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[RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - Printable Version

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RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - dr_torch - 2021-05-12

(2021-05-11, 21:05)rocko Wrote: Great to see someone working on this, I have some problems though.

I downloaded your 3.0.1 zip but in the information in the addon it still says 3.0.0. Wrong link or am I missing something.

Most shows open but most require 2 or  3 tries

The shows lock up often.  

Any ideas on any of this

Thanks
Here is 3.0.2 --> https://github.com/mcowell/catchup4kodi/raw/master/plugin.video.itv/release_3.0.2.zip

I have updated the subtitles now to work just like the BBC.  You will get different colours for different actors.  Unfortunately for some reason the Kodi subtile settings do not seem to take affect on Matrix.  They work for my over the air streams but not for ITV / BBC.  It's odd.

I have fixed the date on the folders and also the time issue (it was displaying PM with 24hr time) and I have done a MASSIVE code cleanup to remove dead code that we are no longer using.

So the version number is totally my fault Wink I am managing a large Java project in my actual job and we do automated release cycles so I never manually update a version number. haha.  Anyway - you should see 3.0.2 in the new release unless I have screwed something else up Smile

Initially I had the issue where some streams would not play.  ITV returns a list of streams to the add-on and then we pass that list to Kodi - after that we have no control over what happens.  It turns out that some of the mobile streams were not supported by Kodi and so they would not play.  I have switched to using the 'youview' streams and, as far as my testing is going, I have a 100% success rate now.

Unfortunately I cannot assist with freezing, buffering, or issues like that.  The reason is, as I said above, once we give Kodi a list of stream, that's in for our part.  Effectively the code in the add-on ends at that point and Kodi takes over.  You may however, have some luck looking at the Kodi logs to see if there is anything helpful in them.

Let me know how 3.0.2 works for you.  I feel that perhaps I should go and create a Kodi repo since the original dev of this project seems to not be here anymore and so my pull request is just going to sit idle Sad

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-12

(2021-05-12, 16:50)dr_torch Wrote:
(2021-05-11, 21:05)rocko Wrote: Great to see someone working on this, I have some problems though.

I downloaded your 3.0.1 zip but in the information in the addon it still says 3.0.0. Wrong link or am I missing something.

Most shows open but most require 2 or  3 tries

The shows lock up often.  

Any ideas on any of this

Thanks
Here is 3.0.2 --> https://github.com/mcowell/catchup4kodi/raw/master/plugin.video.itv/release_3.0.2.zip

I have updated the subtitles now to work just like the BBC.  You will get different colours for different actors.  Unfortunately for some reason the Kodi subtile settings do not seem to take affect on Matrix.  They work for my over the air streams but not for ITV / BBC.  It's odd.

I have fixed the date on the folders and also the time issue (it was displaying PM with 24hr time) and I have done a MASSIVE code cleanup to remove dead code that we are no longer using.

So the version number is totally my fault Wink I am managing a large Java project in my actual job and we do automated release cycles so I never manually update a version number. haha.  Anyway - you should see 3.0.2 in the new release unless I have screwed something else up Smile

Initially I had the issue where some streams would not play.  ITV returns a list of streams to the add-on and then we pass that list to Kodi - after that we have no control over what happens.  It turns out that some of the mobile streams were not supported by Kodi and so they would not play.  I have switched to using the 'youview' streams and, as far as my testing is going, I have a 100% success rate now.

Unfortunately I cannot assist with freezing, buffering, or issues like that.  The reason is, as I said above, once we give Kodi a list of stream, that's in for our part.  Effectively the code in the add-on ends at that point and Kodi takes over.  You may however, have some luck looking at the Kodi logs to see if there is anything helpful in them.

Let me know how 3.0.2 works for you.  I feel that perhaps I should go and create a Kodi repo since the original dev of this project seems to not be here anymore and so my pull request is just going to sit idle Sad
It's great to have this add-on back, well done and thank you! 

You say that the Kodi subtitle settings do not take affect, but they do. For example if you increase the font it will give you a bigger font. The only thing that has no affect is the colour, but that's rather irrelevant now being you have actor specific colours. 

Maybe this is my imagination but the quality of picture appears slightly inferior since you switched to youview streams, it does say SD 576 though which is what it said before. It's a shame that ITV Hub is still putting out catch-up in SD.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - dr_torch - 2021-05-12

Awesome.  I am glad the subtitles work better now.

