New Blockbuster Online HME Application

[s2kdave]

I have created a new plugin that uses the Home Media Option to let you add, remove or just browse movies from your Blockbuster Online account right from your TiVo! It's the very first version of this application so it probably has some bugs. The application is a plugin to Galleon and can be configured using the Galleon Configuration Dialog.

Movie Rentals TiVo Plugin (http://movierentals.sourceforge.net/)
SourceForge Project Page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/movierentals/)

Let me know if you try it out and what you think about the plugin.
Thanks
David

[Einselen]

Due to this app I am taking the plunge and installing Galleon for my Tivo here at school with this app. I will check it out and see how I like it.

[Sy-]

Dude... Please tell me you are working on a Netflix version!!!

[s2kdave]

Due to this app I am taking the plunge and installing Galleon for my Tivo here at school with this app. I will check it out and see how I like it.

Einselen, I'm glad to hear that your going to try it out. Let me know if you have problems setting it up. The Windows version of Galleon is fairly easy to get running.

[s2kdave]

Dude... Please tell me you are working on a Netflix version!!!

Sy-, I knew that question was coming the day I started coding. It's also one of the reasons why I called it Movie Rentals rather than Blockbuster Online. The code is written in a way where it shouldn't be too difficult to add support for Netflix. The only problem though is I don't have a Netflix account. I'd like to add support for Netflix though. We'll see what happens and if anyone is interested in helping implement it.

David

[Einselen]

Einselen, I'm glad to hear that your going to try it out. Let me know if you have problems setting it up. The Windows version of Galleon is fairly easy to get running.

Looks good so far. On my system though the movie info such as Starring, Director, Rated, Catagory does not have anything. Also I am guessing there is supposed to be the movie poster and that is not showing up.

Otherwise not too bad. Runs a little slow, like I just did a search and hit the search button and took a few minutes to pop up but I am sure that is due to lag of having to communicate that info out to the internet and come back in, but so far I like it alot as I can sit after watching a show and update my queue without having to run to the computer (but in the dorms, not that much space). Personally also I would rather use the computer to do a search on movies, but adding new releases, top rentals or managing my queue is very nice to do from the Tivo.

[supasta]

The only problem though is I don't have a Netflix account.

Netflix offers a 2 Week Free Trial

;)

[s2kdave]

Looks good so far. On my system though the movie info such as Starring, Director, Rated, Catagory does not have anything. Also I am guessing there is supposed to be the movie poster and that is not showing up.

Otherwise not too bad. Runs a little slow, like I just did a search and hit the search button ...

Einselen, Does the movie details page do that for every movie? Or just certain movies? If all the information is missing, it probably means there was an error fetching the data. Can you look in your <galleon>/logs/log.txt file and see if there are any errors or stack traces?

Yeah, I've noticed that the search by keywords can be slow. I coded it against the beta.blockbuster.com site so I wouldn't have to fix everything when they went live with it. The side effect is that site isn't very quick. I'll look into seeing if there is some way for be to speed it up.

[s2kdave]

Netflix offers a 2 Week Free Trial

;)

When I have time to get it all done in two weeks, I might just have to do that. ;)

[turnipsun]

I am really really in desire of a app for Netflix.

Since I understand the time it takes to make it might be time consuming, and you would need an account for trial.

I am willing to help you out on an account, if you are not willing to do the free trial.

So get back to me with your thoughts, and hopefully we can work something out, becuase I would love to get this going.

thanks,
Chris

[F8ster]

NetFlix RSS Reader for TiVo:

http://bitrazor.com/netflix/doc/index.php

It's read-only, though, no modification of your queue. (No API for such a thing on the NetFlix site, and an insecure scrape-and-submit is not a good idea)

http://bitrazor.com/netflix/demo/recent.jpg

[tivolee]

When you go to My Queue, is it supposed to show your movies in your Queue? I'm getting a blank screen. When I add a movie then it shows up in My Queue.

[s2kdave]

...insecure scrape-and-submit is not a good idea...

I agree it's not optimal and can be slow, but when you have no other solution or APIs or control over the website you're using, it gets the job done. Of course it also means things can break easily and has to constantly be maintained/upgraded. About it being insecure, it has the exact same security level as it does when you use a web browser. I had to use scraping for the blockbuster site with the exception of some read only RSS feeds that blockbuster has. And if I do a netflix one, I imagine I'll probably have to scrape there too.

