Eeyores sadness

Bypassing the software

Eeyore — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 01:28:00 GMT

Say, your're not happy with the way PCZapper performs. Maybe you want to change the startup program into something different, or you could be unhappy with the way the scripting and containering works. Or you could be fed up with the way the PCzapper community is non-existent, the forum filled with Britney Spears and Facials instead of cool scripts and containers... Or you like to use the hardware under Linux...
If you'd want to bypass the software from PCzapper (the orange icon in the taskbar), or reuse the hardware for whatever reason: it's possible!

First, there's WinLirc (or for Linux: lirc). The remote-reciever I'm using from PCzapper is connected to the serial port. Winlirc captures remote signals that go through there. There's even a mention of the palmbutler IR remote in the Lirc listings of supported remotes that works under both WinLirc and Lirc... Cool!
WinLirc captures the keypresses on the remote, but now we have to do something with those keypresses. You'd want to use IREx. IREx can do virtually anything with these keypresses! Generate keyboard-presses (like the scripts from PCzapper do), start software, reboot your computer etc.
So the process is simple:
1- Install WinLirc and setup your remote
2- Download and install IREx
3- Config your remote config (as exampled in the IREx help and config files) 4- Maybe make these programs autostart when windows starts.
Maybe in the near future a more extensive list with examples and all, but for now:
This would be great with GBPVR (also see my post on using GBPVR together with PCzapper), WinAmp... GBPVR even has a PCZapper alternative aboard, called UbuStream.
Not as neatly actualised as PCZapper is, you have to do it yourself there, but if you want streaming video, it's there!

Update container creator

Eeyore — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 01:45:00 GMT

I updated the container creator for PCzapper to function following some stricter rules.
Added the Type=VideoStream and converted NAME tag to Name tag. Apparently capitals only is no longer valid.
It should be working fine again now.

Puppetmaster

Eeyore — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 15:37:00 GMT

I found this nice tool to remote-control my MP3 collection and even, if I want , my PC Zapper with my cellphone. The good thing of puppetmaster is that it bluetooth-remote-controls WinAmp (and mediaplayer and zoomplayer and outlook and lots of others) and gives you info on what track is playing on your cellphone screen.
I own a nokia 6230i which is java-enabled and has bluetooth. So is my PC.
When installed, Puppetmaster is a nice solution for my audio-needs. I added some extra scripts (more on that next post) to add functionality and off it went. Really easy, actually
The lousy thing of any media center solution, including PCzapper, is that, when you want to listen to your music, you have to watch a large (in my case very large) blue screen which sums up some titles and the music coming from my TV speakers.
So I decided to solve an annoyance that bothered me for quite a while:
I was to make a direct connection to my stereo-set from the scart plug that comes with PCzapper. An audio-breakout, so to say.
Why isn't this built in in the scart plug out-of-the-box? It gives quite some additional value...
I flipped open the PCzapper scart connector (you don't need brute force and you can actually click it back together when you're finished) and welded a short piece of two-paired cable on the audio-pins (pins 2,4 and 6 are needed; pin 2 is left signal, 6 is right signal and 4 is ground for both sides), drilled a small hole in the scart casing through where the new cable goes and clicked everything back together.
I connected 2 female cinch plugs on the other side of the cable (I used a short piece of cable, so I could extend from there to whereever I need the signal) and plugged it in the amplifier of my stereoset. Lovely! Works like a charm! Bonus is that the movies I watch on the zapper also have stereo sound over the hifi set.
If everything went this easy, I'd stop writing about it....

Update: puppetmaster is a goner. You can no longer buy this software. Too bad...

