"Push" Streaming Feed - Auto Launch Player

swyftmeister · 09-27-04, 12:31 PM

I have a music server (netjuke) that can stream mp3's upon demand. ie. Via a login to the music server using a remote browser, a request can be made for a music file that is then pushed back down to the client where a suitable media player picks up the stream.

My PDA cannot pick up the feed. I have associated the "m3u" file type but still no joy. Realplayer on the PDA is not kicking in for ".rma" types either, even though ".rma" file type is associated with Realplayer on the PDA. Is the browser on the PDA limited in some way? I am using NetFront3.1

Thanks
Adrian

HighTymes · 09-27-04, 01:58 PM

I will give this program a try and see.

bphillips · 02-20-05, 04:32 PM

Hi - Had the same problem. Netjuke supplies the playlist with a PHP extension so it doesn't get associated with any of the applications on my Axim. I have found a rather messy workaround for now but it works. create your playlist with Netjuke as normal. When the browser asks you to download the file, say yes. Rename the file in File explorer by editing it's properties and changing the extension the mu3 (don't rename the file as it doesn't change the association). When you click on this renamed file, it will launch into you player as a normal playlist. I use gplayer at the moment and it works perfectly. Good luck. :-)

Becky.

NotShorty · 02-20-05, 04:53 PM

Have you tried Windows Media Encoder 9 (free)?

Although I am not familiar with NetJuke, WME9 may be a good solution. You can basically set up your pc to be a pull server which your PDA (or any computer running WMPlayer) can link to via http:

The cool thing about it is you can pull anything that you can play on your desktop. I've had great success with WinAmp, any and all mp3's, and I'd imagine it would work with Napster and iTunes although I haven't yet tried.

also, by pull anything, I mean anything including video like .mpg, camcorders, microphone...use your imagination (think TiVo in the palm of your hand).

NS

bphillips · 02-21-05, 05:37 AM

Slight Typo in my post - for "Mu3" - of course read "m3u". Sorry. If anyone knows the place in Netjuke where the download playlist is created, I'd appreciate you posting it. Simply getting it to rename the file on the fly would be much easier.

swyftmeister · 02-22-05, 07:07 PM

Thanks bphilips.

What i was hoping was that the media player (wmp, betaplayer or gsplayer) would see the passed url, interpret it and stream in realtime appropriately.

What i can't understand is that windowes media player on a regular old windows box will quite happily open up the url that netjuke passes to it and plays the stream in real time.

Why can't the the pda do this?

bphillips · 02-23-05, 07:47 AM

Something to do with associations I suppose. pocket PC doesn't allow you to manually set these although it's not that it won't recognise PHP as the initial page you use with netjuke is precisely that. I had a word with a friend who reckons they has a similiar problem with an RSS feed. Something to do with what it actually puts in the php file itself. They suggest maybe looking at how the actual webserver serves the page. I'm using Apache so I will have a look into that when I can. I'm determined to solve this one as it would be so useful and would make the effort of installing the thing in the first place so much more worthwhile.

Let me know if you find out anything yourself.

Becky.

OddbOd · 04-28-05, 11:16 AM

Well after some wailing and cursing I finally fixed the problem.

You were sort of on the right track with the file association idea but the crux of the problem is the way different browsers handle http headers. The desktop browsers work with Netjuke because the filename passed to them in the header is the one that is actually used, unfortunately Pocket IE does things completely differently and tries to guess the filetype based on the extension it sees (in this case .php). My first attempt at a fix was to use NetFront 3.1 which did work as it correctly changes the filename to .m3u and can be configured to open a file using a helper app, but, even when configured correctly you still have to go through a pointless save dialog to get the file to play.

The second way I tried was to make Netjuke work with PocketIE like so, just open the play.php file and change line 165 from this:

Code:

header ("Content-type: audio/x-mpegurl\r\nContent-Disposition: inline; filename=netjuke-".substr(time(),-7).".m3u" );

to this:

Code:

header ("Content-type: audio/x-mpegurl\r\nContent-Disposition: attachment; filename=netjuke-".substr(time(),-7).".m3u" );

The problem with doing this is you now have to manually open the .m3u file on both your PPC and your desktop machine which I did not consider acceptable as it fixes 1 problem and creates 2 more.

Before I show you how to solve this problem lets take a minute to fix up Pocket IE/Betaplayer so that we can play a file from the web instead of saving it to disk. You will need a WinCE registry editor for this bit so if you don't have one already grab PHM Registry Editor and install it on your Axim. Now open your registry and navigate to \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Betaplayer there should be a value already there named Default containing the value Betaplayer. On the Edit menu tap "New DWORD Value" and for Value Name enter EditFlags, change the Base to Hexadecimal and enter 10010000 in the Value Data box. Tap OK and now there should be two values in the lower pane, Pocket IE will now open any file on the web that is associated with Betaplayer directly in Betaplayer without showing the usual save dialog.

You can do the same for GSPlayer by adding the same key and value at \HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\GSPlayer Playlist but this is unecessary as Betaplayer can handle HTTP streams perfectly well.

Now to fix play.php properly, open it up and insert the following code at line 371:

Code:

######################################

function IsIE4CE() {

 # Check if the server is being accessed by Pocket IE for Windows CE as it
 # handles the content-disposition header differently to desktop browsers
 
   $out = false;
   $client = strtoupper($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

   if( eregi('MSIE 4.01',$client) && eregi('WINDOWS CE',$client) ) $out = true;           
   return $out;
};

Now replace line 164 with these two lines:

Code:

	if (IsIE4CE()) header ("Content-type: audio/x-mpegurl\r\nContent-Disposition: attachment; filename=netjuke-".substr(time(),-7).".m3u" );
	else header ("Content-type: audio/x-mpegurl\r\nContent-Disposition: inline; filename=netjuke-".substr(time(),-7).".m3u" );

And that's it! You don't have to restart Apache as the changes will occur next time you try to play a file. The above code change tricks Pocket IE into downloading the playlist with the correct name while leaving desktop browsers to handle the download as per the original script.

Happy streaming!

P.S. Don't forget to clear out the playlist files from 'My Documents' every so often as they can make a mess.

swyftmeister · 05-13-05, 11:20 AM

Wow. Good work OddbOd!

I'll try this out this weekend.

Cheers!
Swyftmeister

Gokuu_Elemental · 05-13-05, 04:01 PM

OddbOd, if you don't mind me asking, how long have you been programming and what languages do you do programming in? Just wondering, appreciate your experience.

OddbOd · 05-14-05, 03:07 AM

You're giving me too much credit there Gokuu, I know a little bit of C, VB, Assembler and PASCAL but not enough of any of them to do anything really useful. I don't actually do any programming as such since I'm yet to find a problem that can't be solved with existing applications, not very imaginative but it's the truth.