Automatic upload of streaming broadcast video playlists (1 Viewer)

Vulture

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January 14, 2006
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Hello,

This is my first post, but I've been using Mediaportal for a while now.
I'm working on a small program to automatically update some playlists I use. Perhaps some people want to discuss the functionallity of it so I can make it usefull for other people.

It can be possible that this item is only of use for people in the Netherlands, but if so, we will find out.

A while ago I found this link:

http://nolanparty.com/mediaportal.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11730

from Jabnet where he presents a webradio playlist to be used as a list of streaming video. The list is updated frequently and I found it to be very usefull.
I live in the Netherlands and there are some websites here that present archived broadcasted television programs. (like 'uitzending gemist' (trans: missed broadcasts) These websites all used integrated media players and lacked a usefull interface to connect to for automatic capturing of the lists.

The I found this site:

http://www.pczapper.nl/

It's a website of a product called PCZapper. That's a piece of software that makes it able to view photo's, video and streaming media from the internet (didn't we also have such a program?). It doesn't use tv-cards.
This program can connect to a website at PCZapper.nl to get a list of collected streaming media from the internet. This list consists of a couple of xml files, that together form a menu system of streaming links.

I wrote a program that connects to this website, collects the entire tree of xml links and enables you to use these links to create .pls files that can be used in the webradio module of Mediaportal.

It's not completely finished yet, but it should be able to schedule this collection to have an updated list of links to the channels you're interested in every day or so.

Here is a list of the main links menu (all the submenu's have archived content of the tv channel).

Publieke Omroep
RTL
Talpa
SBS Sport
Omroep Flevoland
Omroep Brabant
RNN7

The program is written in Visual Basic .net 2005 (I have no experience with C# at the moment).

I would like to know if someone can tell me if there should be any problems if I used the website data from PCZapper.nl (the website is publically available) and if there were perhaps other websites like this with the same content menu system (perhaps the product is sold in other countries by a different name).
I believe the product called 'Palm Butler' is the same product.

Perhaps some people can tell me if they would find use for this program

thanks

Martijn
 

Aztec

New Member
January 23, 2006
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Hi Vulture,
Well, I was just looking for that exactly when i visited the forum tonight ;)
I have used Palm Butler for a while, which is now called pczapper. I want to use Media Portal in the future, so i would indeed find use for such a program.
greets
 

onkl

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February 18, 2005
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This sure is an idea with potential.
It might be good to add it to the TV plugin. Not because it *is* TV, but because it is *used* like TV.
My concept would be that there is a button in the main TV section "online media", giving access to a menu build out of a private (settings) of a public (server?) xml/library file. This file may contain both standard links as querying tools for both global content providers (Creative commons etc, CNN, BBC) as regional providers (for the netherlands "uitzending gemist" would be a logical start)
What might be interesting is to get the developers interested by building a small showcase at the public developing list.
Using the PCZapper data may or may not be legal, but the actual downloading is done by the end-user, so I think there is no problem for you as a programmer (there might be for you as a user, though I doubt anyone cares). Refer to the recent debate in the forum on the scraping of IMDB and their rules.

If you need some help building a showcase, let me hear, or just post your ideas. Do note that LordMessi allready wrote an idea for online services, with some overlap with this idea.
 

Vulture

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January 14, 2006
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onkl,
I thought about making a plugin for this, but at this point, I think it's a bit out of my league. I'm not familiair with C# (might give it a go...), but have experience with vb.net.
I will finish my program and find a way to make it available (have no webspace) to others. I think that's the best way of getting feedback about the program and about the possibillity of creating a full plugin.

about integrating it with the existing tv plugin or teaming up with other "web tv" services is another thing.
I think it would be possible, only all the services use different types of xml formats or different types of html pages, etc.
I think xmltv shows that it's possible, only you would have to create a different connector for each service.

perhaps some discussion is in place?
 

Vulture

Portal Member
January 14, 2006
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Hi,

I finished the program (initial release) today.

perhaps someone wants to try it?

I don't have any webspace to publish this, but if you send me a mail
vultureonline(at)gmail.com
I can send the program to you.

perhaps someone with some spare webspace (the file is only 444 kb).
It runs on .net 2.0, but so is MP, so no installation extras there.
 

laeb66

Portal Pro
March 20, 2005
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Sweden
Intresting

I gone see if a can constibut to this topic...

We run 6 stream on th demand servers at my company... Gone have a chat with the people work with it..
 

onkl

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February 18, 2005
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Tried it and... Great.

For those not in the Netherlands: This is the useful part of internet TV. Imagine listings containing (e.g.)
All programs of yesterday
All programs per station of the last few days
An archive for various programs
Listings for more or less important news events.
Various genre listings etc.

Vulture, in all my enjoyment, two points of improvement:
The source contains a structure of subdirectories. You also present a tree in the program. However, all playlists are created in the export directory itself. Since MP can handle subdirectories in it's stream directory, it might be useful to create new dirs, named just like the treeview entries in your program.
And name the playlists like the <Name> element of the parent.
So not: Streamdir\Omroep_AVRO.pls but Streamdir\Publieke Omroep\Omroep\AVRO.pls This to avoid very long lists of pls files.
Second: Maybe a commandline option like pczapper2.exe /auto to let it just download the newest listings and automaticly close. (possibly run minimized?) To put in Windows' startup, for fresh listings every day.
But, even if you don't find spare time/ interest in my suggestions, thanks anyway.
 

Vulture

Portal Member
January 14, 2006
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onkl,

thanks for the feedback.
I wasn't aware of the functionality of the sub-dirs.
that's a very functional addition.
I will look into that.

for the other thing.
the main function of this program is to automatically create the playlists everytime you run it with the config file from the command prompt.
(it's in the help text). so if you create a config file with just the items you want, you can run the program (scheduled) with this config file to redownload all the items you want. (if you selected a tree-branch, it will put the parent container in the config file and update everything that's underneeth it, even if new items appear in time.)

if you didn't meant this functionallity, please explain some more.

thanks

Martijn

P.S. I found that the pczapper was formerly called palm butler and was introduced in Denmark.
are there no people in Denmark that can supply me with a url that shows the same content from the Danisch television (or other countries)?
 

Vulture

Portal Member
January 14, 2006
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I tried some other things with the url's.
if you use this url:

http://www.pczapper.tv/cgi-bin/index.cgi

you get more links.
(and the creation of the tree will take longer).

I also found this website with extra links on it.

http://www.pczapper.tv/containers/

there are also links for other countries (Scandinavian countries, Germany, UK, etc.).
but not all links work with the program, not all links are interresting and some links work in circles (so the program wil continue to generate the tree...)

I'm working on some little improvements...
 

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