[Allanon]

Here is an update to the HME/VLC Video Streamer version 2.6. This update will allow you to browse and watch ShoutCast TV Video Streams from the Tivo. It has not been fully tested and does crash once in a while when the computer doesn't read the ShoutCast TV URL correctly. There is no error checking. I have had mixed results with the videos, some work well other don't. It sometimes takes multiple tries before a stream will play. Also note that I did filter out all the channels that had a NC17 rating but other adult channels might slip through so be warned.

To add this new feature just replace the __init__.py file in the hmevlc folder with the one at the bottom of this post. All the other funtionality should be the same except you will now have a ShoutCast TV menu option on the top page.


BTW, page up and down is broken.

 

[wmcbrine]

Ah, I see now. Cool stuff... good job.

BTW, page up and down is broken.

Yeah.

 

[Allanon]

It was so easy to add an xml feed that I have added 2 more. The first newly added feed is Archive Classic Movies, they have a bunch of old classic public domain videos. And the other feed is TED, they have a lot of lectures and videos on a whole range of subjects.

All the videos are MP4 so VLC is not needed. Also, I had to limit the number of videos from each feed to 256 due to technical problem in the hme.py file. Adding more files overloads a char variable. I didn't feel like searching for the problem so I just limited the number of videos.

Also, I found a website called Videocasting Station, it is filled with xml links to tons of videocast websites. If you see one you would like added to the HME/VLC Video Streamer just post here and I will do my best to add it.

To get the two new feeds plus the previous ShoutCast TV feed just replace the __init__.py file in the hmevlc folder with the one at the bottom of this post.

EDIT: I fixed a problem, the screen went blank when returning from a video in the TED video feed, it has been corrected.

 

[grantsa4]

Thanks for all the hard work Allanon. The Sports and Hobby videocast and the Technology videocast would be a great addition.

Thanks

 

[Allanon]

Thanks for all the hard work Allanon. The Sports and Hobby videocast and the Technology videocast would be a great addition.

Your requested videocasts are just sections not actual videocasts, if you click on those links you will find over 6 pages of different videocast websites. I can't add them all but select a few and I will add them. Be sure to check out the videocast's website and view a few of the videos before selecting just to make sure it's has the type of video you would want to watch.

 

[wmcbrine]

This fixes the messed up page up/down and the unintentional 256-item list limit. It also includes goodtrips' sensible suggestion to automatically try VLC if pass-through fails; however, I'm having trouble getting that to actually work, since VLC is refusing to transcode some files that it has no problem playing.

I'm not quite ready to incorporate Allanon's recent work, but I have attached a slightly updated version here. (The main 2.7 is still in the first post in the thread; this is just his modified __init__.py.)

Edit: Again, the "this" in the first paragraph refers to the full version attached to the first message in this thread, not the attachment to this message. There's no point downloading the latter without the former, which I see by the count that someone has done.

[File no longer needed -- see version 3.0]

 

[Allanon]

Version 2.7 doesn't work with the simulator, I get the "Sorry, this program is not compatible with TiVo software/hardware version." message. I'm using Windows XP and version 1.4 of the simulator. I tried with simulator 1.4 experimental but I never can get that to work with any TiVo program. The program does work with my TiVo HD.

 

[wmcbrine]

Yeah. There's a bit of code that tests for client software >= 9.4, and aborts if not. I routinely bypass this while I'm working on it, and sometimes forget to turn it back on for distribution. This time I remembered.

If you need it to work in the simulator, you can insert a "return" statement as the first statement of handle_device_info() in hmevlc/__init__.py. That's what I do.

 

[wmcbrine]

OK, I've implemented config.ini-based, generic iTunes-style RSS support. Just make a section with the name and use "rss=" to specify the URL. You can also add "needs_vlc=True" if it's needed. This feature requires Python 2.5 or 2.6, or the add-on ElementTree package for 2.4.

