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[Uwe]

Since yesterday i've got a new (better) connection to internet and i'm able to receive radio streams. I'm not very familiar with the functionality of MC in that case, but i found out, that Media Mode is not the right solution for me. At the moment, i put the streams ( .ra or .smil files) in a playlist and select them from there. This is the only way to reach them in Theatre Mode. Is there any other solution for radio streams or do i miss something?

Thanks
Uwe

[shortie]

Uwe, you've just hit on something that I've been looking into for about a week or so, now.  I'm replacing Meedio on my HTPC with MC and I'm having problems with Internet radio streams, too.  It seems that Media Center resolves all the items in a playlist and stores them under the name of the playlist instead of just saving the playlist itself and resolving all the items when the playlist is played.  For "normal" media, this makes sense because it allows MC to stay current if you move tracks around on your hard disk.  For Internet radio streams, though, it doesn't work too well.  I listen to quite a few Internet radio stations and almost all of them offer a playlist which contains from 1 to 5 streaming servers.  Sometimes they change those servers (I don't know if they do it based on load or cost or what).  The way Media Center functions now, I don't pick up those changes and have to monitor the contents of the playlists myself.

One thing I will say: 11.1.184 addressed one of the problems I encountered right away and that was that the track info pages didn't reflect when the streaming station changed tracks.  I reported it in the morning and the fine folks here at JR fixed it in that day's build!  With that change, my Theater View correctly reflects the track information that's provided by the streaming stations.

Oh, and to anwer your question, I've created a playlist group called Internet Radio and then create a playlist for each station and add each URL.  The way I do that is to do File -> Open URL, enter the URL for the stream (either the playlist or the individual stream).  That populates Playing Now.  From there, I can do one of two things:

1) drag the items from Playing Now to the new playlist or
2) select all the radio station's items in Playing Now, right click to bring up the context menu and select Send To -> Playlist -> Create Playlist ...

[Uwe]

Shorty, thanks for your detailed answer. Nice to hear, that i'm on the right way. Ok, it's a loop way, but the media mode is definatly not the tool for me but a new entry for the wishlist of MC 12...

Uwe

[shortie]

Good luck with your forays into Internet radio streams in MC.  Based on my experiences, it doesn't look like too many folks have wandered around in this area of the code.  Don't get me wrong, MC has it all over everything else for management of other media items but in this particular area, well, let's just say that there's no substitute for experience and trying to make it work 

[shortie]

One more thing that may interest those of us playing with Internet streams (and it may've been discussed already but I couldn't find anything like this): you can create a view which shows ONLY Internet streams by using the following expression:

   [Filename (path)]="://"

Or at least that seems to work for me.  Create a new view by going to Edit -> Add View Scheme.  I have only Name and Location (root) to the scheme in step 1, named it something appropriate (Streams, in my case) in step 2, made no changes to what I was presented in step 3 and used the above expression in step 4.

[Uwe]

One more thing that may interest those of us playing with Internet streams (and it may've been discussed already but I couldn't find anything like this): you can create a view which shows ONLY Internet streams by using the following expression:

   [Filename (path)]="://"

Or at least that seems to work for me.  Create a new view by going to Edit -> Add View Scheme.  I have only Name and Location (root) to the scheme in step 1, named it something appropriate (Streams, in my case) in step 2, made no changes to what I was presented in step 3 and used the above expression in step 4.

That's it! With this idea the genre of all my streams is "Radiostream" and i can put the view in Theatre View.
Thanxs a lot!
Uwe
Uwe

[schmoose]

One more thing that may interest those of us playing with Internet streams (and it may've been discussed already but I couldn't find anything like this): you can create a view which shows ONLY Internet streams by using the following expression:

   [Filename (path)]="://"

Or at least that seems to work for me.  Create a new view by going to Edit -> Add View Scheme.  I have only Name and Location (root) to the scheme in step 1, named it something appropriate (Streams, in my case) in step 2, made no changes to what I was presented in step 3 and used the above expression in step 4.

Aahh, i overlooked that one.  I've been manually tagging all of my internet radio streams.  for the "Type" tag field, I just put "Radio Station", and created a view scheme that restricted the view to only show "[Type]=[Radio Station]".  yours is easier though. 

anyway, i've given all my radio stations genres and styles, and use the panes to browse through them, just like with all my other muzak.

Uwe, why don't you just create a view called "Radiostream" instead of making that the genre?  it's nice to be able to browse radio stations by their different genres and/or styles

[Uwe]

Uwe, why don't you just create a view called "Radiostream" instead of making that the genre?  it's nice to be able to browse radio stations by their different genres and/or styles

the reason is that i'm an absolut beginner concerning streaming and i just stored 2 (two) stations. So "browsing the station by ..." is not exactly the right expression for what i'm doing with MC.

Uwe

[shortie]

One more thing that may interest those of us playing with Internet streams (and it may've been discussed already but I couldn't find anything like this): you can create a view which shows ONLY Internet streams by using the following expression:

   [Filename (path)]="://"

Or at least that seems to work for me.  Create a new view by going to Edit -> Add View Scheme.  I have only Name and Location (root) to the scheme in step 1, named it something appropriate (Streams, in my case) in step 2, made no changes to what I was presented in step 3 and used the above expression in step 4.

Just tried this again with 11.1.185 and find that my instructions don't work anymore.  Now what you need to do is

• Select Start (i.e. the first item in the tree view pane on the left)
• Click Edit -> Add View Scheme
• In Step 1, Click Add and select Standard View Item...
• Select Type: Name
• Click Add and again select Standard View Item...
• Select Type: Filename and leave Base Directory empty and note that after you click OK, it will appear in the box in step 1 as Location (root)
• In step 2 you can leave Auto-name checked or uncheck it and enter your own name
• In step 3, I left everything alone but, since it looks like things are changing with builds, I'll tell you that Image was Scheme, Tree Position was Automatic, Populate tree, Honor parent scheme search strings and Show in Theater View were all checked, Filter in both directions was unchecked.
• In step 4, I entered the search as listed above: [Filename (path)]="://"

This seems to work in both 11.1.184 and 11.1.185.