Navi-X on SageTV?

[iRoNBiLL]

Okay folks... lets not take my words out of context.

I never said I expect a beta app by this week... you are talking to a fellow developer here, not someone just starting out.

All I said was this isn't the first time I reached out to SageTV, so I'm not expecting much of anything. If this is insulting or someone takes offense to that, perhaps you are taking my comments a little too personal for your own good. Sometimes a little sarcasm can be healthy for us all.

I'm definitely not expecting miracles... I dwell in other "user-to-user" forums all the time and know what to expect... I take a healthy dose of reality with it and make a best effort attempt at soliciting interest.

If we could just keep these postings to "developers only" at this point, anything else is really just criticism and an expectation that if I have not been on this forum for very long, I must not know what I am talking about... believe me I am well-versed and educated in the development arena. You don't have to hit everyone over the head with a club because you think they are unfamiliar with forum etiquette or your product... development is a process and anyone experienced with this already has these expectations.

Now... back to the subject at hand... I am still waiting on someone to begin asking dev questions instead of telling me what my expectations should be... as I already stated, my expectations are minimal at best. TMiranda got back to me and has questions so he may consider this port. I am simply asking we please limit conversation at this point to developers with interest is all I am saying as the rest of the comments unfortunately do not get us any closer to the reality of getting Navi-X on SageTV... that's all I am saying, nothing hurtful.

iRoNBiLL

[PLUCKYHD]

Ok I'll bite (albiet at the very end of the hook)

Haven't not looked at much what exactly does navi-x do that is worth porting? I quick look over it seems it is no better than playon? Does it handle HD? Is it legal?

[iRoNBiLL]

It beats the pants of of Playon if you ask our users. It plays HD and legal is really a parsing of legal terms I am not willing to journey with you. We have yet to get a cease letter (4 years and going) if this helps and as far as I am concerned, it's legal. We link to any multiledia on the internet via our app and if the media player in question can play the file, it plays on your TV.

If you are already at the end of your hook, I think you are taking what I am saying way too personally and really shouldn't. It's not like I was verbally assaulting you personally my friend.

iRoNBiLL

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by iRoNBiLL

...TMiranda got back to me and has questions so he may consider this port...

But I still think EvilPenguin (or plucky, or stuckless, or GKusnick, or Slugger, or JRKiwi, or ....) is more qualified

[Comitizer]

I think this sounds great. Does the content work world wide or is this US only?

[iRoNBiLL]

A combination of both. Some content is regionally blocked and other content is not. Nothing I can do about regional content restrictions for the most part... I did however discover an Adult Swim server that was not regionally blocked and we run our links through that domain from Adult Swim's worldwide CDN, and not AS's home servers... we got around regional blocking this way for Adult Swim content for all users.

I can't remember the last time I saw a regionally blocked item though... it's been that long.

iRoNBiLL

[PLUCKYHD]

I didn't mean i was at the end of my hook with you more that i was just nibbling at helping

Okay next questions

1. Is transcoding going on? If so what kind of pc power does it demand?

2. It this limited to computers only or can the stream be passed over the network (ie extenders)

I will give it a go on xmbc or boxee and see what I think.

[tmiranda]

I started looking at this last night and it's certainly do-able. Navi-X supports a lot of different media types (audio, video, graphics, text, playlists, etc.) and most, but not all, can be handled by Sage. It uses an internal "playlist" format to create a content tree where the leaves are actual content.

It looks like it will be a straight forward task to write some Java and create an API that can us used by Studio to navigate the tree and display the various types of content.

I don't know what plucky and EvilPenguin are thinking but I can start on the Java API. It looks interesting and I am sure to learn something new. Let me know your thoughts on collaboration, or your intent to "go for it"

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

. It uses an internal "playlist" format to create a content tree where the leaves are actual content.

Is there metadata included and fanart/images?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Is there metadata included and fanart/images?

No metadata other than a name and a description string. There are thumbnails and backgrounds, but I'm not sure if the background is fanart or a generic background.

A lot of the content is user-created and I haven't crawled through it enough to see how complete it is. My gut reaction is that there is not much fanart, just thumbnails. I could be wrong about this.

If I had to make a call on the Sage UI I'd use a malore style browser, mostly because I'm familiar with it and (IMHO) it still looks good without a lot fanart. I'd prefer a snazzier UI but that's not my forte (hint hint).

Tom

[iRoNBiLL]

The thumbnails and backgrounds are user decided. We have a default background for the app, but it's changeable and built into our script. Reading the full description of Navi-X I wrote a while back might clear up what Navi-X is...

"The Navi-X Media Browser is a "content aggregator" that provides access to all kinds of multimedia content, listed on a public directory of user contributed listings or playlists for playing on your TV or PC! Users can link to content and playback video, audio, pictures, podcasts, text, rss and html on the internet and share it with people around the world in seconds! Create fully customizable playlists with backgrounds, logos and icons as well as link to your favorite multimedia on the internet or browse the already existing directory of publicly available content, in one sleek, fast and unified application! Navi-X is a multi-platform addon for XBMC and Boxee, popular and free media center applications available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple TV and the original Xbox (modified)."

