Netflix Watch Now beta

[whurlston]

Working on it now. I was hoping to have them as simple menu buttons instead of a popup but it makes the menu list too long. I'm looking for a way to limit the number of buttons in the menu before I bug sub about it.

[rachnjake]

Ok, from a user perspective.....
Since the cancel download and update list buttons are less used, they could be nested within the Download button (or other)

If you add genre buttons, then having the Film button to list "all" would be too redundant, so replace it with one of the genres instead.

The TV movies only totals 47, so combine (or nest) the series and movies together.

Top 50, although cool, would be too short for its own button (without doing the pop-ups that you are shying away from). Maybe just do the top 100 (for starters).

...... and my personal favorite, the ability to sort each genre by user rating (default by name) once you open a list .... only because that's sometimes the best way to pick a movie when you are not looking for a specific title (ie. click "Action/Thrillers", click "sort by rating").

The best part about this plugin was showing my folks who rave about their lousy 'Dish" DVR...... "hey ma.... can you do this with your DVR?"
....look... 3800 movies at the push of the button

[whurlston]

I will be making all the buttons configurable. Meaning you can disable the ones you don't want in the config.

As for the Top 50/Top 100, the Top 50 is actually the Top 50 Watch Now titles so it will always have 50. The Top 100 is the top 100 DVD rentals and may only have 20 movies that are available for Watch Now. And they may not match the movies in the top 50.

This is the list that the Top 50 would pull: http://www.netflix.com/WatchNowTopPicks?...h_sc_top50

TV series and movies will be nested together in the "Television" genre but I prefer them separated so those categories will still be available as well. Again, user configurable.

More sort options are in the works.

[whurlston]

Ok, I give up on listing the categories as menu buttons. I can get it to work for remote and keyboard but not mouse. Category selection will have to be a popup.

[thetmaxx]

great plugin!!! I'm lovin' it!!

my friend was just over the other day braging about how is MCE PC does netflix, and mine didn't, well now mine does!! ha ha

only a few problems...

So I'm sure the main problem is my computer only being 1ghz and only 512mb of ram, but this thing likes to lock up a lot. (so does the music player included with gbpvr.) I am running pvrx2.

Today I finished downloading a movie and tried to play and it just sat there, then i hit the up/down buttons and it flashed back to the main menu of watch now. I got it to start playing a movie last night, but the movie wasn't even close to downloaded yet. it gave me a black screen saying ready, then transcoding. then ready.

I've watched them through netflix's website with no problems. also i turned the d-load all the way down to 500kb/s.

i can't really afford to get a new processor going right now, but being the computer takes really old ram i may be able to up that a gig or so....

[whurlston]

Will the downloaded wmv file play in Windows Media Player? If not, you need to make sure Windows Media Player is set to acquire licenses automatically. Also, the first time you attempt to play the movie in WMP, it may ask for your netflix login. Once you enter your login info, all subsequent plays should work.

[thetmaxx]

I tried, and it shows it's playing, but all i get is a black screen. When it first opened it said downloading media usage rights, then download media usage rights complete. if i jump to a different part of the movie it's still black screen, and the timer still shows like it is playing. Thats really weird because usually WMP will say it cannot find the codec or something... does this use a weird codec?

Also it is set to acquire usage rights automatically, and it is WMP 11.

WMP did not ask for netflix login, I have my computer logged in and remember me selected.

[whurlston]

It sounds like it's playing fine but as you said it seems like the video decoder is missing. PM me the name of the movie and I'll test it here. I'm not sure what video codec is used on the movies because to be honest, I never really checked. My guess is it is using WMV9 though. I believe that is needed for the DRM.

Speaking of DRM, are you attempting to play this on a secondary monitor? If so, the DRM may be causing the issue.

[whurlston]

I run found an issue where some movies have multiple watch now episodes that are not handled correctly. One example is "Archives of War".

Another issue I've run into is that providing additional sort features is difficult because of the way I structured the xml list of movies.

I am able to overcome both of these issues by restructuring the xml file but that also means an fairly extensive restructuring of the plugin code. This will delay the next release by a few days. The xml file will no longer be separated into the four categories currently displayed in the menu so I will be eliminating them. There is not enough real estate on the screen to feasibly display all the genre categories so I will be including a "Favorite Categories" in the config. You will be able to select a few categories (amount depends on space available) that will be shown in the main menu. All other categories will be selected from a popup launched when selecting "Categories" from the main menu.

Current sort options planned are:
1) Title
2) Rating
3) Star Rating
4) Year
5) All of the above in reverse order.

The plan is that you will be able to cycle through these by using <CTRL-S> or the stop button on the remote. I also hope to add a default sort option. Are there any additional sort parameters that anyone would want?

[thetmaxx]

I've Pm'd you. I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling WMP, now the sound works, but still no video. I tried reinstalling netflix's movie player, still sound but no video. I'm stumped. This was for the movie 'close encounter of the third kind' and 'bullitt'.

I cannot understand why WMP would have troubles playing it's own file and codecs.