Support for external player options for recorded show playback.

[lstepnio]

I'm using Zoomplayer Professional for all of my media playback on my HTPC. The primary reasons for using Zoomplayer is that the PQ and stability are unmatched and that the family is most comfortable with a single UI for control of playback.

I've been using GB-PVR to record HD shows on a 24/7 desktop/workstation with the GB recordings directory shared via the network to the HTPC. I've been using the web interface to schedule and manage recordings. This setup has some limitations and I would ideally would like a 2nd GB-PVR "client" installation on the HTPC. This would allow me to use the GB-PVR interface to schedule and manage recording while still being able to use ZP for playback. I'm have no plans to use LiveTV as my HD STB is a better solution for LiveTV.

TVedia supports using a 3rd party media player.
SageTV supports using a 3rd party media player.

I've pretty much settled into making GB-PVR work as solution and this is one of the features I'm really missing. I'm offering a donation of $79.95 (SageTV license cost) for this feature to be added to GB-PVR.

[sub]

Sorry, I wont be adding support for third party players. I'd rather spend that time improving GB-PVR's player.

[lstepnio]

Sorry, I wont be adding support for third party players. I'd rather spend that time improving GB-PVR's player.

That's a major bummer but I can certainly appreciate that. Either way, I donated some cash since it's still a great program.

Do I have any options or work-around suggestion for what I'm asking for? Is there any known plugin that might be able to support this function, possibly if added to the plugin? I'm really open to any suggestions. I assume the code that handle launching media is closed and isn't something I could crank out myself?

I hate to sound desperate here but it seems that adding this as a hidden feature to the configuration file wouldn't take that many cycles. The code to launch a program with the UNC path to the recording would be trivial. Is there anything I could do to change your mind?

[sub]

There is no built in stuff you could tweak to acheive this, but I seem to remember the MyVideos plugin allowed for external players. This plugin isnt being developed anymore, but I'm sure you'll be able to find a copy somewhere here.

[lstepnio]

I actually got my hopes up with MyVideos plugin before when I searched the forums for any solution supporting an external player.

"GBPVR v0.92.08 to v0.96.x (wont work with anything newer than 0.96.)"



The other feature I missed mentioning is that I have a 1080p display and I have my HTPC setup with a virtual resolution to compensate for overscan. This virtual resolution is ideal for desktop use as it maintains 1:1 pixel mapping with no overscan but isn't ideal for video playback. I have ZP setup to automaticly switch resolution to the full 1080p when going fullscreen.

I don't mean to sound in any way rude, I appreciate the time and effort you put into this. It's absurd you're not charging as it's my opinion that this is the best windows PC PVR solution.

[dark_half]

There was a newer version of MY Videos that was Beta that worked with the newest version of GBPVR.

[sub]

"GBPVR v0.92.08 to v0.96.x (wont work with anything newer than 0.96.)"

The situation with the MyXxxx plugins were a bit strange. The author wanted to distribute new versions from his website instead of putting them on the wiki, so the wiki versions of this are old. The author has now abandoned work on these plugins, and removed them from his site, but another user will probably have them and be able to send them to you. I've seen similar requests in the 'plugin and skin support' forum, so you should be able to tack your request onto one of those threads.

[lstepnio]

I really appreciate the help. I'll dig around to see what I can find and figure out.

[wtg]

I too wish we had this ability, for two reasons: 1) to avoid some of of the headaches associated with DirectShow and 2) to handle unsupported file types.

There's little included in GB-PVR for debugging and correcting DirectShow decoder problems and I don't of any other good software for this either. Myself and many others have at some point found playback of video and audio to have no problems in external applications but to have issues within GB-PVR. Today we're forced to dig for the underlying DirectShow problem which often isn't easy or quick, where if we could configure the use of an external player we could at least do so at our leisure. And while I know the DirectShow problems aren't GB-PVR's fault, many others don't and don't have the tech skills to diagnose the DirectShow troubles themselves. It would just be nice to have the external player as an option.

Playing back file types that aren't handled by WMP and DirectShow, like QuickTime or Google Video, would be a real benefit too. Now we have to jump through all kinds of complicated hoops to transcode the videos to a format GB-PVR supports.

[lstepnio]

FYI, I made another request for RSS feeds of recordings which was released.

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=24316

This might help some folks with using GB-PVR as a server and using the RSS feeds to populate a client. I'm going to look into taking the RSS feeds into TVedia which is my primary front-end on my client HTPC.