PCZapper changes (and XS4ALL news)

Eeyore — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 03:36:00 GMT

As of a couple of days ago, my internet provider XS4ALL appears to give away PCZapper Pro to all it's users. A little bit too late for me, but what the hack...
On PCZapper, quite some things have changed also. It doesn't display on pczapper.tv yet, but changes are eminent, if you look at pczapper.nl, you see a new range of products is added, and the old hardware parts are left behind. A new grey control box, new remotes (no 'sleek design remotes', regretably) and a full range of products. Look on pczapper.nl for the product-changes.
It seems as if the zappers have been working their secret mission since taking over the bankrupt HomeLinc inventory to come to a newly defined product. The new line goes well with the free, payed pc and full versions. Hopefully, we get more insights into tweaking now the coprporate strategy is rolled out. Let's hope PCZapper remains heading towards an open platform, giving out manuals and insights as PalmButler used to do and better, where everybody can change looks and content in a breeze.

Let's now head to quality tweaking tools, WiFi connection for the tv, and stuff like a PPC and a Phone version, preferably with a content management system that stores your favorites centrally, so you can enjoy what you want in any place, anytime. Am I going too fast? Just say so... I only hope I'm not going fast enough.

update: pczapper is no longer given away by XS4ALL.

Easy way of adding media

Eeyore — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:37:00 GMT

PC zapper has a new way of adding links. It's all very easy.
You add a new browserURL and add the following
http://www.pczapper.tv/mediamanager_client/player.php?url= plus the URL of your media file.
where the URL is the full adress including http://, for example
http://www.pczapper.tv/mediamanager_client/player.php?url=_
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvFmQSHWZNU

On this page there is a list of supported medialinks.

Or, of course, you can use the feature in Eeyore's very basic container creator to make this into a nice container!

PalmButler

Eeyore — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:06:00 GMT

Quite some people are asking about the PalmButler software from HomeLinc and how to reactivate it.
They are satisfied with what the PalmButler software does and don't want to buy the upgrade PCZapper offers to change the software to PC Zapper software.
On this page a Palmbutler user offers a way to activate the old software (version 3.3.1) again.
You can still create your own containers for it the way you could when homelinc was still in business, the only thing you cannot do is upgrade.

Media Center

Eeyore — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 01:37:00 GMT

Isn't this what it's ment to do?
Mads Villesen created this plugin to control Media Center Edition with your PC Zapper remote.
If you run Media Edition, be sure to try this one out!
It's designed for the 'sleek' remote, but of course it can be adapted to do more with the basic remote (that one has more buttons like a rec button and channel up and down buttons) so get creative and add some lines to the script!

RSS and PC Zapper

Eeyore — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:23:00 GMT

Just a post to point out a really good intitiative on the web:

Here is a container creator that converts RSS video-feeds into containers you can import in your zapper.
It's cut-and-paste, so really easy to do.
The guy has a nice example of it online, which converts the yahoo movietrailer-RSS's (what's the plural of RSS?) into this container.

Give it a try! It's a bit slow, but that's because the pages are created on the fly.

Google video on PC Zapper

Eeyore — Sun, 20 Aug 2006 19:25:00 GMT

I added an [Add Google Video] button to the online container creator , for use with the opera9.psm plugin.
Now you can easily add Google video links to your own containers.

More to come! If you have suggestions on what to add or change to the creator, I'd like to hear of it.

Zapper in a resizable screen

Eeyore — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 04:11:00 GMT

I do a lot of trial and error on the zapper. In itself ,that's not bad. What IS bad, though, is that my tv set is in the living room and my PC is in my study. So if I want to troubleshoot a plugin or a container, I have to go two flights up and down from TV to PC and vice versa.
So I searched for a solution to view a mirror of the TVscreen output on my computer PC. Together with the virtual remote I could then troubleshoot without all the walking.
Well, guess what? I found one. It's called UltraMon.
On my screen, it looks like this:

The bonus of this is that I now can use the zapper on my PC without going through the screen settings of the zapper everytime I want to use it in my study (with the hazard of not putting them back when I'm done and ending up running 2 stairs up and down to reset the settings after all).
Nothing short of amazing. Just so you'd know.

