UbuRadio 1.2 Doesn't show North America

[mkenyon2]

I have UbuRadio 1.2 in \Plugins\UbuStream\ folder. When I go into 'Find a Station', and navigate to North America, I get 'Select a Country' with an empty list.

[ubu]

That's been broken for a while. The site I'm scraping to do the Find Stations part of UbuRadio underwent some changes and I haven't had time to update the plugin code.

I originally created the UbuRadio plugin to:

a) provide a lightweight, simple interface to UbuStream's underlying stream player architecture for users that primarily use UbuStream for listening to live radio (and who were frustrated by NetRadio being confined to Shoutcast streams).

b) take advantage of a site I'd found with an exhaustive and fairly current list of internet radio stations (Mike's Radio World) to provide an easy way to add content to the plugin.

To be honest, I haven't got a huge amount of feedback to suggest the overwhelming popularity of either idea. With the UbuStream plugin taking up most of my spare time, I've tended to not bother to update UbuRadio when the web pages changed and broke the code. So I'm trying to decide whether I should:

a) Remove it from the wiki and suggest people use UbuStream instead.

b) Remove the Find Stations portion and keep it as a simple plugin for streaming audio fans who don't want to deal with the complexity of UbuStream.

c) Find another developer who would be interested in taking over the maintenance of the screen scraping code and upload a new release each time the web site restructured its pages.

If you're interested in the c) option, I'd be glad to send you the code.

[jksmurf]

I like Uburadio and used it .... vote for (d)... :confused:

k.

[ubu]

I like Uburadio and used it .... vote for (d)... :confused:

k.

LOL I share your confusion.

Are you sure you don't want to volunteer for the c) option? (You actually like the plugin, so you automatically qualify).

[mkenyon2]

Some developers fear screen scrapers...

[ubu]

Some developers fear screen scrapers...

With good reason. They're ugly.

That's why I developed the UbuRssManager component for UbuStream v2.2. Seems like screen scraping is ultimately doomed to failure because you're doing something the site owner doesn't want you to do, whereas RSS feeds are something the site owner does want you to consume so they're likely to be more stable. And RSS feed elements are presented in a nice, structured fashion (with standards and specifications and stuff) that any developer should love. (Regular expressions not required!).

Sadly, there's no RSS equivalent of Mike's Radio World that I'm aware of.

I've been mulling over a possible "option d)". I'm planing to convert my plugins to the new PVRX2 architecture so maybe I'll use UbuRadio as "the canary in the coal mine" and do a GB-PVR 1.x specific version of that before I tackle converting UbuStream. I could "fix" the North American listings while I'm at it.

[ubu]

So I fixed the screen scraping problem. It wasn't that hard, it turned out.

Check out UbuRadio v1.3 on the wiki. The Find Station feature is working again and this version will run with the new v1.0.08 release.

It's all good!

[mkenyon2]

Sweet, I'm picking stations, and I can play in Preview mode...
But...
I cannot hear anything in TimeShift mode.

[ubu]

Sweet, I'm picking stations, and I can play in Preview mode...
But...
I cannot hear anything in TimeShift mode.

Well, here's my standard response to Timeshift Play problems:

1) If the stream will play using "native" VLC (or Preview Play using VLC) then the stream is a good "candidate" for transcoding with VLC. If not, it definitely won't transcode, so won't play with Timeshift Play.
2) You may need to adjust the Wait Time on the UbuRadio setup dialog. For MVP use especially, you'll need to increase this value. 10,000 works for my system.
3) When using Timeshift Play, you should see the UbuRecordingService spawn a VLC process which will start clocking CPU cycles. If not, the stream isn't being transcoded. You can check the VLC log and query the status of the UbuRecordingService from the UbuRecordingService console dialog.

If you're still having problems playing a specific stream in Timeshift Play, let me have the URL and I'll take a look.