[F8ster]

Sorry, I didn't mean to discourage you from doing so, only to explain why I hadn't already added it to my app.

About it being insecure, it has the exact same security level as it does when you use a web browser

The issue is not transmitting over HTTPS, it's storing the users' credentials on the local machine in a way that's secure (unless, of course, you don't store them, and ask the user to enter them every time). To quote Writing Secure Code: "Storing secret information - data such as encryption keys, signing keys, and passwords - in a completely secure fashion is impossible with current PC hardware." While the exposure in this case is probably pretty low, I was not willing to risk the liability of having someone come back and say, "hey, someone stole my NetFlix password because of your app." (I have experience in this area unrelated to TiVo, so I may be more paranoid than most.)

I also share your concern about the maintenance. My stock app (http://bitrazor.com/stock/doc/index.php) falls back to scraping when the web services calls fail (for example, for mutual fund tickers), and I do have to go back in and adjust the scrape from time to time to react to some change they've made to the page. (I have a pretty dang reliable 3-marker scraper class, though, that covers a lot of sins :).)

Anyway, I would happily retire my NetFlix app in favor of a more full-featured version, if you're going the extra mile. I just wanted to make sure the posters on this thread even knew my read-only version existed, and why it's been limited.

[s2kdave]

F8ster,
No worries. I wasn't taking any offense to your post. What you said is true about saving passwords on your computer. Unfortunately every app has that problem including the web browsers like firefox or IE where you can save your passwords. The password is encoded similar to the other Galleon apps though. You do have a point though. I did license it as LGPL which states it's use at your own risk.

So you were the one that wrote that Netflix reader? That's pretty cool. I saw it when I was looking for a blockbuster version before I wrote my app and was wishing there was a blockbuster version.

David

[speedz]

When you go to My Queue, is it supposed to show your movies in your Queue? I'm getting a blank screen. When I add a movie then it shows up in My Queue.


I get the exact same behavior as Tivolee.
I can see the new release list, and search for movies.
I can even add a new movie to my queue and see it online from my PC afterwards.
I cannot see anything in the My Queue or Shipped lists on the app however...

Thanks for the great start!

[s2kdave]

speedz,
Can you look at your <galleondir>/logs/log.txt file and see if there are any errors? Or can you PM me everything after the line that looks like "BlockbusterService - logging in <email>...". Make sure that your email/password are correct. Right now it doesn't really do much as far as informing you when it is incorrect and login fails.

David

[MichaelK]

thanks for the effort- cant wait to try it...

[vinniet]

Helllo ... this does not seem to work with the newest Galleon. Can you give me the java statement to start this from the command line.

Has anyone got this working under Galleon? IF so are you using native or java version.

THanks,

Vinnie

[cpucrash0]

i'm having a problem with this plugin. I installed the latest galleon and it didn't work then I installed the one before and it still doesn't work. I just get a blank screen if I go to any option in this program. I'm using tivo series 3, I don't know if that matters or not.

I enter my correct username which is my email and the correct password. I checked the log info and this is what it says.