So yeah, users can create customizable playlists with backgrounds thumbnails, custom icons for media entries, etc. To be honest, if you all can just get the playback working properly, we wouldn't mind even seeing a compromised version where it doesn't have these features at the moment... Navi-X is open source so we are open to modifications. If nothing else, we could even start it as a 1.0 and bring the rest of the features into it whenever.

While we have coders who write scripts in perl or php for scraping/aggregating content into playlist format .plx for Navi-X while users manually contribute links and add backgrounds and logos for playlist and items. Hope this helps.

iRoNBiLL

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by iRoNBiLL

The thumbnails and backgrounds are user decided. We have a default background for the app, but it's changeable and built into our script. Reading the full description of Navi-X I wrote a while back might clear up what Navi-X is...

"The Navi-X Media Browser is a "content aggregator" that provides access to all kinds of multimedia content, listed on a public directory of user contributed listings or playlists for playing on your TV or PC! Users can link to content and playback video, audio, pictures, podcasts, text, rss and html on the internet and share it with people around the world in seconds! Create fully customizable playlists with backgrounds, logos and icons as well as link to your favorite multimedia on the internet or browse the already existing directory of publicly available content, in one sleek, fast and unified application! Navi-X is a multi-platform addon for XBMC and Boxee, popular and free media center applications available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Apple TV and the original Xbox (modified)."

So yeah, users can create customizable playlists with backgrounds thumbnails, custom icons for media entries, etc. To be honest, if you all can just get the playback working properly, we wouldn't mind even seeing a compromised version where it doesn't have these features at the moment... Navi-X is open source so we are open to modifications. If nothing else, we could even start it as a 1.0 and bring the rest of the features into it whenever.

While we have coders who write scripts in perl or php for scraping/aggregating content into playlist format .plx for Navi-X while users manually contribute links and add backgrounds and logos for playlist and items. Hope this helps.

iRoNBiLL

Bill,

Thanks, this does help. I've been reading through the forums on your site and am getting a feel for how things work. It really is a nice system

Playing the content in Sage is very straight forward as long as Sage supports the format. The HD300 plays almost anything you throw at it and PC clients use a variation of mplayer which handles most formats as well. Once we get the url of the audio or video file from Navi-X (which looks to be not so difficult) we just pass that to a single Sage API and tell Sage to play it. (I'm simplifying a little bit because it's more complicated than that for some types of files.)

The harder part is displaying the content in the Sage UI in an appealing way. We could just display a raw list (which is what I'll probably do as a proof of concept) but that's not very exciting. Most people will prefer something more visually appealing and want the ability to search, filter, group, and sort content based on various criteria. That's why PluckyHD asked about the availability of metadata and fanart.

[iRoNBiLL]

Well... as far as meta data goes, people can also add their own descriptions to movies and shows for example. Otherwise, on our playlist hosting site, we have a button built into the playlist editor that allows people to automatically populate movie description and meta data by clicking on it and perhaps manually selecting a title to populate if rottontomatoes doesn't recognize the title people entered into name for the playlist item entry. Our site then scrapes rotton tomatoes for a description and thumb for the movie automatically. If people make scrapers to grab the meta data, you can populate it into any playlist entry as long as their is a function for it. (ex: type, name, url, thumb, background, description, icon, date, etc.)

iRoNBiLL

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by iRoNBiLL

Well... as far as meta data goes, people can also add their own descriptions to movies and shows for example. Otherwise, on our playlist hosting site, we have a button built into the playlist editor that allows people to automatically populate movie description and meta data by clicking on it and perhaps manually selecting a title to populate if rottontomatoes doesn't recognize the title people entered into name for the playlist item entry. Our site then scrapes rotton tomatoes for a description and thumb for the movie automatically. If people make scrapers to grab the meta data, you can populate it into any playlist entry as long as their is a function for it. (ex: type, name, url, thumb, background, description, icon, date, etc.)

iRoNBiLL

Got it. I'll need to think about it some more and play around with your site to understand all of the capabilities.

Can you point me to a list of all allowable fields? (And by field I mean type, name, url, thumb, description, icon, background, etc.....) The list of valid "types" was very useful BTW!

[iRoNBiLL]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Got it. I'll need to think about it some more and play around with your site to understand all of the capabilities.

Can you point me to a list of all allowable fields? (And by field I mean type, name, url, thumb, description, icon, background, etc.....) The list of valid "types" was very useful BTW!