You could be correct about the youview streams - you can try changing to "mobile" in the default.py (search for youview) and see if you get a different resolutions.  We are kind of at the mercy of what ITV agreed to deliver to youview at this point. There also may be other formats that I have not discovered yet.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-12

(2021-05-12, 20:25)dr_torch Wrote: Awesome.  I am glad the subtitles work better now.

You could be correct about the youview streams - you can try changing to "mobile" in the default.py (search for youview) and see if you get a different resolutions.  We are kind of at the mercy of what ITV agreed to deliver to youview at this point. There also may be other formats that I have not discovered yet.
I will try that and see what happens. The only place I've seen ITV catch-up advertised in HD is behind the ITV Hub+ pay wall if bought via Amazon Prime Video. I assume picking up those stream is impossible.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - FXB78 - 2021-05-12

(2021-05-12, 20:25)dr_torch Wrote: Awesome.  I am glad the subtitles work better now.

You could be correct about the youview streams - you can try changing to "mobile" in the default.py (search for youview) and see if you get a different resolutions.  We are kind of at the mercy of what ITV agreed to deliver to youview at this point. There also may be other formats that I have not discovered yet.
Using mobile does produce a slightly different resolution, 896x504 vs youview which gives 720x576. It's also possible the bitrate is higher on the mobile feed, I seem to remember the old addon gave various options for bitrate. Perhaps a toggle could be added to settings so users could select between youview & mobile streams? Obviously with the mobile streams causing issues for some youview could be set as the default.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-12

(2021-05-12, 21:56)FXB78 Wrote:
(2021-05-12, 20:25)dr_torch Wrote: Awesome.  I am glad the subtitles work better now.

You could be correct about the youview streams - you can try changing to "mobile" in the default.py (search for youview) and see if you get a different resolutions.  We are kind of at the mercy of what ITV agreed to deliver to youview at this point. There also may be other formats that I have not discovered yet.
Using mobile does produce a slightly different resolution, 896x504 vs youview which gives 720x576. It's also possible the bitrate is higher on the mobile feed, I seem to remember the old addon gave various options for bitrate. Perhaps a toggle could be added to settings so users could select between youview & mobile streams? Obviously with the mobile streams causing issues for some youview could be set as the default.
The iPlayer WWW used to have options for bitrate I think. It would be nice to get the better quality streams but obviously without causing too many other issues. 

I did a quick test after changing youview to mobile and I can see the improvement in quality but most shows I tested wouldn't play first time, although if you keep trying eventually they do play. Obviously that's not ideal as sometimes it was 6, 7 or more attempts.

The other issue after changing to mobile is I lost all the subtitles again.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-13

(2021-05-12, 20:25)dr_torch Wrote: Awesome.  I am glad the subtitles work better now.

You could be correct about the youview streams - you can try changing to "mobile" in the default.py (search for youview) and see if you get a different resolutions.  We are kind of at the mercy of what ITV agreed to deliver to youview at this point. There also may be other formats that I have not discovered yet.
Here's an interesting discussion on the woes of the ITV Hub resolution. It confirms what I said about ITV Hub+ being HD via Amazon but only 896x504 without Amazon. It also says that ITV is 720 HD on Now TV. 
https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2306813/itv-hub-in-hd

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - dr_torch - 2021-05-13

The options for platformTag seem to be as follows: samsung, ctv, youview, dotcom, samsungtv, mobile, android. (according to the ITV API docs)

I cannot get all those to work though.  Several of them return a 400, which is a bad request and dotcom returns too many results.  You are welcome to try making the change and see if you get better results for quality.

For content provided through Amazon we would have to try to find out how that content gets delivered to them.  My guess is that ITV has an endpoint that is just for Amazon and it is probably access restricted by a token that we cannot get.  But if you have Amazon Prime TV you can look at the requests and the responses that the browser sends and that may give you an idea.

But basically - getting Amazon to work would be a totally new project unfortunately.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - dr_torch - 2021-05-13

Ah - as for the bitrate options - they only work for DASH stream and all DASH streams are encrypted on ITV now.

With HLS - which is what ITV and BBC deliver - the bitrate is configured dynamically based on connection speed so it should be high to start and if there are buffering issues it should reduce.  However, I am unsure whether Kodi supports that properly.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - YeahWhatever - 2021-05-13

I'm installing from the zip file and it fails due to "invalid structure". Am I doing something wrong?

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - FXB78 - 2021-05-13

(2021-05-12, 22:57)chrissxuk Wrote:
(2021-05-12, 21:56)FXB78 Wrote:
(2021-05-12, 20:25)dr_torch Wrote: Awesome.  I am glad the subtitles work better now.

