[mythtv-users] watching recordings on windows via samba share to myth box

[thunderducks]

I thought I would share this hack in case anyone else was looking to do this:
I've installed the VLC client on my laptop and was happy with the way
the way recordings played via the samba share to my recordings
directory.  The one thing that was missing for me was a decent
description of the hard to decipher file names.  Enter the mythweb
recordings page which has a beautiful layout of your recordings with
descriptions etc. So I thought, why not hack the php code to redirect
to local samba file - so here's the process I went through to get that
done.


1. on the windows machine I installed the latest version of VideoLan
Client (vlc)  www.videolan.org
2. on the windows machine I registered a new protocol called vlc.  I
did this by creating a new key using regedit that points anything with
the vlc: prefix to the vlc viewer. Here is the structure of the new
key:
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT]
   [vlc]
       (Default) = "URL:vlc Protocol"
       URL Protocol = ""
       [DefaultIcon]
           (Default) = "vlc.exe"
       [shell]
           [open]
               [command]
                   (Default) = "c:\Program Files\videolan\vlc\vlc.exe" " %L"

3. On the myth side, I edited the recorded_progams.php (buried in a
themes directory).  I only changed the line that creates the image
link(it's buried in an if statement that determines creates a URL for
the image if you have that feature turned on) - I figure that way if I
still want to download the program I can just click on the description
and it will still function as the author intended.  So comment out the
original image tag and replace it with something like this(you'll need
to adjust for the name of your samba share and the directory that your
recordings are stored in):
echo '<a href="vlc:\\\\Mythtv\\video\\recordings\\'.basename($show->filename).'">'

once again, just for reference, Mythtv is the name of my box and my
recordings are in /video/recordings/ - so you'll need to adjust
accordingly.

Anyway, just a little hack I thought I'd throw out there in case
anyone else was looking for something similar.  I've had success with
it on 3 different windows machines so far.  I'm not a programmer or
anything, so please let me know if there was an easier way to do this
that I missed.

Kent