Xfinity Help

Dev Community Dev/API Corner
1

I probably chose a too complicated source for my first shot at a channel, but I’m charging forward nonetheless. So… in advance I apologize if these are stupid and/or answered elsewhere.



As the topic says, I’m trying to put together an Xfinity channel, since no one appears to be working on one. I’ve been trying to follow along the various tutorials / examples but have hit a couple of roadblocks.


  1. Login… I haven’t really come across tutorials or anything that address this. For the AmazonInstantVideo plugin I see login steps in a <site configurations\amazoninstantvideo.xml> it looks like, and also in contents\accounts.py (Which gets called in init.py > MainMenu(). Where should I be putting the login info?? Any better examples out there?


  2. Regarding pulling the list of shows: 

	tv_URL="http://xfinitytv.comcast.net/full_episodes"<br />
	tv_page = HTML.ElementFromURL(url)<br />
	items = tv_page.xpath("//li[@class="tv"]")

should get me a list of shows on the page. However, the list spans multiple pages. How do plex channels typically handle this? I'd assume one way is to use not load the next page until the user selects "next" through the menu... but ideally I'd like to have plex handle the sorting of the shows instead of relying on the website, that way I can weed out stuff the user isn't eligible to see (HBO w/o a subscription, etc). Am I thinking of this in the wrong way??
2

Wish I could help you but I have not attempted channel development yet.  But I hope someone is able to answer your questions soon as that would be an awesome channel to have.

3

Glad to see someone was looking into this.  A friend just asked me about it and I have been looking at the site.  Was just about to post a question on the subject when I saw your post.

From someone who has just recently started learning channel design, yes you did pick a hard one to start, but who am I to say that, I have only started designing and I was looking at this project too.

The problem is you first will need a URL service for this channel, since there is not one for xfinity.  That was going to be my question. Looking at some of the videos for the site, it seems to pull some of their videos from their own video hosting site and some from Hulu so I am thinking the URL service for that site will be tricky.

You will have to create a URL service before you attempt writing the channel, but to attempt to answer your questions anyway:

The issue with having to enter an online ID and password for the channel to work should be solved by the user logging into the online site first from the computer that hosts their PMS server.  Then this info should be saved in the Flash program and give them full access based on their subscription.

And with the results spanning several pages, the site is usually using some type of carousel, so it is best to look for some type of json data file in the site that they are using to create the carousel entries. It makes it much easier to pull the info you want once you find the right json data file, but those json data files are a pain in the but to find and manipulate the parameters of to get the results you want. And looking at the page you listed in your post, that is a lot of shows to pull.  You may be better separating them into the sections available there of Popular, Newly Available, and then separating them into letters A-Z.

If you want some more info on URL services, you can check out this post http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/62126-url-service/ of me trying to figure out the process and here is a tutorial on the subject http://devblog.plexapp.com/2012/05/11/the-power-of-the-url-service/.  And with JSON, here http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/67261-json/  is some questions I asked on that subject as well (though it doesn't show the week I spent pulling out my hair trying to figure out that concept) and this tutorial talks about how to use Chrome to find the JSON in the network section http://devblog.plexapp.com/2012/09/27/using-chromes-built-in-debugger-for-channel-development/

I kept three windows open at all times.  One searching the forum for posts on the subject, one with the Framework Documentation, and one with the tutorials mentioned above.  Also, it is helpful if you can find a channel or service that already exist that is similar to your design and open the code for that channel to see how they did it. The hard part of that is figuring out which channel pulls from a website that has a similar design to yours.

Hope that helps.

4

I am curious if you have made any progress with this channel or looked at the URL service yet.

5

Have you looked at the Comcast website recently, they are in the process of replacing all their set top boxes over the next couple of years with a new one called the Xfinity X1 box.  This new box actually has       applications available for (traffic, weather, facebook among others).  This might open up the ability to create something that Comcast will allow to be added to their applications, or it might allow someone to create a jail break like people have done with the Apple TV.

I am hoping that Comcast might open up the ability for people to create applications for their settop box that can be sold thru an app store.

6

I looked at Xfinfity some time back and it appears to use what they call an Adobe HDS. They are supposedly very hard to work with according to some of the guys I talked to. It takes a lot of different parts from different files and merges it all together to make the video file. And not only does it hold DRM info, but uses something called bootstrap info to encode the basic makeup of the file format. This makes it near impossible for me to even figure out how to pull all the parts together to even construct the video file.

Maybe Comcast will help the process somehow in the future or someone with better skills than myself can figure out a way to create a URL service for it, but the combination of Adobe HDS, the bootstrap encoded info, and the DRM makes Xfinity a very difficult if not impossible project right now.

7

I just made the jump of faith and signed up for lifetime Plexpass in the hopes that this would eventually be supported officially (hopefully) or unofficially. 

8

If someone could get me a link to the manifest.f4m, I could have a look(or preferably the content attached in a post here).

I've managed to get a plugin working with Adobe HDS but have never seen one where DRM is required ...

9

hi, is there any movement within this area? I have some f4m links that id like to get running

10

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