[mythtv-users] Got streaming radio working with my remote in mythTV - how I did it.

Michael Hill mikehillny at yahoo.com
Tue May 20 10:47:33 EDT 2003


Last night after an hour of playing around I got some internet radio stations
playing on my mythTV box.  
I am using mythTV 0.8 and mythvideo 0.8. The general idea is to put pls files
in your mythvideo startdir and run them in mythvideo.  
The trick is configuring mplayer to quit from the remote, in other words LIRC. 
Details of how I did it below -
the only catch is I needed a free button on my remote.  This is not the most
elegant solution, but it works good enough for me until
someone finishes or modifies a module supporting internet radio.

1. Install mplayer.  You might as well install the nuppelvideo patch while you
are at it:

2. Install mythvideo. edit the /usr/local/share/mythtv/mythvideo-settings.txt
file.
	edit your startdir.  for this example ill be using /var/mythvideo
	copy one of the file type lines and paste it.  Edit avi_helper,mpg_helper, etc
and change to pls_helper
	add pls to the bottom.

3. Go and get the .pls file for whichever radio station you want to listen to. 
I used www.kexp.org save the pls file from the site into your stardir.  My
int_radio_kexp.pls looks like this:
[playlist]
NumberOfEntries=1
File1=http://kexp-mp3-2.cac.washington.edu:8000/

4. Verify that mplayer will play it from the command line:
	cd /var/mythvideo
	mplayer int_radio_kexp.pls

CTRL-C out	
[edit your mplayer settings if it does not work - IE http proxy]

5. You should be able to connect and play the playlist from inside of mythTV,
but you cannot exit without killing mplayer.

6. Edit your .lircrc to have mplayer exit on a keypress.  I added the
following:
begin
    button = RECALL
    prog = mplayer
    config = quit
end

	If you don't like the standard location for the lirc-config file (~/.lircrc)
use the -lircconf <filename> option to specify another file.
	Now when you stop and re-start irxevent, lircd should stop mplayer with your
new remote button RECALL.  Mplayer does not need to be the program in focus.
	
7. That should fix the mythvideo from hanging.  You can select an internet
radio station playlist and it will start playing, to stop it, use your mapped
mplayer quitting button.  
	mplayer will exit and mythvideo gets the focus back.  Worked for me at least.
	
I was just sharing one way I got it to work.  With the keyboard only you would
have to alt-tab to the window with mplayer and ctrl-c it.  I guess you could
write a script that fires off when a button certain key is pressed.

I would love to figure out how to get a picture file to display, or a
visualization like mythmusic.
I was thinking I might re-install mplayer with the gui and see if at least that
would show up and give more output to the screen.


Feel free to email me with questions or improvements while we wait for a real
[compiled] solution.

Thanks to everyone working on this project, good work!  - mike


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