HOW-TO:Use external players on Android
#1
HOW-TO:Use external players on Android (wiki)

Credit for the original playercorefactory.xml definitions: KemoNine, Staticadk, and GSH.

I finally got around to making this how-to. For those of you who use the unofficial "XAF" XBMC version, this is basically the same thing they use, if not better.

Eventually this will even allow us to use external players even when we don't need them for hardware video decoding, like for special video player apps. Unfortunately, the big one a lot of people want, Netflix, won't work because there is no URL we can pass off to the Netflix app. Hopefully that will change in the future, but it will require Netflix to support some kind of API that does this, like they do on iOS.

Thoughts, questions, improvements on the guide? Feel free to improve it yourself, as well, since it is a wiki, or just leave a message here.

Feel free to use this thread to also ask for help and support regarding external players, or make a new thread if you would like specific attention to the issue (if it doesn't seem like a general issue, etc).
Reply
#2
This does not work on frodo 12.2 official android release. Or at least I can not get it to work and here is a thread that explains why. Is this still the case? Because it is not working for me atm. Shame because I can not get any addon to work in xaf version.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=166717
Reply
#3
Is it working on nightly builds (wiki)? If not, we can let someone know that fix needs to go in.

(also, no 1chan talk on the forums, but this should be universal, so other examples should apply)
Reply
#4
No, just for giggles I downloaded the latest nightly and tried that since I was having so many issues with xaf and frodo official. External player is still broke as far as I can tell on android builds.
Reply
#5
Ditto for me... not working.

These instructions should also probably be updated for those of us using JB multiple user accounts on a single device Smile
Reply
#6
Just downloaded the latest nightly and external players are still broken.
TV Mosaic on Windows 10 as PVR Backend |  1 RaspberryPI 3 Client (LibreElec) | Amazon FireTV box | 5 Amazon FireTV sticks | FireTV Cube | 2 Nvidia Shield TV
Tuners: HD HomeRun 4 ATSC (OTA) | IPTV
Reply
#7
Ned, can you confirm whether this has ever worked with the version of XBMC available from xbmc.org?

I know this works with custom builds of XBMC (like the XBMC XAF Custom build available from xbmchub, and in fact have this working myself) but no one appears to be able to get this working with the official XBMC (again, myself included).

This thread (http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=166717) suggests the fix is to add CopyUserDataIfNeeded("special://masterprofile/", "playercorefactory.xml"); to xbmc/Application.cpp but looking through the source code on github I cannot spot that this has ever been in the official version of XBMC. It has also been suggested that this change may cause problems for other operating systems and so shouldn't be added.
Reply
#8
I know it was worked on. Long ago the guy who made Dice Player made a patch, and so did one of the XBMC devs, specifically for external player support on Android. I'm not sure which one went in, but there was a pull request that merged one of them into XBMC's main code trunk. I never bothered testing it myself once I found out that the Netflix for Android app doesn't have an API to launch specific movies, but there are other similar uses I'd like to see. External player support would be great for several reasons.
Reply
#9
It is true that by default the netflix player for android can't receive information about which movie to play. But I know for a fact (I looked at the smali code for the app) that the code for receiving Intent information about which movie to play is in the App. It is just disabled and can be reenabled with some modifications to the app.

But that still leaves that XBMC can't launch any Android App without crashing :-S
Reply
#10
Sorry for the spam, but this feature is currently broken. I have a fix out there and binaries for those who can't get it to work. It was broken a long time ago, probably just a few weeks after the feature was introduced. Anyway:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=175341
Reply
#11
External player support should be fixed now in nightly builds (wiki), if anyone wants to test.
Reply
#12
I downloaded the last build and put the playcorefactory file in, but no Joy...
Do I have to modify that file, or can we use Wololo's sample file?

Thanks,

CN
Reply
#13
Can you get us a debug log (wiki)?
Reply
#14
I would love to send it to you...just need to figure out how...

I'm following your link on how to do it....send it to you in just a few....
Reply
#15
Well, XBMC log uploaded will not install. It looks like it downloaded but then shows fail install.
I was able to see the verbose script and I did duplicate the error though.

I noticed that XBMC stated external player active, but I didn't see MX Player running...

I am going to reboot the CR11S and try again...

Reboot and attempt to load the XBMC log add on did not work...

CN
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
HOW-TO:Use external players on Android2