QUOTE(vanadium @ Jan 28 2007, 09:16 PM)
Thanks for pointing my .strm pack out; akaigotchi and I are actually collaborating to find additional streams to test and implement. I'm busy moving to Chicago over the next couple of weeks, but will be more active thereafter.
Absolutely true, I am already looking forward to the time, when you are finished moving (IMG:
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In any case, getting a centralized and consistently-updated *.strm pack is just what the doctor ordered. The main obstacle this project hopes to overcome -- at least, in my opinion -- is getting these streams tested.
Full ack, the problem isn't getting people to add streams, but to test them or to report them as broken. I am trying to figure out how the issue tracking system of google code works and will try to write a wiki article on that asap. BTW, I was just having an interesting talk with blittan who suggested that a python script should be written that checks via SVN lib and urllib whether a channel is still alive and if so reports that. I will be writing such a script in PHP at the weekend and will be using it as my internal "bugtracker". The script will write an error log to my database and so I can keep the SVN updated. This also eliminates the problem of multiple tests by users. Looking at this week's schedule I think I can free some time for it at the weekend. (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Meanwhile we are relying on everybody who reads this to report broken channels.
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1. Some international live television streams are part-time only, and thus have to be tested multiple times rather than once.
2. Not only that, some are down intermittently due to technical issues and come back up, say, up to a even a week later. So they have to be tested, again, multiple times -- over considerable time -- before removing them from the repository.
These problems could be eliminated via the script I stated above...
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3. Some streams may not work yet, but will in future versions of mplayer. So we have to keep those in mind for future re-testing. By finding streams that work on the PC version of mplayer but not XBMC's, a lot of people stand to possibly benefit by exposing little bugs that may have been previously overlooked by and for XBMC mplayer devs.
Right now as I harvest channels I keep a separate folder with channels that work on my PC but not my XBOX.
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4. Some people are using older versions of mplayer which may impede the ability to play some feeds. The experimental mplayer fixes most of those issues, but still, we need to make sure that streams are working as of a reasonable version and be sure to weed out outage reports for those using older versions.
I think we should lay out a minimum specification. Right now I am testing on the 01-02-2007 SVN build by T3CH and I am not using the EXPERIMENTAL mplayer.dll for obvious reasons. I wouldn't test on the experimental mplayer until it is officially merged into SVN trunk.
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5. If a stream goes down, we need to see if there's an updated link either on the channel's website or elsewhere. That takes time and effort.
I thought about splitting that work up on several people... Everyone of them is responsible for a small set of countries, so that the work load doesn't get too much on them. They could be informed via mail that channels have gone down and that it is their task to report back new streaming urls.
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So, putting our minds together and getting a process rolling will be of much benefit to the greater community. My focus is almost exclusively International Television, but have put in a few other streams here and there for my personal benefit (like the MST3K Channel form Shoutcast Video). Standardizing the way we categorize these kinds of streams will be helpful, obviously.
I think we already have something rolling. (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) My focus is International Television aswell. I think as far as categorization is concerned we should be sticking to country categories incl. a category "Webcams" for, well that's obvious (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) , webcams (subcategories are crucial here!) and a category named "Other" (maybe that one with subcategories as "Movies", "Sports",...) for streams we cannot by any country, as the source of the stream is unknown (as it is with many good shoutcast streaming sources...). IMHO we shouldn't split categorization up further as more and more categories render the collection useless...
BTW, as promised there's a major channel update available: The new channels are from Italy, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, namely we have 30 more channels inside the collection. All channels are, just as you expect it, tested and fully working in XBMC. Sometimes during testing I had so much fun watching these new channels (some of the Italian ones had full lenght blockbuster movies showing... WOW, even if I didn't understand a word (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ) that I had to be forcely drawn off my XBOX so that I would be able to snoop for more streams on the net... (IMG:
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So see for yourself and enjoy watching the streams from xbmc-strm-collection!
akaigotchi
Author
Topic: Xbmc .strm Collection Started On Code.google.com (Read 348 times)