SlimPlayer Internet Radio plugin

[PiX64]

Chris

Here is how i have the setings:

Mixer: Virtual Audio Cable 1
Decoder: Java MP3 Plugin
playbacktype: SYNC
encoder: Webfeedencoder on localhost:5000
channel: <configured channel for webfeedencoder>

Right now i am getting nothing coming out of the HD200 for sound. the picture changes, and the news ticker/bio works fine. I am also not getting any audio from the Squeezebox server web interface for the soft device corresponding to the HD200 i am working with.

I have the settings for this device (server side) audio = Proxied streaming and the volume is turned all of the way up. I can see the audio playing on the web interface, but like i said no sound.

Also i have this working perfectly on the server as well as 1 client machine I have, but i suspect it is working because those 2 are using "Primary Sound Driver" rather than VAC 1

~Pix64

[PiX64]

Alright i got something figured out here, and hopefully you can explain to me why this is true.

When audio repeater is running as stated in the instructions, I get distorted audio, and sometimes no audio as described in my previous post.

When audio repeater is NOT running the audio comes through using VAC inside of sage, however it takes and EXTREMELY long time to tune in.. 30 - 45 seconds. On extenders the tuning is much quicker. Im not sure if this is due to the fact that i tested it on them after i had alreayd tested it on the server, and the server spawned some instance of audio repeater which i am not able to find.....

How is it possible that this is working without audio repeater running? i checked and double checked, and audio repoeater is not running AT ALL not as a process, not as a program, nothin....

I verfied that the above also works on extenders and it does. BUT the sound is very choppy maybe every 3 - 5 seconds there is a skip...Is this due to the "TRAIL" audio coming trhough from VAC, or are there settings i need to mess with?

~Pix64

[koelec]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Alright i got something figured out here, and hopefully you can explain to me why this is true.

When audio repeater is running as stated in the instructions, I get distorted audio, and sometimes no audio as described in my previous post.

When audio repeater is NOT running the audio comes through using VAC inside of sage, however it takes and EXTREMELY long time to tune in.. 30 - 45 seconds. On extenders the tuning is much quicker. Im not sure if this is due to the fact that i tested it on them after i had alreayd tested it on the server, and the server spawned some instance of audio repeater which i am not able to find.....

How is it possible that this is working without audio repeater running? i checked and double checked, and audio repoeater is not running AT ALL not as a process, not as a program, nothin....

I verfied that the above also works on extenders and it does. BUT the sound is very choppy maybe every 3 - 5 seconds there is a skip...Is this due to the "TRAIL" audio coming trhough from VAC, or are there settings i need to mess with?

~Pix64

The audio repeater is not involved in the recommended setup. It's only to be used to listen in on the VAC device. The repeater only helps in detecting problems, as it can be setup to repeat the audio being fed into VAC to an hardware audio device available on the server so you can verify slimplayer is outputing audio to the VAC device. What is essential is that slimplayer sends the audio to VAC device and Webfeedencoder consumes from VAC.

The choppy sound is caused by the webfeed encoder setup for the channel and can be optimised by changing the params on the advanced tab of the channel edit. There's a post from Michael
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&postcount=705 about this.


- Chris

[PiX64]

Excellent. Thanks so much.

~Pix64

[heatvent]

2 quick questions...

1. If I set this up for use with an extender, and put in SYNC mode. Is this truely in sync or is there additional delay due to SageTV buffering, etc. The reason I as is I use squeezeboxes and I am wondering if this will be close to being in sync with the rest of the devices (knowing that there is a PC/SB sync difference) or will there be a significant delay when played on the extender.

2. Is there anyway to rename SlimPlayer? It shows up as SoftSqueeze in Squeezebox Server. I would like to rename to Living Room or something like that.

Thanks

[RetroBox]

I am having some problems installing the Squeezebox Server on the same machine where I'm running the Sage Server with Jetty Web Server... can all these run at the same time in the same environment?

[craigap]

Originally Posted by RetroBox

I am having some problems installing the Squeezebox Server on the same machine where I'm running the Sage Server with Jetty Web Server... can all these run at the same time in the same environment?

