Hey all, (sorry for the long post, I tend to ramble)
Firstly just want to say what an awesome little addon this is. I've been telling everyone I know that uses XBMC about it and they are all impressed. Keep up the great work.
Now on to problems. I've tired going through this thread to find answers, but it's not easy to scan through 278 pages of posts to find what I'm looking for, so here we go.
I believe there are currently problems with Eden and non-windows server sharing channel info. Something about an SMB issue? I have a semi-working work around for this, but I've now come to a point where I can't see how to fix the problem.
Basically I have my main machine running XBMCUbuntu with all my media shared and using a MYSQL db for the library. In PseudoTV I have configured the shared directory to point to a local folder which is accessible via my network as well. Any directories I use in channels are all local directories as well. So far everything works perfectly.
Now I add my Windows box to the picture connecting to the main servers DB for it's library. PseudoTV settings for the windows box point directly to the SMB share for the channels and for channels which use directories for content I just have pathsubstitution settings so that the windows machine can play the directory content fine.
That works too, and in fact with both servers running I can see the same content and the same channels.
The problem I'm having is that any channel that is being watched by the Windows box drops off the channel list on the Linux Server.
EG:
Watcing channel 1 on Windows and channel 2 on the Linux Server
Try to change to channel 1 on the Linux server, the channel is no longer valid and drops from the list.
Note: If both servers start on the same channel at startup (IE: both start on channel 1) then they will play in sync until I change the channel on the Linux server to another channel and then try change it back. Also if I change the channel on the Windows box to one that the Linux box is playing, then everything is fine. As soon as I change the Linux channel and try change it back to the channel it was on (and the windows box has played) it's now invalid and drops from the list.
This doesn't affect the windows box at all though and it can happily change channels back and forth without losing any.
I can get logs if that might help.
So close to getting this working, there must be some way to get around this problem.
One thing I did notice is that the Windows box changes the channel config by placing the entries one line after the other. (IE: If I open it up in notepad it all looks nicely formatted) whereas the Linux server writes to the file with CR and no LF, I assume (IE: if you open it up in notepad it looks all jumbled)
Another thing I noticed is that the permissions on the channel files change when the Windows server access them. IE: channel_1.m3u will have rw-rw-r-- permissions when the Linux box access them, but when the Windows box access them it changes them to rwxrw-r--
Don't think either of these would affect pseudoTV though.
Oh, and another thing I'm trying to do which I see others are struggling with is getting a channel with random content on it and then having that content still play episodes in order. I had this working with Force Random and Play in order, but that resets the channel everytime you start up another instance of PseudoTV and breaks syncing. Perhaps we could look at having an option that says "Force Random on Channel update only"
Another thing that would be nice would be to have some way to read an nfo file or some info file for files that are in directories and not in the library so that you can still get info on an episode or movie or whatever. Currently all my documentaries have been manually added to XBMC and the metadata manually adjusted so that it has the correct info. This works, but it's alot of work to get it all correct.
One last request is to have a way to add Music only channels. IE: Create playlists for genres or something and then have a channel that displays a static background with music in the background. Possibly with a little box scrolling the song info in it? That way I would never have to close PseudoTV and I can have both Video and Music content running on it all the time.