New utility - adds web stream TV channels to GBPVR

[ubu]

so i thought up an alternative interface...

Thanks for your great feeback and thought-provoking ideas. Sorry about the broken link. Well caught! I've fixed it.

Can't think what's causing your command line problem:confused:. UbuStreamCmd reads the player's executable path from the xml "table" and passes it to Process.Start (which doesn't like quotes around the path. Long filenames seem to be fine (paths starting with C:\Program Files, for instance). The url and other parameters are passed to Process.Start unchanged except that the quotes are stripped off and {fullscreen} replaced with the correct argument for the player. Since I'm focussing on live streams here, I haven't used long filenames in the url parm (It should work fine - it works in my other program, Ubu Remote, but I figured that GBPVR users would use MyVideos or Video Library for playing video files). If you let me have the exact command you are trying to get UbuStreamCmd to run, maybe I'll get a clue.

just make custom plugin buttons to launch each channel and don't need the external recorder plugin...

Very intriguing. I'd thought about doing something like this but decided against it for my first cut of UbuStreamCmd for two reasons:

1) I wanted (as a GBPVR user) to have streaming channels behave just like any other channels, as seamlessly as possible, so I could use my remote to switch channels without really "caring" whether it was a cable or an internet source. I didn't want to have to go to a separate sub-system off the main menu.
(btw - if you set up a couple of buttons on your remote to send "Alt-F4, Alt-F4,Ctrl-W" and "Alt-F4, Alt-F4,Home" you can go straight from watching a streaming channel to either the prev channel or to the GBPVR menu - makes the whole experience much smoother. It works when the player can't open the streaming channel too - the first Alt-F4 closes the player's error dialog window and the second closes the player.)

2) It was rather simple for me to carve off a small piece of functionality (and code) from my existing app, Ubu Remote. Whereas, to implement it as a plugin, I would have had to get my head around the GBPVR plugin framework and widget library (I admit to a modicum of laziness here - I realize that I'm going to have to bite that bullet eventually anyway).

Nonetheless, I would like to have a shot at doing the plugin approach. Mainly a matter of time/bandwidth. I imagine that the player execution & parm parsing code currently in UbuStreamCmd would be integrated into the new plugin so the current UbuStreamCmd.exe would go away. UbuStreamConfig could be implemented as a plugin config window from GBPVR config (which would be much cleaner).

It did occur to me that similar functionality is, in fact, already available simply by hanging a Custom Task on the main menu that would invoke Ubu Remote, which already has the features you would need (menu of stations, "Play" and "Kill" buttons to start and stop players, fullscreen toggle, etc.) as well as an integrated database of stations, urls and descriptions (wouldn't need UbuStreamConfig any more) and a button to bring up program listings in a web page (gives you ersatz Guide funcionality). The downside to this is that Ubu Remote has a different look and feel (and conceptual paradigm) from GBPVR. If you take a look at the screenshots on the Documentation pages of the Ubu Remote site, you'll see what I mean. Currently the Ubu Remote user interface is more mouse than keystroke oriented so I'd have to tweak it a bit to support using a remote (not too hard - handy feature anyway). Right now the Ubu Remote console window sort of is the remote control for sending commands to Ubu servers. But, if you just run the console in "local" mode, it should work fine as a Custom Task. I'll try it out tonight.

But that solution still doesn't have the GBPVR look and feel, isn't skinnable and can't take advantage of GBPVR services. Rewriting it as a plugin means maintaining two code bases - one for GBPVR, one for standalone. Not signing up for that! Ideally, (thinking as I write) Ubu Remote code components should be restructured so that they can sit in either a GBPVR wrapper or a stand-alone wrapper.

You've certainly given me something to chew on.

..and hard to select a channel when there's no listing from the guide...

I'm trying to figure out how to put dummy programs into the guide for the streaming channels. They show up in the guide (right?) but there's no program to select. What would be really nice is to have the mini-guide display while watching a streaming channel. But switching focus from the player to GBPVR and then back again seems a bit tricky.

i wonder if anything can play Flash files?

The only external player I know of is FLVPlayer. The author also has an interesting write up on how call the Flash external API from C# on the Code Project site. I have thought of adding Flash capability to Ubu Remote but that app is really more focussed on live streams (broadcast TV model) than on video on demand (pay per view model). I want to avoid bogging Ubu Remote down with too many extraneous features (and keep its essential stark elegance).

but will only work on streams vlc can read..

Actually mplayer will do this too (and it supports some RealMedia streams which the VLC folks continue to studiously ignore).

