[alshain]

I have started developing a plugin to access the videos from switzerland's national tv station in XBMC.

This is where the videos come from:
http://www.videoportal.sf.tv/

Obviously, there's not going to be a lot of demand for it, so we'll see how much more I will do.

The plugin has been tested with XBMC Nightly and should be working.
You can access, the "videowall" (it does not yet jump to the indicated positions, the entire video will be played -> same thumbnail too)
Best rated, most viewed, newest, and movies that are about to be removed(dying).

sf.tv offers streams of different qualities for all videos. The plugin automatically chooses the best. Usually, this is a 640*359 stream (awesome, I know) - so the speed should never be an issue.
There are some videos that have better quality, this, however, is rarely the case.

Then you can access the channels news, doku, musik, sport, comedy and kinder (which seems to be empty at all times)

I'd be grateful if you could test the plugin and report crashes to me. Every now and then, it will crash iwth an error fd == -1 or something like that. I believe that this is XBMC's fault.

So where can I get it?
http://github.com/alshain/xbmc-sftv

So what is yet to come:

• Ads (yes, just like on the original site, 1 every 10 minutes)
  
• Missed Videos (an interface where you can browse the past programs by day or search)
  
• More channels - currently I simply parse an XML. It's the same videos as in the small Channels widget on the home page.
  
• I forgot
  

[jmarshall]

Nice work.

[mkortstiege]

I'll give it a try this weekend. Code looks pretty nice. Thanks!

[alshain]

Fixed a bug when formatting with wrong indices. (You can change it in the settings)
Valid keys are: title, date, desc, program and some others


hehe thanks, I tried to keep the source as reusable as possible. Several parts could do with some more generalization, but I will add it as needed.

[heldchen]

works fine...

would be cool to have some more informations about the show one watches. for example, in wall, all 10 vor 10 entries look the same: the subtitle seems missing, only the thumbs change, making it hard to guess what's to expect from the show.

of course something like http://www.videoportal.sf.tv/sendungen?sort=topic in xbmc would be awesome

[r0man]

Hi alshain

I really would like to use the plugin 'cause many shows are not available thru their regular podcasts. Would be nice if you can give me a hint on how to install the source (so far, I was not successfull. I'm using XBMC on Linux).

Thanks a lot
r0man

[butchabay]

+1 for this plugin. Haven't tested it yet, but i'm sure i'll use it do i'm living in Switzerland!

[r0man]

Hi alshain

I really would like to use the plugin 'cause many shows are not available thru their regular podcasts. Would be nice if you can give me a hint on how to install the source (so far, I was not successfull. I'm using XBMC on Linux).

Thanks a lot
r0man

No one who could give me a hint on how to install it?

Thanks!

[alshain]

Hey

You should be able to just do a git clone into your addons directory.

Code:

# git clone git://github.com/alshain/xbmc-sftv.git plugin.video.sf.tv

Please note that SF has changed some RSS feeds and I haven't updated the script in a while.

But since it looks like I won't be the only one using it, and my HTPC finally arrived last week, I'm going to implement some updates soon

@heldchen
Yes, they look the same because that is the video wall.
The video wall links to the full clip, but the flashplayer only plays an excerpt of that clip.

XBMC however caches the thumbnails on a path level, hence the same pictures for the same shows, even if they have a different title.

I will have to find a way to make XBMC only play a small clip from the stream, and add probably add an additional layer in the app in order
to get the custom previews.

As for the "Themen" page. The problem with that site is, that it is plain HTML and it's a PITA to parse such pages.

If you look at the bottom of the videoportal, you will see something like "Vergangene Sendungen", I'm going to implement that first I think.

But before that, I need to clean up some code and make it more versatile and reusable.



I have not yet seen framework for XBMC plugins that provide an interface to video portals. Perhaps I will split my project in order to give people the ability to make a frontend for their own favorite sites using some components to simplify the plugin development.

[heldchen]

actually i didn't meant the pictures, but the titles which are always the same and do not reflect the actual theme of the entry.

[alshain]

I see.

The problem is, that the RSS feed of the wall supplies very little information abut the video.

In the config dialog of the addon, you can change what is being displayed.
On the "Wall", you can hit the info button to get a description on what is being played.

I will have to think of a better way to customize these titles, because depending on the RSS feeds they are different. I'm not a fan of implementing every little feature that sf.tv offers on its own, but I'd rather have reusable code.

But I think I have no choice

[teigaff]

Hi
I've installed the newest SVN version of XBMC. Now it's 30746 from 30 november 2010.
Then I copied the extracted files into scripts folder on the XBOX.
When I want to launch the addon.py I receive an error: "Script failed".
In xbmc.log it looks like this:
--
22:32:44 M: 41263104 NOTICE: -->Python Initialized<--
22:32:44 M: 40935424 NOTICE: [PLUGIN] 'SF TV: version 0.1' initialized!
22:32:45 M: 38862848 ERROR: Error Type: exceptions.ImportError
22:32:45 M: 38862848 ERROR: Error Contents: No module named xbmcaddon
22:32:45 M: 38862848 ERROR: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Q:\scripts\alshain-xbmc-sftv-a200f32\addon.py", line 16, in ?
import resources.sftv.sftv as sftv
File "Q:\scripts\alshain-xbmc-sftv-a200f32\resources\sftv\sftv.py", line 2, in ?
import xbmc, xbmcgui, xbmcplugin, xbmcaddon
ImportError: No module named xbmcaddon
--

What's wrong? Anything else to install?
Thanks for your help.

[alshain]

Hi, I'll have a look.
At the moment, I've put development of this plugin on ice.

In Dharma RC1, the plugin starts without errors.

[teigaff]

Hi alshain,
Thanks for your reply. Please let me know when you will release an update.