Getting video-content (and google-vid solution)

Eeyore — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:37:00 GMT

Most times, it's not hard to find the video you're looking for.
Especially if you are looking for any videolinks, a simple google search will suffice, like funny +filetype:wmv.
Or, in the page containing the videolinks, you rightclick on a link and paste it in the container creator. Sometimes you even have to look in the sourcecode of the webpage, but mostly that's all.
If you can't find it, there's several tools to give it another try.
First, of course, there's URLsnooper.
URLsnooper is a piece of donationware (freeware unless you think it's worth your money) I brought up in the fabchannel article, which captures media-urls that are loaded by webpages. Give it a try, it looks something like this:

If that's too complicated or doesn't work, you can try a firefox plugin called unplug, which basically, once installed, gives a page with medialinks for each website you want:

Now, you surf to a site, press the button, and unplug gives you the links.
Just copy and paste them into your containers.

A bit different are embedded links and the like. Firefox has a plugin to deal with that also: it's called (very catchy) MediaPlayerConnectivity. When installed, it replaces the video's on the pages you visit with a black MPCbutton and some other handy right-click stuff. Basically, with this, it is really easy to copy-and-paste andy video-URL on any website. The trick is (in my humble opinion) to swich off the MPC for all filetypes, and when you want a video and cannot easily get the URL, switch the filetypes on and refresh the page. Once at work, it looks like this:

Still, the problem of getting the vids in containers is persistent. Or is it? I dumped the links in the Zapper in quite some formats, and one actually worked.
In full screen, presented to me with great awe, with only the grey playbar on the bottom to remind me it's a google-vid, there it was: an swf file played on the zapper!!!
Apparently, the trick is to associate swf files in the zapper with MediaPlayer BUT CREATE THE LINKS IN THE CONTAINER (or in the Zapper Media Manager) AS WEB LINKS!!!
The code will be like this in the container:
<Item Type="BROWSERURL"><Name>IT'S NAME</Name><URL>ACTUAL URL (being 12 lines long)</URL></ITEM>

I'm not sure it's ment to be this way, but hey, it apparently works.

The toughest thing would be to get videocontent from within flash-applications, like from the dreaded fabchannel, starting to play full screen.
when you really want the video, I'd go for downloading (ripping) the content instead of trying to find the link, which is way more easy: look here for instance).
While digging into this matter, I stranded in decompilers, ASP hacks, PHP reverse-tools: not worth the effort. In that case, you're better off getting the Opera plugin to work and watching the flash video's on your Zapper through that route.
But until now Fabcahnnel won't play fullscreen.
Grr

WebSite

Eeyore — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 22:49:00 GMT

I launched a website with basically the same content as here. This will stay the work in progress, while the destilled content will also end up there.
You're welcome to go there:
PCZapper on Steroids

PCzapper plugin for Opera 9

Eeyore — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:44:00 GMT

Hi all, For everybody that is experimenting with the opera oportunities: here is the slightly edited plugin for opera 9. The one that's also there and is called opera is for opera 7.
Arrows up and down are for link selection, arrows left and right are for scrolling up (left) and down (right), Selecting the links through [play] or [ok].

To install: First install Opera from here. Now download the plugin file. Open the pczapper media manager. On the right side, click plugins, click add, browse for the opera9 plugin file. Click Ok.
Now under associations, search for .htm and .html, click on them and change from web browser to opera and click Change.
Ok again and Opera is the default browser for PCzapper.

Opera - the nice PC Zapper frontend

Eeyore — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:04:00 GMT

Last post I used the Opera browser to create clickable pages for use with the PC Zapper. I stated it actually ment using Opera web browser as a front end for the PC zapper (just as I created the script for the GBPVR to use PCZapper as a VCR earlier).
Now let's explore this a little further.

