New iPlayer Plugins

[ddfczm]

Hi Everyone, i spent the weekend working on some nicer iplayer plugins for myself, thought id share if anyone else wants them.

I built it with the Windows 7 SDK so i doubt it will work on Vista. It uses iPlayers WMV videos by default, if it fails to aquire that it will go to a web page with the player.

Ill put the code somewhere to soon.

PM me with any issues .

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/file/mmcwhz...p_alpha1.1.msi

Screenshots:

[HiddenCake]

This looks really good, although I can't test the actual media playback as I live in Australia. But the interface itself works really well.

I would be very interested in having a look at the code. Did you say you were going to post it? I am working on a similar program for ABC iView, which is basically the Australian version of BBC iPlayer (but much smaller), however I am really strugging with the interface side of it. I am stuck with a standard Windows Forms interface at the moment. So it would be very helpful if I was able to examine your code. I don't plan on actually using any of the code in my program, but if I did, it would all be done under the terms of the licence.


I am a bit surprised the BBC haven't made a plugin, actually, considering they have an "iPlayer Channel" on the Nintendo Wii (for the UK).

[ddfczm]

Sure thing, heres the code, sorry if its a tad messy . The useful stuff is the BaseViewMenu and Default.mcml and MenuView.mcml

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5nyjuz...Player_src.zip

[HiddenCake]

Brilliant - thanks for that! Should be very helpful in showing me the right way to go about making my interface

[jollster101]

This looks really good, although I can't test the actual media playback as I live in Australia.

That is an annoyance I have with the Beeb. My daughter loves the CBBC website and they have changed it recently and now I get the message, "Not available in your area" every time I try to play stuff for her.

Grrrrrrrrr.

[Bagal]

Thanks for taking the time to implement this, unfortunately I tried to use it last night but upon installation it didn't appear in the Extras library, I checked in the Extras library settings and it appears in the list and is checked but never appears.

I'll give it a go tonight on a different machine to see if it's specific to the first one I tried on. I've also since thought that I could probably use MediaCenterStudio to add the app to one of the existing strips and see if I can use it that way.

[muscles68]

Hi this must of took some time but it does not show up for me in mce. anywhere would you know why thanks

[ddfczm]

Hey, its set to install into a custom start menu strip called iPlayer, i tried it on my x64 Windows 7 Pro desktop and my x86 Windows 7 Home Premium netbook, seemed to appear fine.

Are you on windows 7? Maybe someone has seen similar issues before?

[HiddenCake]

I just created a shortcut to %windir%\ehome\ehshell.exe /entrypoint:{799df54e-abd6-41cd-a99f-45367b790bb5}\{89d083d5-f12d-4d63-836c-7cfff56774dd} and used that to take a look.

[Bagal]

I'm using Windows 7 x86 Home Premium on the machine with the problem, I've got a number of other machines with Win7 on so as I'll said I'll try those as well.

If that fails then I can always use the entry point shortcut provided by HiddenCake above, thanks!

[kevyn]

I have the same issue - the program works well from the Hiddencakes shortcut, but I have no icon in extras or custom strip at all.

Windows 7 Ultimate x64


edit:
I should add that I have added the icon using media center studio, and this plugin is fantastic (way better than tuner mce IMO). My only suggestion would be if you could group the shows together rather than having E01, E02 etc...

Thanks for making it!

[mrben]

Just wanted to say thanks very much for this plugin, it's great so far! Really nice interface. Showed up fine for me on its own strip on the first pc I've installed it on (Win7 Ultimate RC x86)
Buffering took ages but that's just down to my pathetic internet.. Thanks!

[Bagal]

I eventually added this in via MediaCenterStudio but then no videos would work until I saw the plugin mentioned on Neowin and someone mentioned in the comments that you needed a media player security update, after applying that all is now working fine.

The security update is here in case anyone else has this problem: http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/...en/indivit.asp

[dan13l]

I've just installed this, thought I'd share my thoughts:

First off: great piece of work. I've used plugins for XBMC, Boxee, and Tuner Free MCE to get a decent iPlayer implementation on my Media Center, and this pretty much tops the lot for an integrated solution.

Problems: I couldn't get the icon, or menu strip, to appear in Media Center at all. This is a 64bit Windows 7 machine. Like others, iPlayer appears in the extras config menu, but there's no strip or icon.

I managed to get things up and running using MediaCenterStudio. It's not immediately obvious (especially on a screen with a fairly low resolution) but there's an EntryPoints shelf at the bottom of the start menu window, and you can drag the iPlayer icon up from there. It's a two second job once you've sussed that.

That said, it'd be nice if the installer would add the icon properly...

Feedback and feature requests: For a first release, this really is excellent. That said, there are a few tweaks I'd love to see in future versions:

Grouping - currently each video is listed individually when viewing listings, it'd be far easier to navigate into a folder containing all the episodes of a particular series, and then list the individual episodes.

Saved searches - if you're looking for the same episode of something on a regular basis, it'd be great to remember previous searches so you can get back to them.

Program info - not sure if you can get this out of the iPlayer web interfaces, but being able to display more info about a program would be really nice. Things like a full description, running time, etc.

Favourites - it'd be nice to be able to mark a particular channel (or program, if they lived in their own folders) as favourites so you can get back to them quicker. You could have a favourites menu at the top of the screen along with highlights, channels, etc.

In summary: fantastic work and I look forward to future releases. Personally, I think the BBC should buy this off you and release it as their official iPlayer plugin for MCE. It's that good.

Cheers.

[clotheyes]

This is amazing - although I did also have to add it via media centre studio...

I have this running on Windows 7 x64 playing to an XBox360 - finally a workable solution for iPlayer on Xbox360 - the kids are loving on-demand CBeebies