Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jimn]

Hi All,

We are looking to replace Web Media, which is located under audio. If you use a lot of audio media from the internet, your input would be very helpful. Here are the major options:

1. Just remove Web Media and list 2 or 3 popular sites. We already have Shoutcast. What other audio sites should we include?

2. Replace Web Media with a better version.  How would you like Web Media to look and function?

3. Some other concept?

Thanks for your input.
JimN

[Osho]

My 2 cents: Whatever be the new design for Web Media, make sure it could be accessed via Theater View. If I have set up my radio stations on web, I would like to be able to listen to them using just a remote from the couch.

thanks,
Osho

[Matt]

My 2 cents: Whatever be the new design for Web Media, make sure it could be accessed via Theater View. If I have set up my radio stations on web, I would like to be able to listen to them using just a remote from the couch.

thanks,
Osho

You should be able to do this now using a Playlist.

[jgreen]

I would love to use the "web media" browser but i have never been able to get it to work.  I use the "shoutcast" link and it works REALLY WELL.  I don't know what other aggregator sites there are out there, but a couple more and i think you can remove "web media" fairly painlessly. 

Now that I think of it, there are a couple of streaming media sites out there that plan drive-by spyware on you, under the guise of "players".  So i think a tiny bit of due diligence is warranted.

[Mr ChriZ]

I use Web Media Daily to listen to BBC stations.
I'd miss it if it were gone.  Although it's still playing up on this system.

[jimn]

I use Web Media Daily to listen to BBC stations.
I'd miss it if it were gone.  Although it's still playing up on this system.

Is there some functionality of Web Media that you would miss? Or would just having the BBC stations in a playlist work as well?

How about being able to select the BBC Audio site (say, from a list of a dozen or two) to let you customize which sites appear under the Audio box (were Shoutcast appears now)?

(Just coming up with some possibilities.)

Thanks,
JimN

[jkrzok]

I wouldn't mind seeing Icecast and perhaps Live365 included. Is Pandora out of reach? Could we also see a way to add user defined entries, even if all they did was load a web page. That way I could load that web page that lists all of the BBC streams and someone else could get SomaFMs list.

I would like to see that whatever is included (be it Shoutcast or Icecast or others) have a look that is more integrated with MC. Don't just load the web page; load the information within something that looks like the library. (Quintessential Media Player's beta http://www.quinnware.com/ does this quite well.) This would provide a more consistent user experience and, frankly, I think Shoutcast's site is just plain ugly and not all that user friendly. And we wouldn't see ads!

I'd also like to see a more efficient, user friendly way to store favorites. A playlist doesn't always display meaningful information and I think that favorites in the old Web Media were stored in cookies. Anyhow they were stored they seemed to disappear often enough for me to discontinue their use. It would be nice to send a station to Web Media via right-click.

Web media would, to me, be nothing more than a place to keep my favorite stations, with clusters stored as single entries, something that can't be done in a playlist with more than one station. You could even rename it to Favorites, if M$ will allow you use the word. Shoutcast, Icecast, etc entries would be nestled in the same part of the tree.

Lastly, for now, I'd like to have the options to move this web media part of the tree to the top level and have a button for it on my toolbar.

[jgreen]

Icecast, yes.  I would make sure that Live365 wasn't trying to plant Odd Stuff on your computer, though.  If we're free-associating here, what about AOL/XM, or XM streaming?

As for favorites, I have a Playlist that I drag my web radio into.  maybe an MC playlist with the top 50 user choices off of web media (BBC, for example).

Also, jimn's caching web streamer is incredibly cool, IMO.  When I'm on my (slow) EV-DO connection in the hinterlands, and heavily surfing at the same time, pausing playback and spooling up cache is the only way to get 128 kbps streams to play properly.  Thanks again!

[Mr ChriZ]

As long as there's some simple way of me selecting the station,
without having to remember the URL then thats fine =)

Ps, shouldn't JimN get the red stars?

[jgreen]

I think there's some issue with this, perhaps a "political" issue.  For example, "Swell Guy", as we discovered, is actually Bill Gates incognito.  I suspect that "jimn" may actually be Steve Jobs.  Why else the appelation "jimn", studiously mocking our own JimH?  Is there some bad blood there?  Some road not taken?  I ask jriver, and especially this new jim, to come clean!

[JimH]

Damn!  Where did we go wrong, Steve?

[lalittle]

Hi All,

We are looking to replace Web Media, which is located under audio. If you use a lot of audio media from the internet, your input would be very helpful. Here are the major options:

1. Just remove Web Media and list 2 or 3 popular sites. We already have Shoutcast. What other audio sites should we include?

2. Replace Web Media with a better version.  How would you like Web Media to look and function?

3. Some other concept?

Thanks for your input.
JimN

This is great news.

While I definitely REALLY like the addition of "Shoutcast" in the tree (and frequently use it), and would be interested in seeing other sites here as well, My vote would absolutely be for number 2 -- i.e. replace the current MC Web Media with a better, more powerful version that was directly integrated with MC.  This would give people the ability to use popular sites like Shoutcast from within MC (which is a GREAT feature) but it would also allow people to have more advanced features of a "built in" Web Media section.

As far as features go, it would be nice if the station list could stay updated with the latest streaming stations, and not offer stations that have long since gone off the air.  It would also be nice to be able to save "favorite" stations in a list (like the current version can do) so that they could be easily accessed.  While I like Shoutcast, it's annoying that they don't offer a list of favorites on the site.  I realize I could save "links" to radio stations in order to access them, but 1) this is not very user friendly since it requires some "work" to set them up and tag them appropriately, and 2) these stations tend to change once in a while, making old links stop working from time to time.