There's quite some sites that use RSS feeds for links to news items or direct video access or whatever. No way to watch them on your tv-screen. Not yet. But with Opera, new possibilities emerge.
On rss2html.com you can easily convert an RSS link into a web-page. (Try, it's realy self-explanatory) And with Opera, you can click your way through the links in these pages. The link that's created is easily imported into (a container for) pc zapper. Now, since you associated the htm and html extentions to opera plugin (see previous post), you easily browse through your rss feeds the way you want it: from your couch, on your TV-set!
You can even take this one step further: in another post I talked about RSS, VCR and torrents. Imagine, on your zapper, you click through an RSS feed from a torrent-tracker, this autodownloads the torrent you clicked and when it's finished downloading, you access it from your couch... Isn't life a wonder?
Happy Zapping!

google video workaround

Eeyore — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:25:00 GMT

Well, I found a workaround, but it's not an easy one.
This appears as if we use Opera as a front-end. And actually, we do.
We need to create a web-page that looks good on tv (so BIG LETTERS), in which we cun-n-paste our video links, and then navigate that page with the remote control from the zapper.

My setup at home is that I use the zapper on my TV set, and not on the computer. So I need Opera to appear on the TV only. I use firefox for browsing on my computer, so that's not a big issue for me.
I have an NVideo videocard, which has a function to open applications on the screen you want.
The settings screen looks like this: (in dutch)

Main thing is on the right side: I add an app, I tell Nvidea that it opens on screen 2 (TV)

We need Opera plus it's plugin (you can find it here). Add the plugin to pczapper config in media manager.
Now you manually create the webpage containing the links (find a html-template here).
Add this webpage to your meda manager and open it with the zapper. Hopefully this worked and you have video's.

Now tweak opera to not have any toolbars, searchbars, statbars and stuff, make it fullscreen and maybe more to be as functional as it gets on your TV set.
Quite a workaround for a simple thing the zapper isn't recognising: URL's that send back data to a server!!
Hopefully they get a fix on that soon...

Google video's: experiment failed

Eeyore — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:43:00 GMT

Hi all. Haven't been posting for a while, due to holidays, work, family growth and the like...
Guess I won't be posting regular any time soon, but hey, every scrap of good info is still, well, good info.
I've been toying with the google video's and especially how to embed them in the containers.

Since the google vids are basically flash, I first tried to open them with media player 10 on my computer. That works like a charm! So, first thing to do is associate .swf files to media player in the PCZapper Media Manager (the orange thingy next to your computers clock).
Next, rewrite the tag to open the video and start playing it.
It's a very basic tag really:
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-[your movie id goes here]&autoplay=true

Try it on google video`s. If you hover over the movies, a doc-id is in the url. That's the one we're talking about here.

Now, for making a container in which to implement this. Tried the URL as usual, in the container creator, but the Zapper Manager doesn't want that.
Changed virtually everything, from the cItem tag to include all possible values, to associations for the browser URL to MediaPlayer: Zapper Manager doesnt' want to deal with tags that end with numbers, I guess. Or the http:// part is what it doesn't swallow. I'm not sure.
Gonna try and write a plugin to let zapper think MediaPlayer is a browser. Maybe that'll work. I'll let you know!

Bug

Eeyore — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 03:26:00 GMT

There's an itrritating bug in PCZapper 4.15. If I press [esc] on the keyboard of my computer, it switches off and on twice, If I quit PCZapper, it's gone.
So, apparently, I switch on and off the TV view of the zapper...
Don't know the solution yet, keep you posted

tweaking PCzapper frontpage

Eeyore — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 01:06:00 GMT

Inspecting the layout files of the pczapper in search of the white vertical line in the frontpage (I changed it to a twig as you may have noticed in the screenshot below, but needed to adjust the position) I found another way to tweak the frontpage.
The basic limitation to the PCZapper, we all been told in the forum, is that you cannot change the frontpage and especially not the right side of it, the web-based part.
Well, I got news for you: you can do it!
It comes down to editing pbOEM.xml in the pczapper/program directory.
In the file pbOEM.xml are two things; the layout and the links.

