Why is playing internet streams so hard?
#1
/disclaimer: Nothing in this post is meant as criticism, I just want to understand the problem and possibly tackle it myself.

A very common problem for me in my daily use of xbmc is that some of my favourite or temporary internet streams are not playable in xbmc. For instance, right now I would love to play the dutch Eufa 2012 streams, but since they are temporary by nature, noone has coded something for them. This has been a recurring problem.
Everything requires support either from a plugin or some aggregate site. Getting the right streaming address appears to involve difficult tools and some sort of arcane knowledge. My basic question is, why is this so hard? Why is it necessary to write a plugin for every specific site, apparently using some regex magic to retrieve the url?

For a laymen like me it seems weird that I can access these streams from any browser with a simple click, but in XBMC this is apparently a hard thing to do for most sites. Even a, to me, simple solution like a browser plugin to send the stream via http to the xbmc pc requires site specific coding apparently.

Can anyone please explain to me the difficulties? Is it for instance maybe possible to write an extremely basic 'browser' for xbmc that parses the url that has the player including stream and let the user do the final 'click'? Because as far as I can see, a generic plugin that has support for any stream (as long as the format is supported of course) is a killer feature, even if it requires user input.
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#2
(2012-06-11, 13:23)kingmob Wrote: /disclaimer: Nothing in this post is meant as criticism, I just want to understand the problem and possibly tackle it myself.

A very common problem for me in my daily use of xbmc is that some of my favourite or temporary internet streams are not playable in xbmc. For instance, right now I would love to play the dutch Eufa 2012 streams, but since they are temporary by nature, noone has coded something for them. This has been a recurring problem.
Everything requires support either from a plugin or some aggregate site. Getting the right streaming address appears to involve difficult tools and some sort of arcane knowledge. My basic question is, why is this so hard? Why is it necessary to write a plugin for every specific site, apparently using some regex magic to retrieve the url?

For a laymen like me it seems weird that I can access these streams from any browser with a simple click, but in XBMC this is apparently a hard thing to do for most sites. Even a, to me, simple solution like a browser plugin to send the stream via http to the xbmc pc requires site specific coding apparently.

Can anyone please explain to me the difficulties? Is it for instance maybe possible to write an extremely basic 'browser' for xbmc that parses the url that has the player including stream and let the user do the final 'click'? Because as far as I can see, a generic plugin that has support for any stream (as long as the format is supported of course) is a killer feature, even if it requires user input.


Word! Been looking for a plugin like this for way to long
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#3
With nothing better to do and being it's a reoccurring question, that does get answered once in a blue moon..

Streaming video from a browser is not the same as looking at it in XBMC, you miss all click throughs, advertisments, joins, cookies and in general, the method a website uses to generate $. The web sites don't like to provide streaming links to 'other'web sites (or their competition) to just re-link their stuff, unfettered, which may be copyright content that they have paid money to obtain those streaming rights, not to mention the servers and telecomm internal issues. Key here is someone has to pay for content, one way or another and your ISP at this moment in time is not sharing his $ that he gets from you with anyone but himself.

Some sites, e.g. Revision 3 don't mind XBMC viewers, they plug various advertisers (as a traditional commercial does) and they can influence users and get their revenue from that direction, regardless of the method of viewing. As the magazine industry is on the way out, the streaming video blogs are on the way up. Kinda like when Radio or TV broadcast mostly through the air.... "you mean we get all that for free!"

When it comes down to protecting these streaming sites, some are happy to just have the numbers indicating widespread acceptance of whatever the content is delivering. While others shift the link, or hide the link to pages locked away to registered members. This practise is getting very sophisticated, with services that lock links to a randomly addressed IP served up at the time of request and in that sense becomes close to unpredictable for links in add-ons. Sites can be geo cached, menaing that something looks at the incoming IP and decides that you live outside the area it wants to deliver content (e.g. Canada) or that you haven't paid a monthly $ for access. Streaming video sites is a moving target, when one system is offering great stuff for viewing no holds barred, while others are locked up tighter than a drum until they see your wallet.