The current Web Media can save favorites, but it's station list is incredibly out of date, and it's layout is rather "ungraceful."  On top of this, the information from stations (even ones that DO still work) is often incorrect, and the display of this information is extremely outdated compared to the rest of MC, which is very modern, user-friendly, and offers a great deal of flexibility and configurability.

Thanks for considering this,

Larry

PS.  One other very small thing:  I suggested this a while back, but I'll mention it here again that you may want to capitalize the "Shout" in "Shoutcast" since this is the way they always write it on their site (i.e. "SHOUTcast" rather than "Shoutcast.")  This simply makes it look more "correct."

[Fred1]

Whatever is technically behind the scenes, i would like a GUI that's simple like a real world radio with station buttons.

I don't like to have my radiostations as a playlist but want to click it as a nice button.
Information regarding the station could be displayed in some kind on status field.

[daveg]

For streaming audio, especially talk radio, the best site out there is Radiotime.com
They have listings of just about every radio station in the world, with a listing of what is on(for most). Very good product if you listen to talk radio on the internet.
I did some work for them a while ago and they are very receptive to integrating their service with others.

[bob]

One nice thing about the current setup is that the stations are validated so that there should very little (preferably no)  dead stations or other baddies.

I haven't used a lot of other services, I usually just get the link to a stream I want from the providers site. Anyway it seems to me that keeping/implementing some way of weeding out the dead stuff would be nice.

[lalittle]

One nice thing about the current setup is that the stations are validated so that there should very little (preferably no)  dead stations or other baddies.

I don't understand -- when you say "current," are you talking about the current MC "Web Media" section?  If so, my experience is the opposite.  I find that MOST stations in this list don't work.

Larry

[jimn]

Thanks for the feedback and site suggestions!

It was all very helpful. (Still a little time left for last minute suggestions.)

Ps, shouldn't JimN get the red stars?

I don't really know how this system of stars work. I only know that for the last star rating system I remember (Mrs. Johnson's kindergarten class), 5 gold stars was actually something very good, while ANY red markings were quite upsetting.

-SteveJ

[park]

I'd like to see lastFM added to the audio tree. Especially considering there is a lastFM plugin available for Media Center.

[datdude]

It would be nice to know more about a station like its popularity and how new or old it is.  That info probably isn't available, but...

I would also like to see Pandora work through MC somehow.

[ThoBar]

So long as I am able to continue to add my own radio stations (I dont want to be restricted to the "more popular" ones), the only change I would like to see is a "Web Media" section in Theater View, where all web related media (stations...) appear as a submenu. The ability for us to use this instead of smartlists would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
C.

[lukecro]

I haven't used the MC "Web Media" functions much in a long time -- but I think I'd definitely use a new, improved MC Web Media quite a bit.

Personally, I'd love to see, in addition to Shoutcast and other "recommended" sites:

-> The ability for users to *easily* add new stations/sites/streams, and have the choices saved to the database/library in some way instead of as a cookie/etc., so that the added stations can be saved/transferred/remembered along with the rest of the user's library.

-> The ability to use MC to search for radio stations is cool, so I'd be all for keeping this functionality so long as there was a way for the Web Media database to stay more up-to-date -- but the main issue, for me, is the ability to intuitively store, search, organize, and play user-chosen favorite stations, even if those stations where discovered via a non-MC source.

-> Any integration with Pandora would be superb. I'm addicted to the free version of Pandora, and I'm even kinda considering the paid version. Either way, Pandora-radio integration with MC would be awesome, even if it meant having to look at the Pandora ads. (Totally off-topic: eMusic integration would also be cool.)

-> An overall more tightly integrated Web Media ("look and feel," Theatre View, etc.) -- something closer, perhaps, to how MC currently handles podcasts.

-> While far from perfect, and no match for MC in most respects (although it's getting cooler with each build), Songbird has been adding some very nice features in terms of searching for, playing, saving, and deleting online media and radio streams . . . Since they appear to be <cough> borrowing ideas from MC, it'd only be fair for MC to borrow some of their better ideas right back.... Or consider, and let me apologize before saying this, as I realize they may be seen as a competitor of sorts, but, hmmm, some sort of future Songbird/MC integration? The combined power of the two could = the ultimate media interface of the future...

[jimn]

Thanks for the continuing comments and suggestions. I'm still assimilating them while developing the new interface.

A note about integrating websites into MC. It is really a great idea, and I wish there was a way we could realistically implement it. The problem is that we would have to write custom code for each site, and that code, by it's nature is very fragile; the site owner makes one small change and our code is broken, and we don't know it until somebody reports it. To my knowledge, most sites don't have a programming interface available, and if they do, it probably doesn't get properly updated along with the site. There is certainly no interface standard so we still have to write code for each site.

When you think about, it not necessarily in the website owner's interest to provide an easy way to scrape the data & links from their sites. So while displaying all the websites as is in MC is not an ideal solution, it will have to serve.

JimN

[Mr ChriZ]

With the new Remote Server implementations being developed
I would like it to be possible for Web Media to be accessible to
developers also. It may be already I haven't looked.
It would be good if I could start up Radio 2 on my surround sound
computer by hitting the right button on a website on the laptop
that my company keep promising me.

[water1]

I would like the ability to listen to XM Radio. I currenly use: http://www.xstreamer.net/xinfo/