8:37:57,733 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - 192.168.1.10 icon.png HTTP GET - to factory /MovieRentals/
18:38:07,139 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - 192.168.1.10 icon.png HTTP GET - to factory /MovieRentals/
18:38:11,561 INFO [master] BlockbusterService - logging in user ...
18:38:11,670 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - HME receiver connected
18:38:11,670 INFO [Acceptor] MovieRentalApplication - Device connected {brand=TiVo, platform=Gen05, host=Evelyn tivo, version=}
18:38:11,670 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - unknown event opcode : 8
18:38:26,889 ERROR [master] MovieRentalApplication - Error logging in user.
18:38:26,889 INFO [master] BlockbusterService - syncing movie queue...
18:38:26,889 INFO [master] BlockbusterService - logging in user ...
18:38:27,014 ERROR [master] MyQueueScreen - An error occurred when retrieving the queue.
18:38:27,014 INFO [master] BlockbusterService - Downloading top rentals.
18:38:27,654 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - connection to receiver closed
18:38:27,654 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - HME receiver disconnected
18:38:29,435 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - 192.168.1.10 icon.png HTTP GET - to factory /MovieRentals/
18:38:30,513 WARN [master] TopRentalsScreen - Cannot retrieve top rentals list.
java.io.IOException: Cannot download RSS feed for top rentals.
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService.getT opRentals(BlockbusterService.java:601)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.TopRentalsScreen.getMovieItemL ist(TopRentalsScreen.java:22)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.MovieListScreen.loadData(Movie ListScreen.java:46)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.BaseScreen$1.tick(BaseScreen.j ava:30)
at com.tivo.hme.sdk.util.Ticker.run(Ticker.java:143)
Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Open quote is expected for attribute "http-equiv" associated with an element type "meta".
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService.getT opRentals(BlockbusterService.java:597)
... 4 more
18:38:31,013 WARN [master] NewReleasesScreen - Cannot retrieve new releases list.
java.io.IOException: Cannot download RSS feed for new releases.
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService.getN ewReleases(BlockbusterService.java:579)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.NewReleasesScreen.getMovieItem List(NewReleasesScreen.java:22)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.MovieListScreen.loadData(Movie ListScreen.java:46)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.BaseScreen$1.tick(BaseScreen.j ava:30)
at com.tivo.hme.sdk.util.Ticker.run(Ticker.java:143)
Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Open quote is expected for attribute "http-equiv" associated with an element type "meta".
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService.getN ewReleases(BlockbusterService.java:575)
... 4 more


I also installed the java version of galleon and the native version.

[cpucrash0]

so does anyone know what's wrong? I posted the log info but nobody replied to my question.

[s2kdave]

cpucrash,
Get the 0.2 version I just put up. 0.1 was pointing at the old beta site which no longer exists because they went live with it recently. 0.2 should work with the native version of galleon.

Let me know if you are having problems.

David

[rigger29]

Found a bug. Whenever I put galleon all in a group when launching blockbuster the screen is all black with white writing. everything works but the graphics are gone. when I take galleon out of group mode its back to normall

[rigger29]

For some reason Im unbale to add movies to my queu. it give me "an error accoured while trying to add " movie title " to your queu. anybody having this problem?

[s2kdave]

For some reason Im unbale to add movies to my queu. it give me "an error accoured while trying to add " movie title " to your queu. anybody having this problem?

Yeah, blockbuster changed their site. It should be fixed in version 0.6.1. Are you using that?

David

[rigger29]

yep that worked. but im still unable to see my recommendation or browse catagories

[s2kdave]

yep that worked. but im still unable to see my recommendation or browse catagories

hmm, mine seems to work. But I'm using galleon 2.3.0 though. It's quite possible that some of the third party libraries don't work well with my app. Can you check the wrapper.log file to see if there are any exceptions or logs in there? When you go to the browse menu item does it show you the categories like Action, etc? Or is it after that once you select a category that you get an empty screen?

David

[rigger29]

yes it shows my the catagories but when i select one the screen is blank. im also using galleion 2.3.0

[rigger29]

dType.contentId=tivo, version=8.3-01-2-649}
03:32:50,916 INFO [Acceptor] HDApplication - Current resolution is: Resolution[width=640,height=480,aspectNumerator=1,aspectDenominator=1]
03:32:50,924 INFO [Data Ticker] BlockbusterService - logging in user *hidden for security***...
03:32:51,321 INFO [Data Ticker] BlockbusterService - syncing movie queue...
03:32:55,680 INFO [Data Ticker] BlockbusterService - getMovieCategories
03:33:00,319 INFO [Acceptor] BrowseCategoryScreen - Browsing movies in category Category=[actionAdventure/actionComedy:Action Comedy:0]
03:33:00,319 INFO [Acceptor] BlockbusterService - browse Category=[actionAdventure/actionComedy:Action Comedy:0]
03:33:00,319 INFO [Acceptor] SearchResultsLoader - Resuming background search results loader.
03:33:00,319 INFO [Data Ticker] BlockbusterService - getListingDetails page=1
03:33:00,886 ERROR [Data Ticker] BaseScreen - An error occurred when loading the data.
java.lang.NoSuchMethodError
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService.getL istingDetails(Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService.acce ss$000(Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.blockbuster.BlockbusterService$Brow seResultsImpl.load(Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.SearchResultsList.loadPage(Unk nown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.SearchResultsList.prepareLoad( Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.MovieListScreen.loadData(Unkno wn Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.BaseScreen$3.tick(Unknown Source)
at com.almilli.movierentals.tivo.BaseScreen$2.tick(Unknown Source)
at com.tivo.hme.sdk.util.Ticker.run(Unknown Source)
03:33:01,320 INFO [master] BlockbusterService - getListingDetails page=1
03:33:06,287 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - connection to receiver closed
03:33:06,287 INFO [Acceptor] AppHost - HME receiver disconnected

