source from playon. I get the daily show feed using:

UPnP2Podcast 'PlayOn:Scripts:Comedy Central:Full Episodes:The Daily Show With Jon Stewart:+4'

The +4 is due to them separating the episodes by week.

Their descriptions are much, much, much better, and the video quality is excellent (as good or better than Hulu was before the January changes where they had to start actually rendering flash video from Hulu rather than just transcoding it). So I'm again satisfied with my lowly amd CPU and no longer looking to get a core i7

And, as an added bonus, there are no comedy central or hulu logos, etc.

Drew

That's excellent news! I'll have to update the Hulu feeds to support this when they flip the switch

[setherd]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Sadly, not really

A few things going on here...

1. Hulu works great, Netflix works 90% of the time, and CBS is a crap shoot. Its not the plug-in, its PlayON, so theres nothing I can do about that.
2. A real UPnP browser will let you just browse PlayON like a folder tree which means 100% of what's available in PlayON is accessible. Unfortunately, due to limitations in the Online Servcies menu, I can't do this. I can only provide a limited, pre-determined, subset of the PlayON content available. I tried to do as good of a job as I could with Netflix/Hulu (my two favorites), but I just don't have the time to provide hard-coded navigation trees for PlayON plug-ins. Right now, if you really care about the plug-in, you'd need to generate you're own .properties file to support it. Sorry!

thanks for filling me in, I thought I was losing my mind.
you did a great job on it!

[Suntan]

I’ve got an odd occurrence. I’ve been happily using this plugin to watch one or two Tv episodes before falling asleep in the evenings and it has been working fairly well for some time.

When I first installed the plugin I manually updated the Netflix “on Demand Que” to show 3 levels of videos (+3) so the individual TV episodes just get dumped in with the movies, which is fine as I update my queue to have one or two TV seasons in the queue at a time and then search through for each episode in order.

However, last night one of the two TV seasons that I had in the queue stopped showing its individual episodes. All that shows up is a single entry for the entire season and when you click to play it, it starts the same episode (one in the middle of the season) over and over each time I click on it.

I have a different TV season that is also in the queue and it still shows all 20 individual episodes so it does not seem to be a problem with all TV episode listings.

-Suntan

[Helheim]

I have PlayOn (2.59.3699.67) installed and with my Xbox360 I can watch programs so I know it's working but the SageTV plugin doesn't seem to find it.

"! Error! Couldn't find UPnP Device: (PlayOn)"

Any ideas? Thanks.

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by Helheim

I have PlayOn (2.59.3699.67) installed and with my Xbox360 I can watch programs so I know it's working but the SageTV plugin doesn't seem to find it.

"! Error! Couldn't find UPnP Device: (PlayOn)"

Any ideas? Thanks.

Usually that means your Sage Server's firewall or antivirus is blocking the connection.

[Helheim]

I have windows firewall disabled and don't have any anti-virus software running. I have PlayOn installed on the same box as SageTV, tried it on a different one and that didn't work either. Is there an easy way to check if it's blocked?

Thanks

[joe123]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

As for as processor usage, i'd recommend installing the Flash 10.1 beta to hardware accelerate the Hulu video decoding, that'll take a lot of pressure of the PlayOn machine.

I installed Flash 10.1. My PlayON CPU process is still around ~35% (maybe this is normal?)

How can I tell if Flash 10.1 beta is working?

Great plug-in by the way! Great job setting all this up.

[mkanet]

Hi Joe, getting hardware acceleration to work for flash requires usually two steps. Maybe you forgot to upgrade your display driver to support Flash 10.1? Mine didnt start working until I upgraded my Nvidia display driver as well.

Originally Posted by joe123

I installed Flash 10.1. My PlayON CPU process is still around ~35% (maybe this is normal?)

How can I tell if Flash 10.1 beta is working?

Great plug-in by the way! Great job setting all this up.

[snoopy]

1. I performed a clean install of SageTV v6.2.2
2. I installed the latest SageMC v6.3.9a
3. I looked for the "check for stv update" option in detailed setup > advanced and did not find it. I assume it is the latest since I just installed SageTV v6.2.2.
4. I extracted the latest PlayOn plug-in found here to my program files/sagetv/sagetv directory
5. I purchased the PlayOn desktop application from here and installed it on my desktop.
6. I put in my license key and tested and activated hulu account information within the PlayOn settings.
7. I restarted the PC and started SageTV.
8. I ensured the PlayOn desktop application services showed a green "started" notation within the desktop application software.
9. I opened Online Services hoping to find some reference to either PlayOn or Hulu, or ABC, NBC, etc?

