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More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: wnshall2 on January 06, 2009, 12:31:48 pm

Title: Playing internet streams via Open URL
Post by: wnshall2 on January 06, 2009, 12:31:48 pm

Sometimes when I try to play an internet radio stream using File | Open URL instead of playing the stream a new web browser window opens with what looks like Shoutcast data about the stream.  Here are some URLs that don't work.  BTW, they tune in fine with iTunes and SqueezeCenter:

http://war.str3am.com:8250/
http://streams.wgbh.org/wgbh.m3u
http://streams.wgbh.org/wgbh.pls
(These last two get translated by JRiver to http://64.71.145.107:8000/, which is what appears in the browser window's title bar)

Here is an example of the info on the webpage that gets opened:
Server Status:    Server is currently up and public.
Stream Status:    Stream is up at 24 kbps with 301 of 500 listeners (290 unique)
Listener Peak:    500
Average Listen Time:    2h 35m 07s
Stream Title:    WGBH 89.7 Live Boston's NPR Arts and Culture Station
Content Type:    audio/mpeg
Stream Genre:    Classical Jazz Blues News NPR
Stream URL:    http://www.wgbh.org
Stream ICQ:    
Stream AIM:    
Stream IRC:    
Current Song:    

This is an example of an URL that works:
http://streams.wgbh.org/classical.pls
(although it is translated by JRiver to http://64.71.145.107:8004)
Strange that one URL from wgbh works and the other doesn't.

Can anyone suggest what I'm doing wrong?

Title: Re: Playing internet streams via Open URL
Post by: Matt on January 06, 2009, 07:26:48 pm

Quote from: wnshall2 on January 06, 2009, 12:31:48 pm

http://war.str3am.com:8250/

This returns a content-type of text/html from the server.  That means it's a webpage.

It's probably looking for some special HTTP header before it provides audio data.  Any guesses what it might be?

Quote

http://streams.wgbh.org/wgbh.m3u
http://streams.wgbh.org/wgbh.pls

These two work for me.  Playlists get expanded to actual stream URLs, so it's normal for the filename to show a little different.

Title: Re: Playing internet streams via Open URL
Post by: Matt on January 07, 2009, 11:29:17 am

The server:
http://war.str3am.com:8250/

does not provide a content-type on connection.  That's not a very well behaved http:// server.

Media Center 13.0.103 (and later) will introduce this change for these cases:
Changed: When doing File > Open URL..., if the server does not provide a content-type header in the response, it will be assumed to be an MP3 stream.