My setup works fine that way.

[tbone01]

Originally Posted by RetroBox

I am having some problems installing the Squeezebox Server on the same machine where I'm running the Sage Server with Jetty Web Server... can all these run at the same time in the same environment?

Check your other plugins- it was the port 9000, can't remember which one it was. I resolved by changing the port for Squeezebox.

[RetroBox]

Thanks for the replies. I did open all necessary ports (3843 Server Control + Discovery and 9000 for Web Server) in both the Windows 7 firewall and in my router. I am still getting the following error while entering my credentials in the Squeezebox Web Server Control Panel (v7.5.1):

"An unexpected error occurred while validating your mysqueezebox.com account. Please make sure network connectivity is working fine."

I do have network connectivity, can ping mysqueezebox.com and I even turned off Firewall in case I missed something there. Something that is interesting is that I installed the Web Server on my XP machine and it worked just fine without messing with firewall settings or anything - I was actually able to see the 6 tabs available in the Control Panel and the Authentication tab showed the server running with no conflicts. In my Windows 7 attempt, I was only able to see an authentication panel that doesn't look like anything available in XP.

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but has anyone else experienced a similar problem? I did look online and there are other folks that are having the same issue, but I couldn't find a resolution. I am excited to try this plug-in and would like to run it SBS on my Sage server.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by RetroBox

I am having some problems installing the Squeezebox Server on the same machine where I'm running the Sage Server with Jetty Web Server... can all these run at the same time in the same environment?

I'm not sure if it is exactly the same issue as what you're having but I had problems upgrading my Squeezebox Server. During the install, it was trying to create an instance of mysqld.exe and bind it to TCP 9092. Sage confirmed that "SageTV doesn't use port 9092 by default" and suggested that it was a plugin using the port. I also have the Jetty Web Server installed.

I was able to work around the issue by simply stopping the SageTV service, which allowed the Squeezebox Server install to finish completely. After a restart of the SageTV service, all is well again.

[RetroBox]

Stopping the SageTV server absolutely did it! Thanks so much for your suggestion - because the Squeezebox communicates using a different port, I didn't think these two were related, but sure enough, that did the trick. Thank-you!

I have installed the plug-in and am just starting to play with it. I figured out how to use the navigation and have some trouble getting sound out of the player - I will look into other posts to find the best settings. One thing that I did find strange is that I cannot seem to be able to use the number keys and some other random letters when trying to specify a server /ip address. Am I doing something wrong or is anyone else having a similar issue?

EDIT - Found a solution to the issue above....I need to use the ALT key to type in numbers in these fields.

[RetroBox]

Could someone please help answer these questions? I know they are really basic, but I am a little stumped as to how to get these to work...

1) After navigating to a station, how do I get it to play? I have tried using the Play.Hold under the special menu within Navigation, also hitting the play button. It seems the only way I can get stations to play is to mark them as a Favorite and tune them under View Favorites.

2) How can I use Apps? I logged-in to Squeezebox and installed several applications under my account. When I navigate to Apps within the plug-in, it tells me that the player is already registered to another account. I did provide my log-in details in both the Control Panel and Web Control Panel.

3) Perhaps my questions in #1 and 2 relate to not providing the MACAddress for the player. Under the SB Control Panel, I see the address as 00:00:00:00:00:00... should I use this or the MACAddress for the server? Also, I am using the network address for the server as 192.168.X.XX... do I need to provide a port number or use http:// in front of that?


Thanks.

[koelec]

Originally Posted by RetroBox

Could someone please help answer these questions? I know they are really basic, but I am a little stumped as to how to get these to work...

1) After navigating to a station, how do I get it to play? I have tried using the Play.Hold under the special menu within Navigation, also hitting the play button. It seems the only way I can get stations to play is to mark them as a Favorite and tune them under View Favorites.

2) How can I use Apps? I logged-in to Squeezebox and installed several applications under my account. When I navigate to Apps within the plug-in, it tells me that the player is already registered to another account. I did provide my log-in details in both the Control Panel and Web Control Panel.