[jsteele]

I've been experimenting with this for an hour or so and cannot get it to work from GBPVR.

I defined BBC World Service as channel 80 (my last cable channel is 75). I ran the UBU config and set this channel for BBC and verified the locations of the various player programs.

In the Recording Source I have External Recorder plugin which is configured as:
Executable: C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\UbuStreamCmd.exe
Recording Parameter: {channel} <-- I've tried with and without this
Preview Parameter: {channel} "{fullscreen}"

EPG: None
Channel Changer: No channel changer required

If I go the GBPVR directory and run "UbuStreamCmd 80 "{fullscreen}" the BBC service opens in the Media Player. However if I try to select channel 80 from LiveTV nothing happens.

I must have something misconfigured but I'm sure I don't know what at this point.

[ubu]

You seem to be doing everything right. If it works from the command line, it should work from GBPVR. The only thing I can think of is this:

When you created the new Capture Source, you defined the new channels, giving them essentially arbitrary channel numbers (lets say you assigned BBC World to channel 80). Now you would have closed the GBPVR config app so it would save the new channels. When you ran the config app again, the new channels would have showed up on the Channels tab but GBPVR would have assigned them to the next "free" channel numbers. So, if your last cable channel was 75, it would have assigned BBC World to channel 76. If you want to use the channel numbers you originally specified you have to change them on the Channels tab. So you may find that you can already get BBC World to play by selecting 76 from GBPVR live tv. If so, you just have to change it from 76 to 80 on the Channels tab and it should work the way you expect.

Btw - I don't think the Recording Parameters field makes much difference at this point since you are using UbuStreamCmd to watch live TV. It's the Preview Parameters field that is used for this (and yours looks to be correct).

Hope this helps. Let me know if it doesn't.

[jsteele]

ubu

Absolutely right, that's what happened. I adjusted them and it works. Thanks

[xxalexx]

I'm just new to gbpvr and not have a tv tuner and decided to try your little add in. It works when i used the ubustreamcmd directly.But when it was executed through gbpvr it still play on mplayer but the gbpvr will terminate due to the error below.

[ubu]

If it works from the command line, it should work from GBPVR. The message you are getting indicates some "unexpected" condition within gbpvr.exe itself, so I'm wondering if there is something wrong with your GBPVR or ExternalRecorder installation. Without a capture card, this is hard to check but you could:

a) check the gbpvr log for more specific messages about the error you encounter.

b) check that ExternalRecorder is working by setting up an ExternalRecorder capture source pointing to mplayer and with your stream URL "hardcoded" in the parameters. If you can get this to work but are still experiencing problems with UbuStreamCmd, let me have screenshots of your ExternalRecorder config and UbuStreamConfig definitions. (I'm working on the next version of UbuStreamCmd which produces a proper diagnostic log, which will make it easier to debug this kind of problem).

[d508dq]

Have just installed GBPVR v0.96.12

Am very interested in UbuStream, so tried to get this working.

I can't get External Recorder plugin to appear in the list of plugins. Tried RSS feed plugin and that works fine. I'm new to GBPVR so perhaps I'm doing something wrong.

[SuperG]

I'm just new to gbpvr and not have a tv tuner and decided to try your little add in. It works when i used the ubustreamcmd directly.But when it was executed through gbpvr it still play on mplayer but the gbpvr will terminate due to the error below.

This will happen when GBPVR can't find a capture device. ( I learned this just last night when my capture device went AWOL.

[ubu]

I can't get External Recorder plugin to appear in the list of plugins.

ExternalRecorder doesn't show up in the list of plugins in GBPVR config. Instead, after installing it, simply go to the Capture Sources tab, select Add and you'll find ExternalRecorder shows up as one of the Recording Sources to choose from. You need to do this to define UbuStream as a capture source (this is documented in the readme file that comes with UbuStream).

UbuStream uses ExternalRecorder to play internet streams but you can use ExternalRecorder for many other purposes. Check out its documentation (such as it is )

I'm about to release a new version of UbuStream as a proper plugin. It will allow you to play internet video and audio from a list accessed from the GBPVR main menu (similar to Video Library) but will also support using it with ExternalRecorder so you can treat the streams as "regular" GBPVR channels (and generate an XMLTV program guide so you can select the channels from TV Guide). Watch this space.

[d508dq]

Ubu,

Thank you... sorry, I completely misunderstood the readme file when I first read it... and there's some info on the wiki (re. ExternalCapture plugin) that confused me.

I'll try again!

Cheers.