INTERACT FORUM

More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Marko on July 03, 2003, 04:22:53 am

Title: More web radio tips 'n' tricks....
Post by: Marko on July 03, 2003, 04:22:53 am

I wanted to get "classicFM" piped through MC......

From their homepage (http://www.classicfm.com), their "listen now" link looks like so....

http://www.classicfm.com/index.cfm?nodeId=315&full_path=$/classicfm/music/listennow

and clicking on that opens a page with a VW advert on it, and a popup player. Obviously, this url is no use to MC. I tried to view the source of the page with the advert, and it was empty....
I got the bit between my teeth, and here's the hoops I jumped through to get this one .......

• Saved that "Listen Now" page to disk, opened locally in text editor. Scanned for href entries.
• Found this line...
  
  Code: [Select]
  onclick="javascript:void(window.open('http://audio.musicradio.com/tuner.asp?station=classic','Tuner','width=468,height=207,resizable=no,menubar=no,locationbar=no,toolbar=no,scrollbars=no'));"
  which looked promising, so I tested the url in iexplorer and it opened their player "fullscreen". Getting warmer ;)
• Used Getright to save that .asp file to disk, then opened it in a text editor. The things got tons of code in it, and about half way down, there's "http://audio.musicradio.com/classicfm.asx"
• Not there yet. Experience tells me MC will have trouble with this too. Used Getright to grab that .asx file and once again, fire it into that trusty text editor. There we see the golden link...
• mms://audio4.musicradio.com/classicfm
• Nip back to their homepage and rip a copy of their logo into your albumart folder, associate the the image with the stream.
• Sorted:D

Quote

Listening to: 'Classic FM Live' from 'Radio' by 'Classic FM' on Media Center 9.1

So, you see, these sites want you locked into them. They want to show you their adverts etc. so they don't make it easy to get the stream in a way that you want it, hence many users frustrations that "webradio doesn't work. I click the link but MC won't play it"
It's most often not MC's fault. If you can show MC exactly where the stream server is, bypassing multiple scripts etc, my experience is that it will play without a problem (though there is a BIG problem listening to .wma streams with ASIO enabled, and I wish that could be fixed. Untill then, either remember to turn ASIO off before connecting or use directsound instead).

Maybe someone will find this useful, maybe not, just thought it might help ease some of the criticism MC has been fielding in this area;)
-marko :)