[ronbaby]

My apologies if this is an FAQ.

I have the add-on for Al Jazeera English installed and it is working swell for live streaming, but I understand that the new Al Jazeera America is something different entirely. So, um, please excuse my ignorance, but how would I go about getting that (i.e. Al Jazeera America)? (I did try googling for an answer and I read some stuff about this, but it was mostly rather confusing, and I never found any forum posting or anything that just simply said what to do in order to get Al Jazeera America live streaming.)

P.S. I'm using OpenELEC on a stand-alone x86 HTPC, if that makes any difference.

P.P.S. I also came across this posting about "World News"

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=97488

But even that is rather confusing. I'm wondering why this specific add-on has to be installed by downloading a zip file, and then manually transferring that to my HTPC. Is there some reason why this thing couldn't be installed (easily) from the GUI, just like other add-ons?

Anyway, I'd like to get that add-on too, and will certainly be trying to instal it, but I note that even that only brings in Al Jazeera English, and doesn't seem to include Al Jazerra America.

[moneymaker]

@ronbaby

The "World News Live" AddOn is not maintaining anymore by the thread starter. Use my repository to get the latest one. There you find the american version.

I could take a look at the Al Jazeera AddOn if I can add the american stream, but no promise.

To your last question, facepalm!

[ronbaby]

@ronbaby

The "World News Live" AddOn is not maintaining anymore by the thread starter. Use my repository to get the latest one. There you find the american version. repository.xbmcplus.xbmc-plugins-1.2.zip

Thanks much for that info!

I could take a look at the Al Jazeera AddOn if I can add the american stream, but no promise.

Whatever you can do will be greatly appreciated. (There are few available sources of decent quality real-time world news... unless one wants to pay for cable... and I'm getting prepared to stop doing that at last.)

To your last question, facepalm!

Sorry? I don't follow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm

The gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, shock, surprise or sarcasm.

Were you frustrated, disappointed, or embarrassed about the fact that the add on must be installed manually, from a .zip file? Or were you attempting to suggest your disappointment at my ignorance of the reasons why this might be necessary?

If the latter, I humbly apologize for my ignorance.

[ronbaby]

OK. Sorry. I get it now... repositories must be individually (and manually) added via .zip files. (Sorry I didn't know that.)

Moving right along, I fetched your new and improved World News add-on with the support for Al Jazerra America. Thanks much for that. It seems to work great, however...

Seeing as how you are the guy who (apparently) is maintaining this (World News) add-on nowadays, I wonder if I might impose your your good graces further and ask you to see if there is any possibility of re-jiggering the add-on so as convince it to suck down some higher resolution streams. Any chance you might be able to do that?

I looked at several of the news channels provided by the add on, and all the ones I checked are either coming through only as really low-res streams (360p or even lower) or else seem to be broken outright. Here are the few that I checked and that I have an interest in:

Al Jazerra English ("High Quality") -- 360p
Al Jazerra America ("High Quality") - 288p
BBC World News -- no workie... broken
Bloomberg TV -- 360p
CNBC -- 400p
CNN International -- 360p (also seems to provide audio to ONLY the left speaker for some reason)
NHK World TV -- no workie... broken
Reuters -- 288p
RT English -- no workie... broken
Sky News International -- 270p

Note that for all of my tests, I never fooled around with the "maximum bandwidth" setting for the overall World News plug in... I just left it set to 9999.

Having become accustomed to having access to a plethora of HD (720p) from my cable company... which I am hoping & trying to ditch... I have to say that all of the resolutions listed above look, unfortunately, REALLY awful.

So, um, any chance of getting any of the channels listed above at least up to (US) StdDef resolution (480p)? 720 would be even better of course, but I'll take what I can get.


P.S. It's a fairly well known fact that "cord cutters" (and/or cord cutter wannabes, like myself) are kept in the clutches of the greedy cable monopolies primarily by two things, i.e. (1) news and (2) sports. I personally don't watch a lot of sports, so really (1) is my only real concern. I can get pretty much all of the entertainment I could ever want... even yesterday's Daily Show & Colbert Report...from a Roku (or similar) box, and I can pull all of the *local* news I can eat right out of the local airwaves for free. The only thing that's missing is national & international *breaking* news, which is why I have an interest in the channels I mentioned above. (I can actually get a good helping of national and international somewhat-less-than-immediate news off the local airwaves also, in the form of the ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS Nightly Newscasts. But if something breaks during the day, I'd like to know about it before nightfall.)

[Nostrodamus]

RT has it's own plugin, and the quality is excellent (720)

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=173448

Wish I could help with the rest. I'd like to find Al Jazeera America and CNN International myself.

Also, if you have the Hulu plugin, some of the RT shows are now available from there.

"The Big Picture", "Breaking The Set", and "Larry King". Maybe others. They also have old episodes of the "Alyona Show" archived.

Wish she would have stayed with them instead of selling out to AOL/HuffPo.

[doingok43]

Sorry for jumping in but would love sky news (NOT SKY SPORT NEWS) any help or info would be greatly helpful.

Thanks