Here's a tad of pbOEM.xml source-code:
<Button>
<TabIndex>0</TabIndex>
<Link>pbd://100003</Link>
<ImageUnfocused>
<File>mijnfotos_back.png</File>
<XPosition>3</XPosition>
<YPosition>100</YPosition>
</ImageUnfocused>
<ImageFocused>
<File>mijnfotos_hover.png</File>
<XPosition>3</XPosition>
<YPosition>100</YPosition>
</ImageFocused>
<ButtonUp>8</ButtonUp>
<ButtonDown>2</ButtonDown>
<Shortcut>1</Shortcut>
</Button>

If I do a search in pbConfig.xml, I find the number 100003 (highlighted in link tag) being the folderItemID of my pictures! PbConfig being the file that contains all content, also the content I added myself, I can reroute the button command to another container, even one I created myself.
Second, being able to create my own layout, it must be possible to put more items in the frontpage than there are now. Several things to be noted, however:
-Xposition and Yposition of both the unfocused and the focused image
-a unique tab-index
-the buttonup, down, left and right assignments (these will make you jump between items)
So, you could add a third row, or just cram everything together and add tens of icons, or even, for the wizards among us, create a scrolling frontpage.
Just remember to backup your pbOEM.xml file first, in case you screw up.

the new look

Eeyore — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:05:00 GMT

I've been fiddling with the looks of the zapper, with this as result:

Kinda nice, if you like purple.
It's as I suggested in the last post: just overwrite the images with the new ones (perhaps backup the old ones) and voila.
For those with a desire for purple, here's the rarfile that contains the images. Extract in pczapper/program.
It includes the .psd files with the buttons, so you can change the text of the buttons.
If you use photoshop, you can use a marquee (selection), then crop each button and save it as png. Then undo the cropping and move the marquee to the next button.

Happy hacking!

A while ago...

Eeyore — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:31:00 GMT

A while ago, I posted some hacks to change your pczapper frontend into what you would like.
With the new update 4.10, it's a little different, because the frontend is made up entirely of pictures, and no text.
For your hacking convenience, I made 2 templates in photoshop, one for the regular state of the buttons, and one of the hover state.
All you have to do is edit text and picture and put them in the program directory of the pc zapper.

Update of Container Creator

Eeyore — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 19:27:00 GMT

I updated the Eeyore's very basic container creator to include a help file.
Hope this helps y'all.

TV channels on the web; get them on the zapper

Eeyore — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:17:00 GMT

Well, eh, this is basically a repost of the fabchannel post, with one BIG difference: this one works, while fabchannel adapted it's interface into an ungrabbable flash frontend.
Let's start over again: download URL snooper, a freeware program designed to find out the source URL of the streams you are playing.
Run and click "sniff network". Now, in your favorite browser (yes, this even works in firefox, don't know about opera though), open kanalenkiezer (Channels chooser in dutch), click the station you want to add, and find the mms:// or the rtsp:// protocol line in the snooper. Copy and add to your pczapper media manager (or with my handy container tool to a container of your own making).
Voila, there's new content to be viewed on your zapper.
Boy oh boy, where do I find the time to watch all this?

UPDATE: XMLTV works again

Eeyore — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:09:00 GMT

Been trying anything: reinstalling XMLTV (not much to install really, but recreating listings, trying out new binaries, even tried to install perl on apache to make a clean start). Nothing worked. Until yesterday.
It just started again. Hurrah!
But what the heck was the problem in the first place? New code-formatting at tvgids.nl and returning to old code formatting? Anyway, I'm just happy it all works again as it should. Let the recordings begin again, and long live GBPVR!

XMLTV EPG error

Eeyore — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 22:32:00 GMT

As of yesterday, my EPG doesn't work anymore.

Apparently the date parsing of the Perl code is wrong. Bad thing is, this is inserted in the binary xmltv.exe so no way to do anything about that. Most strange is that there appears to be no-one else with this problem.
Eh... Help?

Free and Light versions

Eeyore — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:18:00 GMT

Haven't found the time myself, but PCzapper introduced free versions of the Zapper software, to be used on the pc (or laptop). So, now we all can enjoy a free media portal with frequently updated content! Cool!
And maybe it's possible to extend it if you like it by buying the hardware to connect to your tv seperately. On the pczapper.tv (not on the pczapper.nl though) webshop you can buy extention cables, remotes and IR recievers.
Then you could start out with the fancy RF-like remote instead of the very basic (and not-so-eyecatching) basic remote!