[mythtv] BBC iPlayer Plugin release / MythStreams

Richard Ablewhite richard.ablewhite at gmail.com
Wed Mar 12 09:15:02 UTC 2008


Hi,

All good suggestions, It was a rushed release as I want to concentrate
on making it work with other providers before polishing all the code
up. Next ill prob start breaking stuff so thought id stick a version
out for people to play with.

The MythStreams was a WIP name, I was going to rename it iPlayer but
then when I realised the code will work for pretty much any web
content I decided to call it streams. I might go with MythVOD, makes
more sense. Will prob move to that in the next release.

I think people arnt going to like the fact Im providing the XML file
of content myself, but I dont want everyone who uses this to run the
script that trawls through every page the beeb have on iPlayer and
grab every XML file for the content. Also the file is made by smoke
and magic (well bash and perl scripts) and id either have to rewrite
them into C++ and add them into the backend side of things, or have
people run them from cron which makes the setup so much more
convoluted.

I use the useragent notIPhoneReallyMythTV so the beeb can pick us out
(has to have the word iPhone in)

I will add support other providers, first Ill go for someone like
revision 3 as they provide some good shows in high quality streaming
formats, inevitably Ill add in youtube content, but will just go for
RSS feeds they provide, none of the searching or nowt. Any other
suggestions welcome.

I was thinking of adding support for zml.com but that might stop it
ever becoming an official plugin :(

Bugs at the moment are that the progress bar doesn't seem to update
properly, and im not sure why... It works by having a hardcoded 3meg
file size so as soon as the MPEG2 file outputted by mencoder reaches
that size it kicks the internal player into action. There is a loop
which checks the file size, and outputs it to the log and updates the
progress bar, but the bar doesnt fill up as smoothly as the file
grows, if you watch the output from mythfrontend you'll see what I
mean.

Oh, and before I started this last week I hadn't written a single line
of C/C++ so the code might not be squeaky clean...

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:39 PM, Paul Harrison <mythtv at dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
>
> Richard Ablewhite wrote:
>  > Evening,
>  >
>  > Just a quick note to say ive finished the first version of a plugin
>  > for the BBC iPlayer. It uses the streams provided for the iPhone that
>  > the beeb let loose last Fri. The plugin is based heavily on the Movie
>  > Times plugin but will develop in time.
>  >
>  > Content is downloaded and transcoded in mencoder to an mpeg2 and then
>  > that file played in myth. This is wasteful but I had problems getting
>  > the streaming file to play directly in myth (and strangely enough
>  > ffplayer/ffmpeg). Will look into it eventually.
>  >
>  > Next few versions will happen fairly soon and will bring in support
>  > for content from other providers, such as CNetTV, Revision3 content
>  > etc.
>  >
>  > Install info in the wiki
>  >
>  > http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/MythStreams
>  >
>  > Vid of it:
>  >
>  > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7eVgPMTa0g
>  >
>  > Richard Ablewhite
>  >
>  I've just given this a try and it worked fine after a few teething
>  troubles. Great work :-)
>
>  I know it's a first beta but here's a couple of things I noticed while
>  testing this.
>
>  * I think the name MythStreams is a little confusing because there is
>  already a third party plugin called MythStream.  It may in fact be
>  possible to write a stream parser or whatever they are called for
>  MythStream to do this but I do like the simplicity of this plugin and it
>  works unlike most of the parsers for MythStream when I tried it.
>
>  * You should make it clear you have to put the mythstream source
>  directory in the mythplugins directory so the correct PREFIX etc can be
>  found otherwise it will compile fine but will be installed into the
>  wrong directory.
>
>  * You don't install the playiplayer.sh script and it seems to want it
>  installed to /usr/local/bin/ it should look for the script in $PREFIX/bin
>
>  Paul H.
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