I was considering purchasing a pro license, but was concerned that it is not really being updated very frequently.
In the premium content section, it lists sling.com as a source. But that doesn’t really exist any longer, unless it gives access to the sling box itself, which would be a bonus, but I think they listed that web site when it was a hulu clone.
The $39.99 price point is a bit high, do they ever run specials or have coupons?
I have purchased some competing products for less.
I think another release is coming fairly soon, but I’m not sure when. I heard that some fixes were a’comin.
The Pro version’s strengths lean toward Internet feeds and Apple equipment (not sure what else would benefit from H264), so it’s up to you to decide on the value…
Waiting for update released…
dare2try,
YES! That works!
I used the link you provided for your custom pipe: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info? … 1226fb0862
And I inputted the link of the RSS feed provided by Hulu: http://www.hulu.com/feed/search?fs=0&qu … pe=episode
Then I clicked on “run pipe” and it provided a page with the Letterman links. At the top of the list was a button labeled “Get as RSS”, which I clicked and got the following feed: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_ … %3Depisode
I then went into my tversity library, selected my existing Letterman RSS feed and clicked on "edit item". I replaced the old hulu feed with the new pipes feed and clicked update. Then I went to my iPod touch and browsed to the tversity server and opened the letterman feed. I clicked on one of the videos listed, but it opened in a "non auto play" format! So I went back to the tversity library and updated the feed again, then back to my iPod again. Still the video would not auto play. Assuming there might be a cache issue, I went ahead and deleted the feed all together and then created a brand new feed using the new pipes feed. Then I went to my iPod to test again and the Letterman videos opened and played just as expected!
THANK YOU!
On a whim, I wondered if your yahoo pipe might somehow also fix the “failure to zoom” issue that occurs when viewing Conan O’Brien on TBS. But no such luck. I use the same process to create a hulu feed, which comes out like this: http://www.hulu.com/feed/search?fs=0&qu … pe=episode
But after creating the library item in tversity, and then opening the item on my iPod, the videos load, and they play, but they show the whole TBS webpage, instead of zooming in on only the video part. Not really an issue of url format, at least I don’t think?
So anyway, thanks again. I really appreciate your time in addressing this issue, and I do think your link is worthy of publishing out for more general use. It also worked for "The Good Wife", so I assume it will work for all CBS content. Good job and thanks again very much. I will personally look a bit closer at pipes and see what I can learn for myself. There are quite a number of other video content links I would like to create RSS feeds for. Maybe I can get Conan working by building my own?
One more time… Thanks!
I took the concept one step further so you don’t have to create any of your own pipes, just use this one and provide it the URL from Hulu.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info? ... 1226fb0862If this works out for you, I will publish it out for more general use.
Kinnybee,
I’m happy to hear that it worked out of you. As a side note while trying to fix this issue I found some shows that I actually watch but didn’t think about adding to TVersity, for some reason, so for that Thank YOU. I’m going to publish out the pipe that you used to create your links (as well as update to V2 of the pipes engine), so I’m hoping that it won’t break your existing links, but if it does I will be sure to let you know so you can recreate them. Fortunately after that, everything should be good, since it will be published.
As for the TBS thing, if I recall correctly TBS is not natively supported in TVersity but that shouldn’t be a big deal since we can easily add support for it using the osb.xml. If your interested in trying to get TBS working, I wouldn’t mind some of your help/input.
Anyways, I am very happy to hear your finally up and running and that I could help.
Kinnybee,
So I took some time today to look at your issue. Actually, I don’t know why I didn’t think about this earlier, since it turns out that I too watch a lot of CBS shows. Currently though, I am just recording them using my over-the-air antenna and Windows Media Center.
In short, the problem with the RSS feed that hulu creates is that it tacks on the referrer to the end of the url with the "#" sign. It looks like by the time it gets to the CBS player, it is only parsing out the "&" (which identify parameters), so the last parameter "auto_play" is actually assigned "true#http…".
Take this example:
<link>
http://www.cbs.com/primetime/ncis/video/?pid=N05IIlqQScSmpKg4HKKdbaBd7HJTIsxR&vs=Default&play=true#http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hulu.com%2Ffeed%2Fsearch%3Ffs%3D0%26query%3DNCIS%26showname%3Dncis%26sort_by%3Dair_date%26st%3D0%26type%3Depisode
</link>Effect, no auto play. TVersity won’t be able to help you out with this because it can’t handle every possible circumstance (obviously), but I did some fancy-smancy RSS feed editing and filtering (see link below) and got it working. I tested this feed using my iPod and it is working with issue, so I’m hoping you will experience the same (I’ll explain how to do it in a bit).
Basically, I’m using one of Yahoo!'s older web based products called [http://pipes.yahoo.com][/Yahoo! Pipes]. It’s intention is so that you can create your own feeds from whatever kind of content you want (blogs, rss, etc.). It has some neat tools but I didn’t have to get real complicated in order to get this working, just had to modify the contents of the “link” element. Here are the steps I took in order to get this working:
I realize its a little more work than you might like, but it works, so here’s hoping you have the same luck!
No, Pro is not worth it. Do not buy it. The “Premium Content” pitch is false advertising. You can search for my post called “False Advertising”. Or just search for “CBS”. Essentially there is no premium content except for Hulu. And you have to spend forever searching on here to figure out how to even get Hulu to work. You would think these forums would have “stickies” with “guides” that help users figure out how to use the software they have PAID for. That’s how it is in almost every tech support forum I have ever visited. But there is no such thing here in tversity land.
I thought buying Pro would give me a bunch of premium content options. Maybe it does. But there is no way to find out because no one here will help you figure it out. Don’t waste your money if premium content is what you think you are paying for. It is a rip off.
Sorry to sound so jaded and negative. Just thought after all these months that I would at least get SOME sort of answer to my technical questions. Instead the only feedback I have gotten is:
"Continued harping on the issue may lead to less fair treatment…"
I guess accepting money on the promise of premium content availability and then not keeping that promise constitutes "fair treatment"? Sounds more like fraud if you ask me.
Well, let me point out that I am a (THE, most of the time) moderator (I am not paid to do this, BTW) and I thought that the number of posts you made was excessive, almost to the point of spam. Cleaning up the extra posts without deleting your whole account still seems fair, and to me the comment I made about ‘harping’ still has merit. I realize TVersity wasn’t free for you, but if you ran into trouble while still in the refund period you should have asked for the refund. You can still tell folks who ask that you are dissatisfied, but your search for technical support here has a problem.
This forum is, for the most part, users-supporting-users. Ronen is still THE technical guy, and he doesn’t always post every week. Your best bet is to email him and see what you get. Clicking on his userID link will lead you to an email link.
Now, perhaps somebody else here could answer your question, but it’s strictly voluntary. I don’t use the Pro version and I don’t have any idea how to do what you want. I’m just assuming that either 99.99% of the Pro users have no issues with CBS.com or 99.99% don’t bother with it, since the complaints are few. Happy users tend not to visit support sites, so that leaves you hoping that an otherwise unhappy user found success with CBS.com and will post about that while waiting for their question to be answered. Beyond that, and Ronen possibly posting something for you, I’m not sure what you’ll end up getting here…
Huh. I guess the link to his email is selectively enabled since I could do it. You can try the info@tversity.com address and see what happens…
OK, so ronenmiz does not have any contact info listed. So how do I contact him? Here is the email I would like to send him, if anyone cares to forward it on to him for me. Thanks:
Dear Ronen,
I generate rss feeds via Hulu. Even content not hosted on Hulu, like CBS and TBS (Letterman and Conan) can be searched for and found on Hulu, and then Hulu will generate RSS feeds for the searches, so you can limit the feed to "full episodes" and not clips, etc.
So I add the RSS feed for Conan to the tversity gui as follows:
http://www.hulu.com/feed/search?fs=0&qu ... pe=episodeBut when I view it via tversity on my ipod touch, I get a full web page instead of zooming in on the video. Is there a solution? I have read and commented on several posts about this on the forum, but no one seems to know why this happens, other than it was a change in the latest version and no one knows how to change it back.
Similarly, I use Hulu to generate rss feeds for The Late Show with David Letterman, which creates this link:
http://www.hulu.com/feed/search?fs=0&qu ... pe=episodeWhen I put that into the tversity gui, it seems to work just fine. Except that the videos don’t automatically play. They have to be clicked in order to play. Upon further investigation, I notice a difference in the URLs of the video pages. Here is a link generated by the Hulu RSS feed:
http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show ... %3DepisodeAs you can see, the Default Play is set to True, so it should be automatically playing. Except even when viewed in a browser the video does not automatically play. It has to be clicked to play.
However, if you remove all the Hulu jargon from the link, you get this:
http://www.cbs.com/late_night/late_show ... &play=trueAnd THIS link DOES automatically play. Both in a browser and in tversity. So for some reason the Hulu jargon prevents cbs.com from automatically playing the video!
Unfortunately, knowing this does not help me. I do not know how to generate an RSS feed for the letterman show any other way than by using hulu. And hulu adds jargon to the end of the link that prevents the video from automatically playing.
So #1, How do you get tversity to zoom in on the video instead of showing the whole web page?
And #2, How do you generate RSS feeds for CBS.com shows like letterman and big bang theory (and other premium sites and shows) that create clean URLs that will auto play?
Or #3, How do you suggest viewing premium content from CBS and others without manually adding each and every individual video URL?
Thanks.
Kinnybee, I looked at your situation as well as some of your other posts and think I can come up with some kind of solution. Unfortunately my time right now is a little tight but I will try and see what I can do this weekend, no promises though.
As for mike auld comment about how happy users don’t really use the forums, I would have to agree, but only when it in the context of these TVersity forums. I’m not exactly sure why that is, maybe because the community does have a sense of ownership like some open source projects do; or maybe it’s because there is no big carrot out there for those that can help but require some kind of incentive to really get going; who know, but I’ll see what I can do for you.
Hope this finds you well!
Thanks for the replies. I will email Ronen and see what comes of it.
On the issue of forum participation, I am no expert. But I did just softmod my Wii by getting involved in the forums at wiihacks.com. There is advertising over there, and sponsors, and whatnot. Maybe it’s a different model? But there is a LOT of information, stickies, guides, etc. Lots of step by step instructions for every conceivable variation of hardware and software. Lot’s of experts on there answering questions and providing development and testing info. Maybe because it is a more open sort of a thing? But they sure seem to have a lot going on. Definitely a different experience over there as compared to here.
To watch CBS content, I would goto hulu.com run a search for… (i.e.) Blue Bloods.
In top right corner of hulu, click Advanced Search.
Put "Blue Bloods" in show title.
Under "refine search results by" the selection that says "video content" select it and pick "full episodes only"
Under Network, its not necessary but I choose to do this to limit results, pick CBS
Click Search
Your search results should consist of all full episodes available on blue bloods. If you notice in top right corner in the search bar it should have "show:"Blue Bloods" type:episode" This is because advanced search put those parameters in for you.
Under "Search results" it should say something like "Results 1-3 of 3 for show:"Blue Bloods" type:episode"
To the left of this, there is an Orange Icon with 3 white slashes in it(the RSS feed icon)
Click it and Copy the link.
Go to http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=dd3f21986a3cd7438b1bff1226fb0862 and paste the RSS link into the pipe parameter area that says: Hulu Rss Feed Url
Your results should show up, click get RSS(the orange/white slashed icon again) copy the link and add it into Tversity.
In that pipe link, it says “clone pipe” just click it and sign in/create a yahoo account. Easy…I don’t remember the steps after I clicked clone, but I did it to save it too.
No.
So, in a step by step here is what you need to do to add hulu content that attempts to redirect you to the show’s own network website:
You, sir are an officer and a gentleman. Excellent instructions!! Worked flawlessly. Thank you so much.
I already had the instructions listed out for my 58 year old mother so it was just matter of compiling everything. Please note that certain networks do not work…we just need a good editor to fix the pipe to get it to work…like for the ultimate fighter it will show the whole website OR for tbs…shows up as a whole website
Sorry I am a bit of a noob. I am evaluating TversityPro. I have used the free version for a number of years and I have been limited to streaming downloaded (Replay Media Catcher) content from my PC to my TV. Now I would like to stream directly from CBS to my TV and skip the downloading step.
Dare2try, much of your explanation is unfamiliar to me but I did the best I could at following your instructions. I have 3 main questions. First, when I go to Hulu, there is no CBS content. I am redirected to CBS where I cannot find an RSS feed or any other way to obtain a video URL. Am I missing something here?
Also, Kinnybee mentioned that he copied the pipe formula in case it ever goes down. How do I do that?
Lastly, once I click on "Get as RSS" do I just use the URL for the page that is generated in Tversity?
Thanks so much for your insight and help everyone. If I can get this to work I think Pro will be worth the effort.
[quote="dare2try"]Kinnybee,
I’m happy to hear that it worked out of you. As a side note while trying to fix this issue I found some shows that I actually watch but didn’t think about adding to TVersity, for some reason, so for that Thank YOU. I’m going to publish out the pipe that you used to create your links (as well as update to V2 of the pipes engine), so I’m hoping that it won’t break your existing links, but if it does I will be sure to let you know so you can recreate them. Fortunately after that, everything should be good, since it will be published.
As for the TBS thing, if I recall correctly TBS is not natively supported in TVersity but that shouldn’t be a big deal since we can easily add support for it using the osb.xml. If your interested in trying to get TBS working, I wouldn’t mind some of your help/input.
Anyways, I am very happy to hear your finally up and running and that I could help.[/quote]
So i copied the pipe formula and made my own incase it ever goes down. Hulu works perfect thanks! So does cbs
Any update on TBS? I also tried this method on http://www.ultimatefighter.com because they keep all of their episodes online but it too displays the entire website when i stream it.
So - is the pro version necessary to use this method of creating the link to stream the show?