Streaming video: major re-think required

[liteswap]

I understand the difficulties re distance sub, although access through a proxy server might work around those, would you think?

[sub]

As mentioned though - that's only part of it. The bigger deal is accessing the metadata (api vs scraping), and the DRM that means I cant just get access to the audio/video streams, limiting it to playback in a browser.

[mvallevand]

If you look at the PlayOn changelog http://www.playon.tv/releasenotes it becomes pretty clear how much effort it takes to keep up with the limited number of services they support. I myself had to open two tickets with them to get Netflix.ca working last year, requiring a lot of debugging on my own time working with several of their developers. For something as simple as my WebRadio plugin I had to make 3 changes this past year just to support Shoutcast changes and there is a lot of behind-the-scene work with the Shoutcast team that many users may not appreciate. Can you imagine sub doing all that work, keeping the "rest" of the core current, and doing this for free in his spare time?

Note to be clear I am not even a fan of PlayOn, except they are able to normalize the DRM'ed Flash and Silverlight content into SD mpeg format that NextPVR supports natively on the PC, NMT and MVP clients and at least the 30 day trial is long enough to evaluate if it meets your needs.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

That was me. To be honest, I got tired of dealing with the Netflix API. They were breaking something every week.

Any chance you'll be revisiting that plugin now that you seem to have the Youtube plugin just about wrapped up? I appreciate dhgb256's efforts on his Netflix TX player, but I've never really been happy with it and much preferred your plugin when it worked.

[mikeh49]

dhbg256 has had problems with Netflix changing the APIs as well, seems about every 2-3 months. So how do Roku and the other streamers do it?

I was pretty satisfied with his program using the queue-only option where I loaded the queue from another computer, and just made selections from the queue on the HTPC. He was trying to provide the full Netflix browsing/genre/ratings experience, which seemed an almost hopeless task.

[whurlston]

Any chance you'll be revisiting that plugin now that you seem to have the Youtube plugin just about wrapped up? I appreciate dhgb256's efforts on his Netflix TX player, but I've never really been happy with it and much preferred your plugin when it worked.

At this point, I'm not sure. I don't even have a netflix account anymore due to being unemployed for 5 months now (every little bit adds up). My unemployment benefits run out next month so I will probably be tightening down even more.

[whurlston]

dhbg256 has had problems with Netflix changing the APIs as well, seems about every 2-3 months. So how do Roku and the other streamers do it?

They have a different API which they pay to use. The free API available to the general public seems to be a bastard stepchild and there has been times where the data wasn't even updated for 3 months.

...He was trying to provide the full Netflix browsing/genre/ratings experience, which seemed an almost hopeless task.

Yup. Netflix is a shining example of how not to implement an API.

[NumberFive]

I find watching iPlayer and other streaming services very easy just with a wireless HTPC keyboard and a web browser. I don't really see how integration with NPVR would be an improvement. I certainly don't think the XBMC iPlayer plugin is that good.

I also like how Music and Videos in NPVR are based on folders and not a database (as is the case for XBMC). Sure you don't get artwork and metadata scraped automatically, but in honesty I don't care because if I genuinely wanted to know something about a show I'd look it up on Wikipedia.

I actually quite like the way NPVR is focused towards broadcast TV. I think many other PVRs get too messy trying to be all things to all people. I like NPVR because sub has made it very good at what it does, and increasingly easy to install and configure!

[johnsonx42]

At this point, I'm not sure. I don't even have a netflix account anymore due to being unemployed for 5 months now (every little bit adds up). My unemployment benefits run out next month so I will probably be tightening down even more.

Sorry to hear that, I hope you're able to find a new job. If you decide you do want to work on it again, let me know and I'll send you a gift subscription for a couple of months of netflix streaming; it seems the least I could do.

[liteswap]

I find watching iPlayer and other streaming services very easy just with a wireless HTPC keyboard and a web browser. I don't really see how integration with NPVR would be an improvement. I certainly don't think the XBMC iPlayer plugin is that good.

I also like how Music and Videos in NPVR are based on folders and not a database (as is the case for XBMC). Sure you don't get artwork and metadata scraped automatically, but in honesty I don't care because if I genuinely wanted to know something about a show I'd look it up on Wikipedia.

I actually quite like the way NPVR is focused towards broadcast TV. I think many other PVRs get too messy trying to be all things to all people. I like NPVR because sub has made it very good at what it does, and increasingly easy to install and configure!

I know I can use a keyboard but I prefer my nPVR machine to be an appliance, fully operable with the remote not least because I'm not the only user - in fact I'm the only PC user in the household. It works pretty well in that regard but it does mean that I want any added functionality to follow the same principles.