We have Att Uverse TV here, and I just now decided to traipse over to their site and see what they had in terms of online offerings.
To my surpise, not only do they have a buttload of different network shows available (HBO, Showtime, Max), but they have a movie and "Live TV" section.
In looking at the TV section, I see that the URL is just this:
Seems like it's a bunch of basic URL's to individual show pages, with each episode in what appears to be a parse able link.
Looks like the shows come over in a flash container, which means you should be able to snag the SWF files...right?
Unfortunately, python is a language I've not worked much in, so even in trying to bend the DIY channel plugin to use the URLS I find around the page, I get as far as trying to parse the video links themselves and am not sure how to proceed. I will continue to poke around at it and see what I can do myself, but if anybody else out there happens to have Uverse and the knowledge to rip this thing into Plex...or even would just be willing to work with me to make it go...I think a lot of people would really dig this. Having my Uverse seamlessly integrated into my plex devices would be absolutely incredible. :D
I am aware of what forum I am posting in. If you would kindly re-read my post, I stated that I would be working at this myself. I'm simply asking if there is anybody else who would be interested in helping me with this.
I am a recognized developer at XDA-android forums and release my own ROM on a weekly basis. I have created and released addons for older iterations of XBMC, and do regular beta testing for Xiaomi, the largest smartphone seller in Asia. I've also written dozens of scripts in VBS, bash, and windowze command line for any number of applications.
However, I do not know python so well, so I was hoping that by posting here, I would be able to get in touch with someone who could possibly offer some friendly pointers.
I thank you for your suggestion, and wouldeven change the thread title so as to avoid further confusion if I could.
Unfortunately it's not really as easy as grabbing the SWF files ... you are going to need to track down the actual streams themselves. XBMC and Plex are very different in terms of the channel options available to you. At one point we did have a way to do it like you are mentioning (sort of), but that just doesn't work out properly in a multi-user environment.
Lastly and sadly, most of the "you need an account to access this" type content can get very challenging at the best of times, depending on how you have to login, how it's tracked etc. Also most times this stuff is heavily locked down with DRM, restrictions on how it's acccessed via both software and authentication for grabbing the streams themselves, etc. So not an easy task but not saying it's impossible to pull this one off -- but highly unlikely that it's going to be something simple. If you can get it to the point where it works a lot of times it's also a lot of work to maintain it as those types of providers seem to like to change things up too often which can break your "workarounds" that you have to use to do what you need to do.
Hope this helps. Lots of other good information on channels and channel dev stuff here:
I can tell you that I have looked at a couple of these master pages for Internet/TV services like Dish and Comcast and realized it was not possible, at least from my level of knowledge and ability.
The part that is most difficult if not impossible, as Gerk pointed out, is the URL service, which is the part you write for accessing the actual video files which you will need to make the videos play. Having access to all the pretty metadata they give you on each page is useless if the video will not play. These sites use Hulu quite alot and even the most knowledgeable programmers here have not found a way to acess Hulu videos. Many of the other videos use DRM. I have even seen some that require you to download a custom player in order to lock down and control access to the videos.
Also, these types of sites do not actually host many of the videos that play on their site, but instead pull the content from multiple websites that already host the videos. So not only would you have to write your URL service to find the actual source and provide access to all of these different sites, you would also have to figure out the coding they use to gain access to those sites.