3) Perhaps my questions in #1 and 2 relate to not providing the MACAddress for the player. Under the SB Control Panel, I see the address as 00:00:00:00:00:00... should I use this or the MACAddress for the server? Also, I am using the network address for the server as 192.168.X.XX... do I need to provide a port number or use http:// in front of that?


Thanks.

Hi,

1) That's a bug. A fix will be available shortly.
2)/3) For this you may need to contact mkanet on this forum. He's a frequent user of this plugin and uses a lot of Apps (formerly called Squeezebox network services).

- Chris

[heatvent]

2 is a bug with the various squeezebox softplayers (softsqueeze, squeezeplay, etc.). This question/issue is posted on web in various forums with very little discussion or conclusion. I have 2 SB devices and 2 instances of squeezeslave running. The issue happens when I use a squeezeslave player or sync other players to that squeezeslave. It cannot access any of my apps. If if use an actual SB device (unsynced) to access the app and then sync my squeezeslave players to that SB device all works fine.

As far as getting an app to show up in the slimplayer plugin, add it as a favorite on the SB device you are syncing to and it should show up under favorites in slimplayer.

[RetroBox]

Thanks so much for the clarifications. I really like this plugin and I do not mind tuning content via Favorites. I did add Apps to my favorites list and these work too.

I guess the limitations on playing stations and accessing Apps lies on the Squeezebox software itself - that's too bad. I am having some issues with the WebEncoderPlugin, but once I get this going, it all should be fairly seamless by choosing stations out of the channel lineup.

Thanks again!

[GMan78]

Sorry folks, extreme NOOB here... but very excited to get this working.

I seem to be having difficulties getting the Squeezesoft player to connect to the mysqueezebox.com system. When I go to the website it shows my player mac address and everything looks correct...but the player won't connect. From the SageTV SlimPlayer GUI I can Power on and off the SlimPlayer but it won't show me any songs or apps. I have the Squeezebox server software running on a separate server. The instance of the SlimPlayer plugin I am trying to run is on my SageTV server.

It's worthy to note I presently have satellite broadband service (read "latency", LOL!) ...do you think that may be contributing? I will be upgrading to 3G service soon.

Tell me if you need more specifics...be glad to get them for you, just kind of lost at this point....

Thanks!

George

[Ericft]

Just a quick question? Does anyone forsee a "simple" future of this slimplayer plugin that would work on extenders without the additional (hardware or software audio loop) setup? also allowing multiple extenders to play different content? or is there a fundamental limitation that prevents this? thanks.

[koelec]

Originally Posted by Ericft

Just a quick question? Does anyone forsee a "simple" future of this slimplayer plugin that would work on extenders without the additional (hardware or software audio loop) setup? also allowing multiple extenders to play different content? or is there a fundamental limitation that prevents this? thanks.

No, the additional setup is required to stream the audio (actually it is a video stream) to the extenders. Also there is no way to play different content on multiple extenders concurrently, caused by limitiations in SoftSqueeze (which SlimPlayer is based on).

- Chris

[rwc]

I've got a couple of questions:

1. If I have an actual 'squeezebox', can I use this plugin to control it? Or does it only work with the slimplayer?

2. If I have sage running and I use something to control the slimpayer (IE: ipeng, or the squeezebox center software)--does the plugin recognize it's being sent mp3 and stop the video? Or does the slimplayer not run while watching video?

Thanks!

rwc

[koelec]

Originally Posted by rwc

I've got a couple of questions:
1. If I have an actual 'squeezebox', can I use this plugin to control it? Or does it only work with the slimplayer?
rwc

Slimplayer is an entirely software based version of a squeezebox. If you own a squeezebox you don't need slimplayer and vice versa. But, they can be synchronized to play the same music in multiple rooms.

Originally Posted by rwc

2. If I have sage running and I use something to control the slimpayer (IE: ipeng, or the squeezebox center software)--does the plugin recognize it's being sent mp3 and stop the video? Or does the slimplayer not run while watching video?

Slimplayer can be setup to run independent of sagetv mediaplayer, i.e. video and music will play simultaneously. Or it can be setup to interact mutually exclusive, either video or music will play.

- Chris