I personally love the streaming add-ons available for XBMC, understanding the nature of those streams means that some work to-day and some work tomorrow, and some many never work for you. The best of the lot would seem to be 'Live Streams' an easy to understand plug-in (look at the XML sets) that allows users such as yourself to create links from open sites you have found and add them to a community list for others to use. There is instructions on how to add links from your browser to the plugin, but because of previously discussed issues not all will work, and questions about this add-on should be addressed in their respective forums.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=120418
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=97116

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#4
FWIW, you can actually click a stream right now and send it to XBMC using Airplay, if you are using a mobile iOS device. Really, if somebody figured out how to incorporate Airplay as a desktop browser extension, most problems would become auto-solved.
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#5
(2012-06-11, 20:50)natethomas Wrote: FWIW, you can actually click a stream right now and send it to XBMC using Airplay, if you are using a mobile iOS device. Really, if somebody figured out how to incorporate Airplay as a desktop browser extension, most problems would become auto-solved.

There is a chrome extension called SendToAirFlick which works on Windows and Mac. It doesn't work for all sites.

There is also service called PlayIt http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=118251 that seems to work better.
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#6
(2012-06-11, 17:58)PatK Wrote: With nothing better to do and being it's a reoccurring question, that does get answered once in a blue moon..

Streaming video from a browser is not the same as looking at it in XBMC, you miss all click throughs, advertisments, joins, cookies and in general, the method a website uses to generate $. The web sites don't like to provide streaming links to 'other'web sites (or their competition) to just re-link their stuff, unfettered, which may be copyright content that they have paid money to obtain those streaming rights, not to mention the servers and telecomm internal issues. Key here is someone has to pay for content, one way or another and your ISP at this moment in time is not sharing his $ that he gets from you with anyone but himself.

Some sites, e.g. Revision 3 don't mind XBMC viewers, they plug various advertisers (as a traditional commercial does) and they can influence users and get their revenue from that direction, regardless of the method of viewing. As the magazine industry is on the way out, the streaming video blogs are on the way up. Kinda like when Radio or TV broadcast mostly through the air.... "you mean we get all that for free!"

When it comes down to protecting these streaming sites, some are happy to just have the numbers indicating widespread acceptance of whatever the content is delivering. While others shift the link, or hide the link to pages locked away to registered members. This practise is getting very sophisticated, with services that lock links to a randomly addressed IP served up at the time of request and in that sense becomes close to unpredictable for links in add-ons. Sites can be geo cached, menaing that something looks at the incoming IP and decides that you live outside the area it wants to deliver content (e.g. Canada) or that you haven't paid a monthly $ for access. Streaming video sites is a moving target, when one system is offering great stuff for viewing no holds barred, while others are locked up tighter than a drum until they see your wallet.

I personally love the streaming add-ons available for XBMC, understanding the nature of those streams means that some work to-day and some work tomorrow, and some many never work for you. The best of the lot would seem to be 'Live Streams' an easy to understand plug-in (look at the XML sets) that allows users such as yourself to create links from open sites you have found and add them to a community list for others to use. There is instructions on how to add links from your browser to the plugin, but because of previously discussed issues not all will work, and questions about this add-on should be addressed in their respective forums.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=120418
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=97116
I understand all that, but it doesn't really explain why it is so hard to play it in XBMC. Yes it explains it if you only want the stream URL, but I see no reason why XBMC (or a plugin) can not 'act' like a browser, possibly scripting the user interaction for a more seamless experience. If I can acces the content, surely I can access it anywhere, no matter how hard a website tries?

Also, I know of the many stream plugins, this is not the problem, but they are either limited to a site, or limited to the help of others, so apparently making something an average user can add their own streams or sites to is very hard.
(2012-06-11, 20:50)natethomas Wrote: FWIW, you can actually click a stream right now and send it to XBMC using Airplay, if you are using a mobile iOS device. Really, if somebody figured out how to incorporate Airplay as a desktop browser extension, most problems would become auto-solved.
That sounds like the quick an dirty solution I'm looking for. What makes Airplay so special that it has to be done through that though? I'm not an apple user, so no luck there Sad
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#7
Looks like rogerthis provided a solution even if you are a Windows user. Maybe even if you are a Linux user.
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