Where did I go wrong?

[evilpenguin]

Originally Posted by snoopy

1. I performed a clean install of SageTV v6.2.2
2. I installed the latest SageMC v6.3.9a
3. I looked for the "check for stv update" option in detailed setup > advanced and did not find it. I assume it is the latest since I just installed SageTV v6.2.2.

Even though its a fresh install, there should be a few STV updates out there. Try loading up the default STV by itself and looking for updates rather than doing it though SageTV. If that still doesn't do it, go ahead and let me know what your STV version is.

[snoopy]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Even though its a fresh install, there should be a few STV updates out there. Try loading up the default STV by itself and looking for updates rather than doing it though SageTV. If that still doesn't do it, go ahead and let me know what your STV version is.

Thank you for your response. When you say "load up the default", I assume you mean to use it (temporarily) instead of SageMC. The "looking for updates rather than doing it through SageTV" is what I am not sure about. Opus has statements about that thing not being cumulative so I am confused. I also told you the wrong SageTV version. The version I downloaded is 6.6.2.218 with SageMC 6.3.9a.

[evilpenguin]

Well, step 1 is definetly getting it working in the default STV w/o SageMC, we'll handle that next.

So in the default STV your STV version number should be 2009101301 or newer. Once you've got that going, this plug-in should just work automatically. If the update button isn't working (as some people have reported in Vista) you can also do a manual update by following Opus's instructions in this post.

[snoopy]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

Well, step 1 is definetly getting it working in the default STV w/o SageMC, we'll handle that next.

So in the default STV your STV version number should be 2009101301 or newer. Once you've got that going, this plug-in should just work automatically. If the update button isn't working (as some people have reported in Vista) you can also do a manual update by following Opus's instructions in this post.

I think I see part of the problem with this. Thanks for the screenshot. I am running a new install on Windows 7. After switching to the default stv, the options I see are not as reflected in your screenshot. I have attached my screenshots to this post.

Because the option isn't there; I have no way of determining either the STV version number, or performing the update.

[snoopy]

It also appears that in the thread you mention for the Opus manual process, there is confusion over what is cumulative and what isn't. So do I need more than one? Which one do I need exactly as there are two below where your link lands me and several above that?

I'm not completely sure I understand the numbering scheme either. I can't make heads or tails of that thread.

According to system information (which I can only find using SageMC), I noticed that the version of SageTV shows as 6.6.2.218 and the version of SageMC shows in there as 6.3.9a.

[snoopy]

• I performed a clean install of SageTV v6.2.2
• I installed the latest SageMC v6.3.9a
• I looked for the "check for stv update" pictured in this thread at post #73 and did not find it. Apparently it doesn't show up in Vista or W7.
• I chose to update manually and extracted the latest "stv file set version number" 2009120901.zip found in post #69 here and took note that the same number was now being reported in menu > settings > sagetv setup > help > system information.
• I extracted the latest PlayOn plug-in found here to my program files/sagetv/sagetv directory
• I purchased the PlayOn desktop application from here and installed it on my desktop.
• I put my license key into the PlayOn desktop application and tested and activated hulu my hulu account information from within PlayOn as well.
• I ensured the PlayOn desktop application services were started showing a green "started" indicator within the desktop application software.
• I opened Online Services hoping to find some reference to either PlayOn or Hulu, or ABC, NBC, etc? What I found was only a link from online services to a hulu desktop application.
• I downloaded and installed the hulu desktop application as well.

While SageTV does now "launch" the hulu desktop application from within the Online Services page; that's ALL it does. There appears to be no real "integration" to speak of.

[snoopy]

I had the order backward. I can see the error of my ways now. The whole point was to update FIRST. I got it. If done in the order mentioned above, everything works. One does not need the hulu desktop application. Will uninstalling the Hulu desktop application cause an issue now?

[snoopy]

1. The playon service if shown in the task bar, should show "running" on mouse-over if that is the current state. This would allow my wife to confirm it is running correctly without having to open anything confusing to her. I think that might improve the WAF of the app.

2. It would also make sense to use an installer for the Play-On utility and have it automatically update the STV from the install.