SKY PLAYER (UK) - Anyone thinking about doing a plugin for it?

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
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uk satelite tv company now have all content available online
Hi all,

Has anyone looked at doing a plugin for skyplayer.com (UK only, paid subscription)? It's silverlight based.

If not and there is some demand for it, then I may try to myself.
2

This would be very handy. I hope we see it.



I think Netflix uses Silverlight too, and is also subscription based. Might be helpful to look at the Netflix code for tips? (although it might end up being a waste of time if they a wildly different :))

3



Thanks for the pointer with Netflix, I'll check it out. I've not done any python before but I've been doing m$ developing for years. I've been taking a look at how some of the plugins work; the ui and video side seem fairly straight forward. I'll start by trying to get the sample video playing here:

[http://skyplayer.sky.com/vod/page/detachedSampleStream.do](http://skyplayer.sky.com/vod/page/detachedSampleStream.do)
4

Cool. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one. Huge feature for Plex if it comes to fruition; in effect watered down Sky Multiroom without the additional box etc.



I don’t know how much help I can provide with the code (none :)), but if you need a tester give me a shout (that is once Sky finally sort my internet access out… the joys of living in a flat and having a 3rd party carry out the work on behalf of Sky :().

5

I’d love to see this feature.

6

oh christ i’d love to see sky player in plex - i hate having to log into the sky ireland site to watch stuff off it.

7

this could be a killer app! would love to see this!!

8

Sky have just launched their x-box related service, so maybe some pointers there… would love to have this

9

We’ve had brief access to a Sky Player account, and I have to say the site itself is absolutely $&^@ horrible. There’s no obvious way of getting the data other than the pages, some content is free, some is for-pay (which we can’t easily tell early on), some things link to external sites, etc. Basically, way too complicated to sort out in the limited time we had to play with it. Unless the site becomes easier to access for us (or a really dedicated developer volunteers to slave away at it), I doubt you’ll see it in Plex any time soon, sorry.

10

So I’ve decided to take this on. I’ve signed up to be a member to the sky service and think getting into plex would be a massive win.



I’ve spent a good portion of the day looking through the Netflix plugin, the dev.plexapp.com site and the site itself.



I’ve got a plan and should be able to have something up soon enough.



BUT (and there was always a but) I think I’m tripping up on something with Plex and how the Site Configuration XMLs work.



I have a very simple plugin - really just a training exercise for me before diving in.



I can get it to create my directories and I get a WebVideoItem created around the default URL that hosts the player.


url = 'plex://localhost/video/:/webkit?url=http://skyplayer.sky.com/vod/page/playLiveTv.do'


Then in my bundle I have a dead simple XML of 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><br />
<site site="http://skyplayer\.sky\.com/vod/page/playLiveTv\.do"<br />
	    plugin="silverlight"<br />
			initialState="buffering"<br />
			version="1.0"><br />
<br />
	<crop x="0" y="0" width="640" height="370" /><br />
	<br />
	<state name="buffering"><br />
		<event><br />
			<condition><br />
				<frameLoaded /><br />
			</condition><br />
			<action><br />
				<br />
			</action><br />
		</event><br />
	</state><br />
</site>


I launch Plex (used the awesome AppMaker tool to install the plugin - very cool) and can navigate right down to my WebVideoItem. And I click on it and Plex says opening stream.

There's no errors in the Plex or my plugin log but it progresses no further.

This could be where my understanding gets spotty - My understanding is that the page should be loaded and I should see a snippet of the page according to my coordinates I've set in my Site Config - but as stated I don't get any further.


Can anyone shed some light here????

Once done I feel it will be relatively straightforward (indeed I've already made my notes and plan) to build this out.

Thanks in advance!
11

Any progress with this? I’m willing to help but have no idea where I would even start really…



This would be an awesome feature though if it could be implemented.

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I'm still plugging away at this - have been stalled though due to a wider issue with the Sky Player and its arcane computer registration process. Hopefully their support team will help me out with that soon and I pick this plugin back up.

At this stage though the main issue with the plug-in is getting the silverlight player to load. The logs in Plex Server aren't throwing any errors and the page gets connected but nothing happens that stage forward.

If anyone is working this plugin let me know. Would be good to join forces!
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Are you passing the 'url = "plex://..."' variable to the WebVideoItem constructor? If so, the URL is wrong :) WebVideoItems automatically convert the URL in the constructor into a plex:// WebKit URL, so you just need to pass the address of the page hosting the player (http://skyplayer.sky.com/vod/page/playLiveTv.do).

If you want more helpful debug output, run Plex Media Server from the terminal by entering the following command:

~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex/Plex\ Media\ Server.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex\ Media\ Server
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Hi Jam

Yep I'm omitting the plex:// part of the URL. When I open my WVI plex says opening page an then the title of the page is shown so I'm assuming its reaching that ok. In fact I'm using Charles HTTP Proxy to watch the traffic and its all getting passed back ok.

One piece i'm going to look at is the returned HTML and if there is something going on there - i.e. SkyPlayer is sending different data back to the plex client.

Just need to get Sky Player to unlock!
15

How are people getting on with this?



I really want to get SkyPlayer working with Plex, it would be a huge addition in my opinion (well that and EyeTV but that is for another thread).



I see Windows 7 media centre now have Sky Player, maybe someone could try and reverse engineer this.

16


Right now there is an issue, still be triaged, with Sky Player and Safari - if you use Safari with SkyPlayer then you run into issues with computer registrations. This has the double whammy of not letting development go forward very quickly and once it is finished it would probably fall over more times than not.

I'm continuing to monitor the situation.
17


Is this a no go then?
18


I believe Sky have worked on the issue with Safari - maybe this means a Plex plugin is closer to being achievable?

...fingers crossed anyway
19

any more on this?

20

I’m interested too, i’d love to see a Sky Player plugin. I’d have a look myself but currently working on something else at the moment…