You could be correct about the youview streams - you can try changing to "mobile" in the default.py (search for youview) and see if you get a different resolutions.  We are kind of at the mercy of what ITV agreed to deliver to youview at this point. There also may be other formats that I have not discovered yet.
Using mobile does produce a slightly different resolution, 896x504 vs youview which gives 720x576. It's also possible the bitrate is higher on the mobile feed, I seem to remember the old addon gave various options for bitrate. Perhaps a toggle could be added to settings so users could select between youview & mobile streams? Obviously with the mobile streams causing issues for some youview could be set as the default.
The iPlayer WWW used to have options for bitrate I think. It would be nice to get the better quality streams but obviously without causing too many other issues. 

I did a quick test after changing youview to mobile and I can see the improvement in quality but most shows I tested wouldn't play first time, although if you keep trying eventually they do play. Obviously that's not ideal as sometimes it was 6, 7 or more attempts.

The other issue after changing to mobile is I lost all the subtitles again.
The quality of the mobile streams is very watchable to me, and I've not seen any issues with them failing. Are there any in particular that consistently fail? I've tried several and they all work first time. I'm using CoreELEC, maybe it's an OS issue or something.

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-13

(2021-05-13, 16:12)YeahWhatever Wrote: I'm installing from the zip file and it fails due to "invalid structure". Am I doing something wrong?
Which zip are you installing and on what version of Kodi?

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-13

(2021-05-13, 16:58)FXB78 Wrote:
(2021-05-12, 22:57)chrissxuk Wrote:
(2021-05-12, 21:56)FXB78 Wrote: Using mobile does produce a slightly different resolution, 896x504 vs youview which gives 720x576. It's also possible the bitrate is higher on the mobile feed, I seem to remember the old addon gave various options for bitrate. Perhaps a toggle could be added to settings so users could select between youview & mobile streams? Obviously with the mobile streams causing issues for some youview could be set as the default.
The iPlayer WWW used to have options for bitrate I think. It would be nice to get the better quality streams but obviously without causing too many other issues. 

I did a quick test after changing youview to mobile and I can see the improvement in quality but most shows I tested wouldn't play first time, although if you keep trying eventually they do play. Obviously that's not ideal as sometimes it was 6, 7 or more attempts.

The other issue after changing to mobile is I lost all the subtitles again.
The quality of the mobile streams is very watchable to me, and I've not seen any issues with them failing. Are there any in particular that consistently fail? I've tried several and they all work first time. I'm using CoreELEC, maybe it's an OS issue or something.
The quality when switching back from youview to mobile was very watchable I agree. That's one of the reasons I previously used this add-on because it's far superior to that offered on my Samsung ITV Hub TV app. It appears to be the stream you get from the website, so I'm not really sure why it's called mobile. The Youview streams look the same as my TV app, pretty awful really when watching on a 70 inch 4K TV lol.

Most of the streams I tried would not play with the first attempt, although some did, it was very random. Some took 6 to 10 attempts to get them play. I didn't get any that didn't work at all provided I was persistent.  Maybe it's to do with me using SmartDNS (can't really elaborate on that in this Forum). 

I tried on my Formuler Z8 Android, I will try some more later on different devices.  I kind of gave up on it because I didn't get any subtitles after switching the code to mobile. Maybe there is a fix to get the subtitles working with the mobile streams?

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - chrissxuk - 2021-05-13

(2021-05-13, 15:45)dr_torch Wrote: Ah - as for the bitrate options - they only work for DASH stream and all DASH streams are encrypted on ITV now.

With HLS - which is what ITV and BBC deliver - the bitrate is configured dynamically based on connection speed so it should be high to start and if there are buffering issues it should reduce.  However, I am unsure whether Kodi supports that properly.
Kodi addon iPlayer WWW uses inputstream.adaptive why wouldn't that work then?

RE: [RELEASE] ITV Player 1.10 - YeahWhatever - 2021-05-13

(2021-05-13, 17:06)chrissxuk Wrote:
(2021-05-13, 16:12)YeahWhatever Wrote: I'm installing from the zip file and it fails due to "invalid structure". Am I doing something wrong?
Which zip are you installing and on what version of Kodi?

3.0.2 from the latest link I could find in this thread - https://github.com/mcowell/catchup4kodi/raw/master/plugin.video.itv/release_3.0.2.zip

I have Leia (18.7).