I've also made the Shoutcast support config.ini-based. I don't know if there are other Shoutcast TV servers out there, but if nothing else, you can use this to disable it, by removing the config.ini entry.

I added a couple more sample feeds to Allanon's. First was Tekzilla. This is actually one of the first things I viewed with my HME video streamer (before it was HME/VLC), and I was keen to start building a Video Podcast app, but I put that aside when Tekzilla appeared on TiVoCast, like, the next day. However, the TiVoCast encoding is crummy. You can see it in HD here, although it seems a little jerky (24 fps).

The other one was GeekBrief.TV. I hear people have been having problems with the TiVoCast. See if this works any better for you.

Much more to come...

 

[Allanon]

Nice, I was going to implement RSS in the config but really didn't know how to make it generic since I never worked with RSS feeds before this and each of their structures seemed different. Anyway good to have this feature. Another thing I was going to add is displaying the description of the selected RSS feed menu item when the info button is pressed. Most RSS feeds have a description field for each item . Maybe you can add this?

 

[wmcbrine]

This version uses HD for the menus and overlays, when possible. (Mainly to fit more text in.) Which is always, since it only works on S3/HD; except, it won't do it if your aspect ratio isn't set to 16:9.

 

[digger69]

Hi wmcbrine, in this post, moyekj indicated there's a limit on the stream buffer. I assumed this is why, when streaming a full length movie (xvid ~ 2gb) it stops before the end. Is that true or is there something I can do to fix this? It's not a big deal since I can pull it over w/ pytivo and then have no problem, but it's not as effecient.

I didn't see any changes related to this, so I assume audio only stream is still not supported.

Lastly, I wonder what kind of thoughts you have purcolating re: HULU to TiVo - perhaps through PlayOn or the like. Or, am I just dreamin?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Chew]

I tried this a few weeks ago, but couldn't get it to work for me.

Last night I tried again. Important tip: read through the thread first. I had a newer version of VLC installed, once I rolled back to the last 0.8 version everything's great.

I love the RSS addition. Looking forward to new additions and features. :up:

 

[digger69]

Important tip: read through the thread first. I had a newer version of VLC installed, once I rolled back to the last 0.8 version everything's great.

Thanks for the reply Chew. The wmcbrine's start of the thread indicates the 0.8.6 is the preferred build and I've been using 0.8.6.i, so I'll downgrade from i and give it a go.

 

[Chew]

I had whatever the most current version of VLC was (0.9.x), rolled back to 0.8.6i and it worked fine.

 

[wmcbrine]

VLC 0.8.6i is still 0.8.6. It's 0.9+ that's busted.

 

[wmcbrine]

Pass-through (no reencoding) support for files with the extensions ".tivo", ".m4v", ".mpeg", ".vob", and ".m2v", and better handling of RSS feeds with mixed video and non-video items.

 

[digger69]

Just tried an audio only stream and worked like a charm. Beauty...

 

[Allanon]

Just tried a 720p .m4v video and it played but it seemed to be skipping frames to keep up. It never paused and there was never a break in the sound but the video would show a few frames slowly then skip to keep up. It was very weird, the movie kept up with the sound but at the same time it looked like it the video was in slow motion. Also when I paused the video to let it buffer then played, it did the same thing. The same videos transfered and looked great when using pyTivo.

 

[wmcbrine]

Using pyTivo, it's reencoded to MPEG-2 by ffmpeg. Evidently ffmpeg is more tolerant than the TiVo. But that's what I'd expect.

There's nothing I can do about that kind of issue. You could force it to be reencoded, by naming it with a different extension; that's about it. Edit: Or, if you want all .m4v's to be reencoded, change its MIME type in start.py -- I've noticed that at least some sites label it as "video/x-m4v". Changing the type will kill the passthrough. Edit 2: Or, if this is from an RSS feed, you can just mark the feed as "needs_vlc=True" in config.ini.

I'll just add that this is not a general problem with .m4v files.