It's not really posted materials but here is the list and example metadata... I also put an example in a manual we made a while back that goes into full detail here... the manual is older than crap now but page 12 starts with "What is a Playlist" and page 14 and 15 gives you the details. Check it out, it MAY help... http://www.box.net/files#/files/0/f/.../1/f_580372080

name=
type=
URL=
thumb=
description=
icon=
background=
date=
processor=
player=
rating=

An example...
type=video
name=MISSY AND THE MAXINATOR (Match More Movies)
thumb=http://i43.tower.com/images/mm117025536/missy-maxinator-kevin-winters-dvd-cover-art.jpg
icon=http://whatever.com/missynmax.jpg
date=2011-06-16
URL=http://www.putlocker.com/file/128258F94355C616
processor=http://navix.turner3d.net/sproc/putlocker
player=default
rating=-1.00

background on an item makes it so when you click an item that is a playlist or text, you can choose a custom background to load with it.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by iRoNBiLL

It's not really posted materials but here is the list and example metadata... I also put an example in a manual we made a while back that goes into full detail here... the manual is older than crap now but page 12 starts with "What is a Playlist" and page 14 and 15 gives you the details. Check it out, it MAY help... http://www.box.net/files#/files/0/f/.../1/f_580372080

name=
type=
URL=
thumb=
description=
icon=
background=
date=
processor=
player=
rating=

An example...
type=video
name=MISSY AND THE MAXINATOR (Match More Movies)
thumb=http://i43.tower.com/images/mm117025536/missy-maxinator-kevin-winters-dvd-cover-art.jpg
icon=http://whatever.com/missynmax.jpg
date=2011-06-16
URL=http://www.putlocker.com/file/128258F94355C616
processor=http://navix.turner3d.net/sproc/putlocker
player=default
rating=-1.00

background on an item makes it so when you click an item that is a playlist or text, you can choose a custom background to load with it.

Thanks. I saw most of those already in the example you sent me. I was afraid there were a bunch more that I didn't know about.

Can you confirm that they are all one line long, with the exception of "description" which is delimited by "/description".

[iRoNBiLL]

Yes, they are all 1 line long... you can make playlists using a text editor and uploading them to a webserver or use our playlist editor and free hosting. The extension on a playlist is either .txt or you can rename it to .plx if you want... it's the original extension for Navi-X, but doesn't necessarily work in Windows... like you can't just make it then associate XBMC or Boxee with it to work... it has to be on a webserver of some type. For everyone else, here is what a user playlist looks like with sections in it... to give you an idea of what is included in a playlist for Navi-X:

version=1
background=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808/gerbil.jpg
title=iRoNBiLL's Playlist
logo=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
description=Websites for Boxee Box rule!!! - iRoNBiLL/description

type=playlist
name=iRoNBiLL's Movies
thumb=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
URL=http://navix.turner3d.net/playlist/19197/ironbills_movies.plx
player=default
rating=3.50
description=Movies for the night.../description

type=playlist
name=Websites (Boxee Box Only)
thumb=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
URL=http://navix.turner3d.net/playlist/49533/websites_(boxee_box_only).plx
player=default
rating=-1.00

type=playlist
name=TV Shows
thumb=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
URL=http://navix.turner3d.net/playlist/19201/tv_shows.plx
player=default
rating=-1.00
description=TV Shows for the day.../description

type=playlist
name=Music Videos
thumb=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
URL=http://navix.turner3d.net/playlist/36339/music_videos.plx
player=default
rating=-1.00

type=playlist
name=Mixtapes
thumb=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
URL=http://navix.turner3d.net/playlist/36078/mixtapes.plx
player=default
rating=-1.00

type=playlist
name=Podcasts
thumb=http://www.fileden.com/files/2010/8/4/2932808//newlogo2.png
URL=http://navix.turner3d.net/playlist/19196/podcasts.plx
player=default
rating=-1.00
description=Podcasts for those on the go.../description

type=video
name=24 Hours of Neon (Las Vegas, Time-lapse)
thumb=http://img.wedoitallvegas.com/articles/las_vegas.jpg
URL=http://vimeo.com/23413966
processor=http://navix.turner3d.net/proc/vimeo
player=default
rating=-1.00
description=by Philip Bloom/description

type=video
name=Slaughterhouse - Whack MC's
thumb=http://img.youtube.com/vi/KHA-OfFCXCM/default.jpg
URL=http://youtube.com/v/KHA-OfFCXCM.swf
processor=http://navix.turner3d.net/proc/youtube
player=default
rating=-1.00
description=The baddest rappers to grace the face of this earth... Slaughterhouse! The "Legendary" Crooked I, Joe Budden, Royce Da 5'9" & Joell Ortiz!! on Shady Records/description

type=rss:
name=Twitter Feed
thumb=http://website.navi-x.org/networks/logos/twitter_logo.png
URL=http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/46805533.rss
player=default
rating=-1.00


Pretty basic right?

iRoNBiLL

[tmiranda]

Bill,

Thanks for all of the help. I'll start to get my thoughts together and put together a Java API that will play nice with Sage Studio. (Studio is the tool that must be used to create the Sage UI.)

Tom

[iRoNBiLL]

I can't wait to see what you have in store for everyone. Keep in touch with me and well get you with our other devs who can explain the NIPL API and other important concerns. Later!

iRoNBiLL

[stuckless]

Out of curiosity... does the Naxi-X work on linux? If the structure for this is pretty easy to consume, then I'll look at creating a Phoenix VFS module for this.