List of useful TV/Radio URLs for use with UbuStream plugin

[ubu]

It seems that many people are looking for places to get the URLs for streaming internet TV and Radio stations to use with the UbuStream plugin. I'm starting this thread as a place where we can share our favourite web stations and/or links to favourite aggregation sites.

I'll start the ball rolling with this link to the Resources page on my UbuRemote site which has a list of useful links for streaming media fans.

The UbuStream plugin is discussed in this thread and may be found on the GBPVR wiki.

[ydekmekji]

Thanks Ubu--I looked at your resource page, and there is an overwhelming list of sites. I have no idea where to start, so folks, if there are sites that you particularly like and/or site, please share!

[ubu]

Thanks Ubu--I looked at your resource page, and there is an overwhelming list of sites. I have no idea where to start, so folks, if there are sites that you particularly like and/or site, please share!

Yes, it does seem a bit overwhelming if you haven't investigated internet broadcasts before. However you will find that a lot of the links fall into these categories:

• broken or out of date links
  
• local government live webcasts (watching the proceedings of the city council of "SmalltownUSA" can be pretty exciting )
  
• rather tedious exclusively religious stations
  
• streams in languages you don't speak (wish I spoke Spanish, for instance)
  
• stations that broadcast low speed streams for dial-up users (or something - they look terrible on your TV screen - BBC 24 and Pulse24 from Canada are examples).

After eliminating these, the list is a bit smaller.

I've included a few of my favourite stations in the sample UbuStream.xml file (NASA TV, Research TV, Annenberg TV, UN TV - mainly educational/documentary stuff - also some radio stations I listen to).

For old movies and TV shows, I like America Free TV (although you need Quicktime to view their streams and the free version of Quicktime does not support fullscreen viewing) and Webranger.net TV (now mysteriously renamed retrovision.tv - view the page source to get the URLs for the streams). I'm also fond of Daytona Beach Live TV for its wierd and wacky programming. It's one of the earliest internet TV stations and it's still run by one guy who keeps it streaming 24x7.

My perennial favourites were BBC World TV and Deutsche Welle TV, both of which have stopped their free streams for US viewers (see my kvetching in the main UbuStream thread). They may still be available if you are outside the US - not sure. I'm still looking for an alternate site that streams live European and World news but have not found one yet.

[dinki]

As a note of interest, the folks over at the Media Portal forum are compiling a pretty good list of stations. They seem to update it pretty frequently. You can see it here:

http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/viewto...highlight=

The updated 'playlists' are located in the first post. Perhaps a simple conversion program to go from MP format to GBPvr format (if necessary) would be a cool project if someone finds this list useful...

[ubu]

Interesting. You wouldn't happen to know what format the Media Portal plugin uses? From the MP thread, it looks like they are using a standard pls format. I'm looking into adding an "Import playlist" capability to the UbuStream plugin so I'm considering formats such as m3u, pls, etc.

The actual stations in the playlists in the MP thread pretty much confirm that it's hard to find good streams in English. You have to wade through a lot of streams devoted to local goverment, community colleges, cult religions, shopping, etc. before you find the "gold". Internet TV seems to be more evolved in Europe for some reason, judging by the plethora of intriguing sounding Dutch, Spanish, etc. stations.

[dinki]

Internet TV seems to be more evolved in Europe for some reason, judging by the plethora of intriguing sounding Dutch, Spanish, etc. stations.

Which is a good thing for a person like me who is learning Spanish!

I can't provide any additional information about the playlists.

[dinki]

Are you actively working on adding the playlists? Could you possibly add the ability to add 'folders'. In the case of the MP playlist, I think it is fomatted with a '[Stream Type Folder][Station Name]Title of the stream' format. Thus all Spanish stations could be accessed through the Spanish 'folder' rather than scrolling through tons of stations to get to the one you want.

Thanks for the cool plugin btw. I use it daily.

[ubu]

Are you actively working on adding the playlists? Could you possibly add the ability to add 'folders'.

Depends what you mean by "actively" . I'm working with cgmt to provide an import capability for m3u/pls playlists (see this thread). I'm also planning on adding the ability to organize stations in "groups" (same idea as folders) so you can toggle between views filtered by them (like the Audio, Video, All Stations view filters work today).

In the case of the MP playlist, I think it is fomatted with a '[Stream Type Folder][Station Name]Title of the stream' format. Thus all Spanish stations could be accessed through the Spanish 'folder' rather than scrolling through tons of stations to get to the one you want.

It gets more complicated if I allow a station to be in more than one group (it might be in "Spanish" but also in "Old Movies"). Do you think that's a "must have" or do you think having each station only be in one group is adequate?

Thanks for the cool plugin btw. I use it daily.

You're welcome.

[dinki]

It gets more complicated if I allow a station to be in more than one group (it might be in "Spanish" but also in "Old Movies"). Do you think that's a "must have" or do you think having each station only be in one group is adequate?

One station per group would be fine by me. Couldn't the user just duplicate the station in a second group manually if they needed to have it in two groups?

[ubu]

One station per group would be fine by me. Couldn't the user just duplicate the station in a second group manually if they needed to have it in two groups?

The issue is more about how to depict this relationship in the UbuStream.xml file. If I simply add an editional sub-element to the existing <Channels> element, you get one group per station. Period. To support stations being in more than one group I'd have to create a whole new section (<Channel Groups>) with a one-to-many relationship back to <Channels>. More flexible but more work.