[s2kdave]

yes it shows my the catagories but when i select one the screen is blank. im also using galleion 2.3.0

Can you send me your wrapper.log and log.txt files so I can look at them? It should be under logs, but might be under bin with a strange path before it. Send it to david_almilli@yahoo.com

David

[rigger29]

its sent to your email

[s2kdave]

its sent to your email

hmmm...I still haven't received it yet.

[mchips]

I'm having the same problem as this:

I get the exact same behavior as Tivolee.
I can see the new release list, and search for movies.
I can even add a new movie to my queue and see it online from my PC afterwards.
I cannot see anything in the My Queue or Shipped lists on the app however...
Everything seems to work except My Queue and Shipped Titles with Netflix, and Your Media Library with Amazon Unbox.

I know the email and passwords are correct...

Any ideas?

Thx...

<edit>
Your Media Library with Amazon Unbox is now working... it just finally started working... but Netflix's Queue/Shipped still aren't working yet...

[rigger29]

I just tried the stand alone version and everything works, but I had to turn off norton internet security. I still want it to work using galleon version. so if i keep the standalone version got one question. what ports do i open in norton internet security. I have to turn it off to even get the system service to run. Also other standalone apps such as tivonage and xmradio have the same issues which is Firewall porblems. I search and search and no one talks about firewall issues.

[s2kdave]

I'm having the same problem as this:

Everything seems to work except My Queue and Shipped Titles with Netflix, and Your Media Library with Amazon Unbox.

I know the email and passwords are correct...

Any ideas?

Thx...

<edit>
Your Media Library with Amazon Unbox is now working... it just finally started working... but Netflix's Queue/Shipped still aren't working yet...

mchips, can you send me your log file? In standalone it will be wrapper.log, galleon would be log.txt. Are you running standalone or the galleon plugin? Also are you using 0.6.1? I fixed the Your Media Library in that version and also fixed some netflix screens where they changed the website on me.

[s2kdave]

I just tried the stand alone version and everything works, but I had to turn off norton internet security. I still want it to work using galleon version. so if i keep the standalone version got one question. what ports do i open in norton internet security. I have to turn it off to even get the system service to run. Also other standalone apps such as tivonage and xmradio have the same issues which is Firewall porblems. I search and search and no one talks about firewall issues.

rigger29, I still never got your log file. I'm almost positive it is a stray old jar file on your galleon path somehow. That's why the standalone version works, but the galleon one doesn't.

Right now it picks a pseudo random port on startup, but you can force the port number to be whatever you want by adding this to the conf/wrapper-blockbuster.conf file:

wrapper.app.parameter.3=--port
wrapper.app.parameter.4=1234

[rigger29]

rigger29, I still never got your log file. I'm almost positive it is a stray old jar file on your galleon path somehow. That's why the standalone version works, but the galleon one doesn't.

Right now it picks a pseudo random port on startup, but you can force the port number to be whatever you want by adding this to the conf/wrapper-blockbuster.conf file:

wrapper.app.parameter.3=--port
wrapper.app.parameter.4=1234

I deleted all of galleon and ensured every related to galleon was deleted then reninstalled everything and it still is not working.

[s2kdave]

do you have your CLASSPATH environment variable set? If so, what is it set to?

Also in the galleon startup log, can you look for the line that looks like this so I can see what it's set to:

15:29:53,115 INFO [Wrapper-Connection] Server - java.class.path=..

[mchips]

mchips, can you send me your log file? In standalone it will be wrapper.log, galleon would be log.txt. Are you running standalone or the galleon plugin? Also are you using 0.6.1? I fixed the Your Media Library in that version and also fixed some netflix screens where they changed the website on me. Thanks for getting back to me...

Everything started working yesterday... I didn't change anything, it just began working... the first two days it wouldn't list anything for My Queue/Shipped, then all of sudden yesterday, it began working... I have no clue why it didn't work at first, and/or why it's working now... but it is working now...

Great plug-in for Galeon (I'm running Galeon v2.3.0, btw)... Kudos! :up: