New XBMC-TV snapshot pack available

Hello everybody,

it has been a while since I last posted here but there have been a lot of things going on with XBMC-TV that kept me from keeping this blog updated. So now I am back and I am happy to report to you that there is a new snapshot pack available for download. You can get the updated snapshot pack here: http://xbmc-strm-collection.googlecode.com/files/XBMC-TV_2007-04-11_snapshot_release_SVN_rev_113.zip

What is currently inside the snapshot pack? Around 300 broadband TV channels and around 200 webcams from all over the world, both tested and verified to be working perfectly with XBMC. Well I guess there is really nothing more to say to that except: ENJOY! :)

I will be returning this week with great news of a "secret" side project of XBMC-TV that will greatly improve the performance and viewing pleasure of XBMC-TV. So stay tuned :)

Cheers and all the best
akaigotchi

Major breakthrough on automated testing of XBMC streams

Hello everybody,

We are proud to announce to you today that we've made a major breakthrough on automated testing of .strm files for XBMC. This means that our efforts of creating a tool that automatically checks on the streams that are already part of XBMC-TV have suceeded and that we will be able to offer that new service by the end of next week. So in the future all streams inside the collection will be monitored permanently whether they still work or not. This will greatly improve XBMC-TV as the team will not have to spend time on manual testing any more and can spend more time on improving the collection (e.g. by adding more content or by coding a XBMC script). Believe it or not: Even if all team members would split the work of manually testing everything inside the collection perfectly it would still take hours to go through it.

We will be keeping you updated on the progress.

Cheers
akaigotchi

New snapshot finally available

Hello everybody,

Finally, I managed today to upload the latest snapshot pack to the downloads section of our project page on code.google.com . Well, to be honest I still wasn't able to upload, so I asked piranna to help me out :) So here it is, all new and shiny with a major addition: around 100 TV channels and webcams were added!

You can download the latest snapshot (2007-02-22) pack here.

BTW, we've managed to add all streaming surf cams from www.coastalwatch.com.au to XBMC-TV. That is around 60 cams from Australia's greatest beaches :D Thank you mikesyr for your great work!

Cheers
akaigotchi

Snapshot pack will be delayed until Thursday

Hello everybody,

I am really sad to say this: The snapshot pack, that should have been on the Google code server yesterday will be delayed until Thursday because of technical reasons. Right now it is absolutely impossible for me to upload it to the Google Code server and the upload page times out every time I try it. I will try it on a different machine though on Thursday evening, as I will be away until then. I hope you understand this.

Of course we could have uploaded the file to some file sharing service like putfile.com. But I don't think this is a good idea, as I personally don't like the download speed (unless you are subscribed for quite a lot of bucks) of these services and I don't like their reliability (you will also have to be subscribed to improve that). If anyone knows a good service of that kind let me know, I am willing to change my mind :)

I am sorry for the delay.

All the best

akaigotchi

XBMC-TV needs a logo! Can you help?

One simple question: Wouldn't Coca-Cola be just be like any other cola, if it hadn't a logo? Well, I think you get the point :) This is one of the main reasons that XBMC-TV needs a logo! We want people to know, that they deal with the REAL thing and not just any of the streampacks around :) Basically the logo should be used with the upcoming website, the project's Google-Code site, the project wiki, as a folder icon for the collection, a logo for a maybe upcoming script, a forum icon for all project members,....

But as most of the people that are participating in the project right now are no GFX people we need your help! So if you have the skills, if you have an idea for a logo springing to your mind when you hear XBMC-TV and if you are willing to share some of your precious spare time with creating a logo for XBMC-TV: PLZ POST ME A NOTE!

We are already looking forward to work with you and are curious on your ideas.

Thanks for your help in advance!

akaigotchi

South America is just an "A"-Button away

Hello everybody!

Just yesterday I made a marvelous discovery: Some countries are closer than you think! At least if you have the latest SVN revision of xbmc-strm-collection installed on XBMC and press the A-Button on webcams and TV channels from countries that you thought would be further away :) So just yesterday I've added around 20 TV channels from South America to the collection, more to come! Hopefully you will enjoy those :) If you think anything is missing, just post me a PM.

Have fun!

akaigotchi

New snapshot pack available for download

Hey everybody,

It is good to be back online. I just got myself a brandnew ASUS WL-500GP and after everything is set up and configured I am close to say that this thing rocks :) Actually I had promised myself more from the feature to attach a USB2.0 HDD to it, but as I got the feature with it "for free" I am not gonna moan on speed and stuff. It is not a fully reliable NAS solution, but that is not said on the box, so I am okay with that...
So as I am now set up to go online again there will be more updates here and on xbmc-strm-collection. I am planning some major channel updates for this week to compensate you for not having an update this weekend.

I also have good news for those of you who have problems checking out code from SVN directly. Just some minutes ago I uploaded the new precompiled snapshot pack so that you can, after having downloaded and installed it on XBMC, sit back and enjoy the show :) What's in it? Around 200 LIVE TV channels and webcams from all over the world. The pack is available here:

http://xbmc-strm-collection.googlecode.com/files/XBMC-TV_2007-02-13_snapshot_release_SVN_rev_58.zip

Okay basically that is it for today.

See you again tomorrow.

akaigotchi

You decided: No more Power Juicer, Magic Bullet & Swivel Sweeper :)

Hey everybody,

How's your weekend been? Good? That's nice to hear! I hope you all enjoyed watching video streams from the xbmc-strm-collection on your XBOX. :) To be honest, you can be glad if you were able to do it, because I couldn't and now I know what I've been missing...

Just Saturday when I planned to gather new streams for an update my broadband router died. Well, at least he didn't make any awful sounds during his last seconds, so he simply left this world without a significant reason. Even the fact that I am in the medical business didn't bring him back to life, so I posted a support request to Netgear. Let's see what they make out of it.... I think even if Netgear is able to fix it I will buy a brandnew & shiny router tomorrow and keep the Netgear as spare or maybe sell it on ebay. Currently I am thinking about buying one of these ASUS machines that have that "download-while-you-and-your-PC-are-sleeping" feature, which seems to be quite cool :)

And now for something completely different. As I mentioned on xbox-scene.com earlier this week the poll that featured the question whether or not to have shopping/auction channels in the strm-collection is closed and here are the results: Even though only 35 of you took part in the poll it is quite clear that the majority of you (24) would not like to have shopping/auction channels in the strm-collection. Thanks for your participation and the clear results. We will be having another poll within the next days, topic still subject to change.

OK, that is all for today. Have some fun with your XBOX, I will join in back tomorrow ;)

akaigotchi

What's new and what's coming?

Hey everybody,

as the project matures there are a few new things I'd like to introduce to you:

1. First of all the "Webcams" section is now open. We've managed to find a larger number of streaming LIVE webcams and put them in the collection. Right now you'll find some US traffic cams from various regions and some LIVE cams from various zoos across the US (I loved the panda cam in the Smithsonian Zoo most, as you could even hear the panda snore while it sleeps ... LOL). Within the next few days new webcams will be added to this section, so stay tuned for changes.

2. We've added around 20 new channels to the collection in the last few days, more to come this week (I see if I can add another 60 by the end of this week )

3. We are happy to have timdog and Chi3f as our "Art department" As Chi3f did the first revision of the folder icons, timdog took some time and reworked them to make them more 3D. IMHO great work guys!!!! We will do some minor changes to the icon layout in the nearby future, so watch out for updates.

4. Chi3f is not only the guy who did the first revision of the icons, but he liked the idea of having a stream collection so much he coded a handy build.bat that strips all .svn folders from the collection and makes it a ready-to-upload-to-your-shiny-XBOX package. Thank you Chi3f for the great work!

5. We will be releasing a weekly snapshot of what's in the collection as a downloadable .zip on the project page on code.google.com. New snapshot releases can be found there every tuesday from now on. These snapshots are mainly intended for those of you, who are not very experienced with a SVN client and have trouble downloading the files from the SVN. Still I recommend the usage of a SVN client and to check back on a regular basis, as there will be relevant updates and changes all the time. I am still working on documentation (HowTo SVN, HowTo FTP to your XBOX,...) and I think I will be done with this by the end of the week, if everything runs well.

Okay, so here are the updates for now

Have a nice time with the collection.

akaigotchi

Over 40 new channels from all over the world added!

...well basically as the title already says :) We've just added over 40 new channels from all over the world including countries as Andorra, Armenia, Brazil (thanks fly out to Josh), Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia! That's an awful lot of new channels to watch, but I am pretty sure, you will make it :)

If you find any channel that doesn't work, plz send me a PM or leave a comment to this post.

That's all for today. Have a nice time watching the new channels :D

akaigotchi

PS: There is something very handy coming up for tomorrow, a small file that could take away a lot of work from you... Just wait and see :)

PPS: We are still hiring active team members! If you want to join the team plz send me a short PM and tell me in a few words what exactly you want to do for the project. I am looking forward to meeting you!

"Bona sera", "God kväll", "Guten Abend" and "Good evening"

As promised yesterday I just had a major channel update released. The new channels are from Italy, Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, namely we have 30 more channels inside the collection. All channels are, just as you expect it, tested and fully working in XBMC. Sometimes during testing I had so much fun watching these new channels (some of the Italian ones had full lenght blockbuster movies showing... WOW, even if I didn't understand a word :) ) that I had to be forcely drawn off my XBOX so that I would be able to snoop for more streams on the net... :)

So see for yourself and enjoy watching the streams from xbmc-strm-collection!

akaigotchi

PS: There is a real jewel in this update! It is Hardly But Ordinary ;)

PPS: New channels seldomly knock on my door and say "Hi, I want to be added to the collection!" So if you fall over anything that is not in the collection let me know about it. Thx!

PPPS: Still looking for team members! So if you want to part of this just PM me!

New ideas and a new team member

It's only been a week since i started the xbmc-strm-collection on code.google.com and already things are changing so rapidly - I couldn't have imagined that. It was only yesterday, when mikesyr came up with the idea of having a webcam section within the collection, which I think is a great idea. We both quickly agreed, that he had to be a project member and so I am happy to announce that mikesyr is now taking care of the webcam section of the project. I am already curious where he'd be taking our eyes to ;)

So you see that new people bring in new ideas... Why don't you join xbmc-strm-collection today? It's as easy as that: Just write a short msg wherein you state how you can add your skills to the collection. I am happy to hear from you! :)


So that's all for today, stay tuned as more changes are coming up within the next few days.

akaigotchi

PS: A major channel update is due to be released for tomorrow night (CET). Be sure to check out the latest code from the SVN trunk :)

Added folder icons to each country - thx to Chi3f

I am happy to see things developing so fast. I just put an announcement for this project on the various XBMC-forums and got instant reply :) It seems like I hit the nerve and many of you seem to be happy with the idea of having an all-in-one solution for XBMC streaming video (Plz tell me if this is total crap!).

One of the replies on the project announcement I received today made me extremely happy! I received a message from Chi3f who is coder on the XBMC skinning project named XTV (a VERY mature attempt to bring the look and feel of Apple's iTV to XBMC). He told me he liked the idea of a XBMC stream collection so much he wanted to contribute. And that is why he created a set of 11 icons - you got it, one icon for each country currently in the set.

Here's a sample of what one of the icons actually looks like:

I think they look GREAT! So if you change your view settings in your XBMC folders to "Big icons" you will be able to view these icons in your folder view (There will be a wiki article coming up in a few days covering that feature). I hope you like them. As new countries are being added to the stream collection new folder icons will be added aswell. So stay tuned...

I want to thank Chi3f for the really great work! To be honest you added something to the stream collection I haven't thought of before :-)

As you can see this project lives from YOUR help! So if you feel you can contribute to the project in any way plz send me a short note.

That's all for now folks ;-)

BTW, Chi3f gave me another valuable present for the stream collection. But that will be added in a few days....

BTW2: Stay tuned with Project XTV, seems like one of the hottest skinning projects for XMBC

xbmc-strm-collection started on code.google.com

Do you like to watch streaming video files on your XBOX? Well, than certainly XBMC is the right solution to do this, as it supports many streaming video and audio formats. But still the question remains where to get all those stream sources from to play on your XBOX... Certainly there is wwitv.com and channelchooser.com to name some of the bigger directories for streaming media resources. But are these resources tested for working with XBMC?

As I did realize that there is only a handful of resources that are actually being tested to work with XBMC I thought about creating a one-stop solution for all you XBMC users out there to get working and up-to-date streams for XBMC. This is why I founded xbmc-strm-collection on code.google.com. See this as my way of giving back to the XBMC community that gave me many hours of pure pleasure entertainment with my XBOX.

So what is actually in it? Right now there's about 60 working and tested channels in .strm format (ready-to-use in XBMC) from 11 countries. Not much, but I just started and I will be continuing to extend and to keep this collection up-to-date. If you feel that any particular country or channel is missing, just go ahead and post me a note.

So how do you get it? All the .strm files are located in an SVN. Basically you need an SVN client (e.g. Tortoise SVN) to check out the .strm files to your PC's hard drive. A basic tutorial of how to do this is found here (Look for the section "The checkout operation"). From there you should ftp the .strm files to your XBOX and play them in XBMC. If you have any trouble with this, don't worry: Within the next few days there will be an addition to the project's wiki where you will find an exact description of how to checkout the .strm files from the SVN and get them to your XBOX.

Of course I could always need help! If you notice that any channel is broken/down post me a note wherein you describe the broken channel and, if possible, the error message you got. If you want to team up with me post me a note aswell, wherein you describe what you can provide for the project.

So well, not much more to say right now, have some fun with your XBOX...