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I have been using Dave Cross’s
Radio Player streams list in order to be able to control Radio Player and
select programmes from my remote control. My remote control is a Pocket
PC and controls the PC - which is the sole domestic TV, and which is controlled
*only* from the PPC, with no keyboard or mouse. I attach a screenshot of its
use with Radio Player. This screen fits into a wider set of about 30 screens controlling
all aspects of my TV/Audio system, including: Live TV; Radio; PVR (with Radio
Times XMLTV data on the remote); CD; DVD; 10000-track media library; Photos;
etc. See http://brianavid.com
for a fuller description. Consequently I have written new
RP software for the “server” (my TV) and the “client”
(my remote control) to list, select and control programmes through Radio
Player. My plan is to make this source freely available later this month when
it has bedded down (I use the MIT open source license for my stuff). The issues I have (so far with
limited use) are: 1. The list of available
streams and URLs comes from Dave Cross. Thank you so much Dave for providing
this. But I would much rather it came from the BBC, where it is less
susceptible to any changes in the site structure or layout. But Dave’s
screen scraping is the only way today, and it must be considered a risk. Also,
the BBC could add additional data, such as “genre” or “original
broadcast date/time”, which could offer additional listing possibilities. 2. The Radio Player insists
occasionally on popping up the message “Would you like to resume
listening from where you left off? …”. But my TV has no keyboard or
mouse. So I can’t interact with the server in a normal PC-like way. In
reading the RP _javascript_, I can find no way of inhibiting this message externally
from my player server application (which wraps Radio Player as an ActiveX
control). So far my only work-around is to use PTFB - a $30 external
application which presses the “Cancel” button when this message appears.
This is a very ugly solution! 3. All my other remote control
screens have extensive real-time feedback from the currently playing TV or
audio - e.g. TV “now&next” for the
current channel, program counters and sliders for audio, DVDs and TV
recordings, currently playing track, etc. I would really like to have similar
feedback data from RP. I have yet to find how I can get the document.RP.GetPosition()
and document.RP.GetLength() values out of the control
- maybe this is just my lack of experience in using the DOM. But if I could get
these, then I could display the program counters and state on the remote control . I expect that often, RP will be used with the TV
screen switched off and with sound only, so an on-screen display is of little
use. Does my description make
sense? And is there any feedback on the issues? Thanks Brian Collins |
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