Interest in North America XM Radio/Sirius internet plugin? (3 Viewers)

[zswman]

I wish I could help you skin, but if when you are ready to beta test I would be happy to help. Great work - !

 

[bradsjm]

Questions

Hmmm, only 15 votes so far. I would have thought there would be more users than that! Must be the silent types

Questions:

1. I've got Amazon cover art searching working and I've noticed that they have better (size/quality) than Napster do so I'm thinking of flipping the search so it checks local, then Amazon and then Napster. Of course this means that you would end up with more space taken in the thumbs\album directory as you'd get larger cover images. Anyone think that is an issue?

2. What about history? Do you want to have a list of previous songs heard kept? Do you want a history for every channel or just the songs that you have heard no matter what channel? How much history should it keep and for how long?

PS: I'll let you know about testers, hopefully won't be too long before I'm ready to have something for limited testing

 

[zswman]

On point 1, will the cover art be deleted once it's no longer needed? If so, I don't think the larger file size would be a problem for most users. I would welcome the additional quality as I expect I will frequently use this with the "now playing" graphic.

On point 2, I would only care about the songs I have heard, and then no more than say 10 entries. If I'm listening and hear a song I want more info on, 10 entries gives me plenty of time to get back and review the history.

 

[jim tressler]

Re: Questions

#1 - no biggie here - I will probably turn the tv off when xm plugin is running - ie.. pipe it out to the deck - but when I am activley flipping xm channels, quality cover art would be a plus.. so go for the quality!

#2 - I guess thats kind of cool - never really thought of it, so that can go either way.. if it is a resource hog, then scrap it.. if its light - then it would be cool to have

jim

Hmmm, only 15 votes so far. I would have thought there would be more users than that! Must be the silent types

Questions:

1. I've got Amazon cover art searching working and I've noticed that they have better (size/quality) than Napster do so I'm thinking of flipping the search so it checks local, then Amazon and then Napster. Of course this means that you would end up with more space taken in the thumbs\album directory as you'd get larger cover images. Anyone think that is an issue?

2. What about history? Do you want to have a list of previous songs heard kept? Do you want a history for every channel or just the songs that you have heard no matter what channel? How much history should it keep and for how long?

PS: I'll let you know about testers, hopefully won't be too long before I'm ready to have something for limited testing

 

[GitsLM]

sorry for being silent until now just wondering if you also plan to implement a recording function. Then keeping of covver art would be awesome and even better scheduled recording like in the TV module I know probably I am asking for too much but maybe in a future version. Anyway I will appreciate any implementation of XM - so thanks a lot.

PS Thanks a lot as well for the EPG plugin, finally I am thinking of getting a decent TV card. Since I am most of the time in the US and there was no decent EPG, I did not use the TV engine this much

 

[bradsjm]

sorry for being silent until now just wondering if you also plan to implement a recording function.

Thanks for the compliments on the Zap2it plugin. Unfortunately, recording the stream is against the XM radio terms of service and it is a sore point among previous software developers of XM software (and the software that isn't available anymore for that reason) so I'd rather keep this plugin on the right side of that legal issue and available

Personally, the quality of the streams (64k WMP9) isn't IMHO that great that I'd want to record it anyway but as an ex-radio DJ (www.u93.com) I tend to be fairly critical of audio fidelity...

As for a status update, the polling code is now stable (it is responsible for keeping all the now playing information up to date) and ran overnight with no problems so I'm pretty happy there.

I've also got sorting (by channel #, channel name or category) working and filtering by genre. You can also view as a list (as in the screenshot) or small and large channel logo thumbnails. Some of the logos look awful so I'm trying to find better versions for them. Right now it doesn't delete any cover art and I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with that. I know how I want to do it but that requires a change to MediaPortal itself and I'm trying to make this plugin work with 0.2 final.

I still need to implement favorites and add some error handling dialogue boxes etc. but I'm thinking (not promising) that I'll have something you can play with in about a week or so. As always, depends on my real job...

 

[patrick]

Right now it doesn't delete any cover art and I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with that.

It may be more trouble than it is worth but maybe an
option in your settings for the max size of your cover art folder.
Then delete the oldest ones when the limit is reached (assuming
you know which cover art your plugin downloaded).

Or if you track the cover art in a database then you
could have a counter for the number of times shown
and delete the least used ones first when the max size
is reached.

I was just thinking if you left it running for a weekend
the folder size could quickly get large.


patrick

 

[bradsjm]

Unfortunately I have had no real time to work on this plugin lately so instead of making people wait I'm going to package a work-in-progress version with some caveats:

1. IT HAS NO ERROR CHECKING. If you give the wrong account information or there are any errors it may crash MediaPortal!

2. Favorites don't work

3. It doesn't clean up the cover art it downloads

4. It has only been designed using BlueTwo and will likely need to be modified to work in other skins.

On the other hand, it mostly works

http://mediaportal.nrgup.net/plugins/XMRadio.zip

Hopefully when I have time I can continue working on it.

 

[zswman]

Awwwwww ... on the very day I leave the house for a ten day business trip :-( Can't wait to get back home to try this - thanks.

 

[keitht74]

This is exactly what I've been waiting for!! I have been using Meedio for so long but this plugin is exactly what will make me switch to Mediaportal. I've always wanted a nice looking GUI that I can control via my remote. AWESOME WORK!!!