Sirius on the iPhone

Getting Sirius on my iPhone was a difficult task for me. I was using Orb with uSirius for a while but I found that orb is too heavy for my home server. Also Orb takes too long to start from the iPhone... I have to click through 5 prompts before I can hear Stern. Then if I got disconnected, which happens all too often, I had 5 more prompts to click through.

So here's my solution using all free software without transcoding and without jailbreaking my iPhone.

This is for the technologically advanced user. If you don't have a web server or never heard of asp then stop here.

Requirements:

A home web server running asp
uSirius RC 8

uSirius Mirror: http://www.mediafire.com/?kn0cotmyt52

A sirius subscription
fStream (free on appStore)

A little background info:
When a media player hits a uSirius url (e.g. http://192.168.1.101:19080/streams/stream?bandwidth=low&num=100&r=1229898108), uSirius redirects the player to the correct feed from the sirius servers (e.g. http://g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/?auth=reallylongurl&MSWMExt=.asf)

How this redirection occurs is the source of the problem. Most media players don't like to be redirected. Especially all iPhone media players I tried. So my asp script simplifies the redirect by transforming it into a m3u playlist. Here's how to do it

Open up notepad and paste this code:

<%
response.ContentType="audio/x-mpegurl"
Set stream = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP.3.0")
stream.open "GET", "http://192.168.1.101:19080/streams/stream?bandwidth=low&num=" & request.querystring("C") & "&r=1234567890", false
stream.send ""
If stream.Status = 200 AND stream.readyState = 4 Then
 s = stream.ResponseText
 s = Mid(s, instr(s, "=")+1)
 s = Mid(s, 1, instr(s, "Ref")-3)
 s = "mms" & Mid(s, 5)
end If
response.write(s)
%>

Save it as sirius.asp and put it in the your web root directory.

You would have to get the ASX playlist location from uSirius and plug it into my script, substituting your internal ip address and the "r=1234567890" part.


Lastly, in fStream you could add a stream to Howard 100 by calling this script like this: http://myexternalipaddress/sirius.asp?C=100 because Stern is Sirius channel 100.



I have found this setup to be highly effective for me and it puts little strain on my server. I know this isn't the most complete tutorial in the world but I just figured I'd share my findings with you.

If you have a better solution please share in the comments.

Movie Browser

I am sorry I've have not made any updates to this code. The real world has taken hold again and I hardly have free time to wipe my ass. Again, feel free to use my code in your projects, I don't care. I'll probably have free time over the summer to update this code and add an automated importer.

Cheers and beers!

Movie Browser 0.1

Flash and Media Center are a sweet mix. I wish I used flash 2 years when I was breaking my head over hosted html. The picture above is from my newest application "Movie Browser". This runs on MCE 2005, Vista MCE and Extenders :P. It's still in beta and is a little difficult to set up, but worth it :-) I mean, who needs iTunes huh?

I am no flash expert, I got the design from the open source dudes at weberdesignlabs.com It took a couple days to get flash to play nice with MCE but I think it looks great.

If you are interested in the project post a comment and I'll continue development. It is currently running on my Vista and 2005 box without a hitch so any further development is not for me it's for you. This is an open source project, so if you improve the code let me know.

This is still in BETA, so unless your ready to do some post install maintenance please wait for the final release.

Download Movie Browser 0.1 Beta
Download Source Code

Questions? Ask here

Live TV Streaming (SoftSled Anyone?)

My brother has been streaming live TV to his xbox 360 and I am jealous. I don't understand why Microsoft added this feature to extenders and not to full media centers. So to make a long story short, I started fiddling with VLC media player. Using VLC I was able to stream live tv from my bedroom's media center to my living room's media center machine. The best part is, I can stream the video and still use media center in my bedroom. VLC used about 32Mb or memory to perform the stream but the picture quality is outstanding IMO. I know about ORB and other software that does similar things, but I wanted High quality video, accessible through media center's interface without having to go through an outside server.

VLC was a bit of a pain to setup and I had some audio driver issues. But now that it's done and working I couldn't be happier. I'll post a full tutorial on how I accomplished this soon.

MCE Skipper

Media center does not have seekbar functionality built into it. So, this plugin shows a seek bar very similiar to that of windows media player 10 that can be used from your couch with your remote control. It has a sleek interface in my opinion. Check these screenshots:





I have tested this plugin on MCE 2005 and Vista

Usage:
Once your video is playing, click the i (more info) button on your remote or right click with your mouse, then choose More...

Limitations:
1. MCE 2005 does not allow me to get the duration of the currently playing video. So the Seekbar will default to a 1 hour lenght. If your current video position is longer that 1 hour the seekbar will grow to accomodate. But if your video is less than 1 hour, the seekbar will not shrink. So be careful when seeking videos less than 60 minutes, it might jump to the end of the video.

2. The play, skip forward, skip back buttons on the bottom don't do anything... they are just there for the good looks :)

Download