A few observations:
First, I'm rather impressed with how you have captured the netflix video stream and play natively in Media Center...this is an amazing achievement.
There seems to be some flakiness between how the plugin interacts with the agent. I will detail my experience in case you have not encountered it in your personal tests.
At one point in my usage, there seemed to be two videos playing. One was the onscreen buffer, which I could pause at will, but the other continued playing in the background. I'm assuming that you are playing the video and pulling it in to the buffer. So, I also assume that the second video is actually the source video that I'm hearing (but not seeing).
Also, when I exit the plugin, this unseen but heard video continues to play for at least awhile. Restarting the movie did not fix this. I eventually had to restart the whole machine. I do not know if this was a problem with two agent threads or what. (I obviously don't have a perfect idea of how you accomplish this magic...I'm just making guesses based on how I would approach it.)
I also notice that when you navigate to the main menu while a video is playing, you continue to hear the video until you press "stop" but there is no actual way to get back to the in progress video. The "Now Playing" feature has not been fully taken advantage of it seems.
I will give you more feedback as I continue to play around with it.
But, I will reiterate...amazing work...this is a great start.
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KungFu_Toe:Any chance of getting this compiled to work on Vista x64? I'm getting a 'jet.oledb' error.
clifgriffin:At one point in my usage, there seemed to be two videos playing. One was the onscreen buffer, which I could pause at will, but the other continued playing in the background. I'm assuming that you are playing the video and pulling it in to the buffer. So, I also assume that the second video is actually the source video that I'm hearing (but not seeing).
The Netflix ActiveX Client volume is one thing that I’m not 100% I can control via code. The fix for this is to go to Netflix.com and view some movie. Turn the ActiveX Netflix client volume all the way down and then close the browser. Their actually is a registry setting for the Netflix client volume but it does not seem to matter if I manually set it.
clifgriffin:Also, when I exit the plugin, this unseen but heard video continues to play for at least awhile. Restarting the movie did not fix this. I eventually had to restart the whole machine. I do not know if this was a problem with two agent threads or what. (I obviously don't have a perfect idea of how you accomplish this magic...I'm just making guesses based on how I would approach it.)
Right now I don't have any kind of NetflixMC plug-in session management while running in MCE. If you open NetflixMC and then start a movie then go back to the program lib and start NetflixMC again you will have two NetflixMC plug-ins running each talking to the NetflixMC agent with different threaded sessions. The NetflixMC plug-in pings the NetflixMC agent ever 15 seconds. This lets the Agent know that the plug-in is still running. Once the ping stops there is a 10 sec timeout at with point the agent will stop the background movie. You can actually view and manually kill this process while it is running from the taskbar try.
Sharp_1:Here is what I have so far: http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2521/netflixmcerrorid0.png I seem to be having trouble with the ID and Password being saved after I press apply in NetflixMC settings. NetflixMC agent starts up automatically when windows starts but errors out into the "status stopped" state in my notification area. OS = Vista Home Premium Let me know if you want me to post my debug?
Here is what I have so far:
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2521/netflixmcerrorid0.png
I seem to be having trouble with the ID and Password being saved after I press apply in NetflixMC settings. NetflixMC agent starts up automatically when windows starts but errors out into the "status stopped" state in my notification area.
OS = Vista Home Premium
Let me know if you want me to post my debug?
killervette:here is my errorStartup URI: C:\Program Files\NetflixMC\NetflixMC Plug-in\NetflixMC.xbapApplication Identity: file:///C:/Program%20Files/NetflixMC/NetflixMC%20Plug-in/NetflixMC.xbap#NetflixMC.xbap, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6fddde62590ed66f, processorArchitecture=msil/NetflixMC.exe, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=6fddde62590ed66f, processorArchitecture=msil, type=win32System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException: Cannot create instance of 'Window1' defined in assembly 'NetflixMC, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. Error in markup file 'Window1.xaml' Line 2 Position 5. ---> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.ServiceModel.EndpointNotFoundException: Could not connect to http://localhost:4369/WCF/Host. TCP error code 10061: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:4369. ---> System.Net.WebException: Unable to connect to the remote server ---> System.Net.Sockets.SocketException: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it
gobanjoboy:Sharp_1 - I just posted a newer build. trying it now.
Sharp_1: gobanjoboy:Sharp_1 - I just posted a newer build. trying it now.I was able to get the NetflixMC agent to run using the open in administrator option as stated earlier. I will get back to you with more findings. Right now my only issue is getting the movie to play longer then a few minutes...keep getting a message like "windows will not play file" with a big blue screen.
gobanjoboy: clifgriffin:At one point in my usage, there seemed to be two videos playing. One was the onscreen buffer, which I could pause at will, but the other continued playing in the background. I'm assuming that you are playing the video and pulling it in to the buffer. So, I also assume that the second video is actually the source video that I'm hearing (but not seeing). The Netflix ActiveX Client volume is one thing that I’m not 100% I can control via code. The fix for this is to go to Netflix.com and view some movie. Turn the ActiveX Netflix client volume all the way down and then close the browser. Their actually is a registry setting for the Netflix client volume but it does not seem to matter if I manually set it. clifgriffin:Also, when I exit the plugin, this unseen but heard video continues to play for at least awhile. Restarting the movie did not fix this. I eventually had to restart the whole machine. I do not know if this was a problem with two agent threads or what. (I obviously don't have a perfect idea of how you accomplish this magic...I'm just making guesses based on how I would approach it.) Right now I don't have any kind of NetflixMC plug-in session management while running in MCE. If you open NetflixMC and then start a movie then go back to the program lib and start NetflixMC again you will have two NetflixMC plug-ins running each talking to the NetflixMC agent with different threaded sessions. The NetflixMC plug-in pings the NetflixMC agent ever 15 seconds. This lets the Agent know that the plug-in is still running. Once the ping stops there is a 10 sec timeout at with point the agent will stop the background movie. You can actually view and manually kill this process while it is running from the taskbar try.
Hmm, I seem to be an idiot. :) I misread your instructions and turned the volume all the way up, not down. I was reading what I was expecting it to say, not what it actually said.
I'll play around with it more today and see what I find.
Currently know issues:
Sharp_1: There are many things I like about both Netflix plugin UI's, I wonder if the developers would work together to make something really awesome...they both seem to be working in the same direction but with two different ways to get there.