BTV Negociator - Alpha release

[Fonceur]

I was just getting my toes wet in programming in C#, so decided to make a little application to see which of my recordings were not happening (rejected recordings) and why... I have been hoping forever for SnapStream to come up with a better conflict warning/resolution, but unfortunately they have not yet in the ViewScape (the web admin does have one)... I hate missing a recording and having no way to know it, so hopefully now that should not happen to me anymore!


What the program does is to list:

- All the rejected recordings with the reason (can be filtered).

- All the rejected recordings due to a conflict with the list of shows creating that conflict and alternate times to record (if any). Possibility to modify from record once to always, if that solves a conflict. Possibility to add the alternate recordings or replace the conflict by this one.

- All the rejected recordings due to the user blocking them, with the possibility of deleting them.

- All the forced recordings with the possibility of deleting them. (current recordings are flagged as forced...)

- All the upcoming recordings.

- All the recording jobs with the possibility of changing their frequency and more.

- All the recent recordings with the possibility of deleting them.

- Your permanent search by Episode, Keyword or Title.

- Channel browser.

- Automatically update the Guide, solve Conflicts, create Recording jobs for your search results...


Known limitations:

- If data for the episodes are missing, you might get false alternatives, i.e. next week's episode instead of the current one... (Nothing that I can do about that...)

- Transparency problems with the drop down boxes to select the fonts... (I will need to fix the other's guy code for that...)

- Background color of the extended information stays white when not empty, regardless of the lists' background color. (I will most likely need to remove that hard-coding in the other's guy code for that or find the proper way to change it...)

- The configuration file will not be saved if no connection to the server has been established. (security precaution to avoid wiping a good configuration file...)



Acknowledgments

- Without the BTV SDK I would not have tried to do this.

- Thanks to DaWanderer for the BTVLibrary!

- Thanks to LaMarvin for the ColorPicker!

- Thanks to Martin Cook for the Managed Font Combobox!

- Thanks to Nishant Sivakumar for the multi-line listbox!

- Thanks to RodgerB for the MessageBox with a timeout!

- Thanks to Alexander Lowe for the Windows Shutdown!

You can get the latest version in the download section or the current beta (5.13) here...

[DaWanderer]

Very useful program. I've been curious as well to see why some recordings didn't go through. I'm also glad to see that my BeyondTV Library is useful to other developers

One recommendation I'd make is to change the default hostname in the .ini file to localhost instead of htpc. Great start on the program and good luck!

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by DaWanderer

On recommendation I'd make is to change the default hostname in the .ini file to localhost instead of htpc. Great start on the program and good luck!

Oops, forgot that I used the .ini from my development machine... I uploaded a newer version (.4) with the correct .ini. It now shows with which recording(s) the conflict exist.

Thanks to your example I also started to use the bagHelper, I had looked at the source before but had missed the bagHelper[] part. Makes for cleaner code. I assume that when I'll start playing with the negociating part, I'll find some other goodies in your library.

[geoffstewart]

Neat app. When I tried it, I get "Unknown Reason" for the rejected shows. By the looks of it, these are shows that have already been recorded in the last 30 days. I assume this string is simply returned from the interface, right?

[Fonceur]

The reasons are actually of the form BlockedByUser and I am writing them back in the form Blocked by the user. The problem is that the SDK does not have the full list of values for RejectionEnum, so you got the default text. I setup 2 recordings to catch that reason, so it will be fixed in the next release. Thanks for pointing it out!

[costello]

First let me say congratulations with what you have done. I hope you follow through because it shows a lot of potential.

However, you should note that it is spelled negotiation.

Andrew

[opilion]

If there was a way to have your app run in the background and post these messages directly to the warnings screen in the FSUI, that would be even sweeter - the same place failed guide updates, etc... are listed. That would keep it all contained, rather than having to launch anything external.

op

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by costello

However, you should note that it is spelled negotiation.

I could not decide between the French name négociateur or the English negotiator so I made an hybrid version... Well, at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Originally Posted by opilion

post these messages directly to the warnings screen in the FSUI

I like that idea! I have no clue how to do that, but I will take a look after I am done with the configuration screen.

[jeffreyd_tx]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

I am just getting my toes wet in programming in C#, so I decided to make a little application to see which of my recordings were not happening (rejected recordings) and why... I've been hoping forever for SnapStream to come up with a better conflict warning/resolution, but unfortunatly they have not yet... I hate missing a recording and having no way to know it, so hoppefully now that should not happen to me anymore! Be warned that this is only a beta release...

What the program does is to list:

- All the rejected recordings with the reason.
- All the rejected recordings due to a conflict with the list of shows creating that conflict.
- All the rejected recordings due to the user blocking them.

- All the forced recordings. (current recordings are flagged as forced...)

- All the upcoming recordings.

Known limitations:

- No negotiation yet... To live up to its name, I do plan to actually offer the user some suggestions to resolve the conflict, but I'm not there yet...

Acknowledgement

- Without the BTV SDK I would not have tried to do this.

- Thanks to DaWanderer for the BTVLibrary!

Changes

- The values of the default hostname, port, password and language (English or French) can be overwritten through the BTV-Negociator.ini file. It should work on the localhost as well as on another machine that uses BTV-Link (trial or registered version).

- List the recording(s) creating the conflict.

You can download the beta release (version .5) here.

I have always wanted something to do this. I get a handling error anytime I try to run it. My systems is quite solid so not sure why it wont run. Anything else need to be installed?

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by jeffreyd_tx

I have always wanted something to do this. I get a handling error anytime I try to run it. My systems is quite solid so not sure why it wont run. Anything else need to be installed?

I still need to work on the error handling part to better track problems. You do need .NET framework installed and all the included files, but nothing else...

I would assume it is not able to connect to the BTV server. By default it connects to http://localhost:8129 with a blank password. You can can change those in the BTV-Negociator.ini file if needed (early version .3 had my machine name (HTPC) in there...). It also reads the license number from the registry. If you were not using the version .5, I'd suggest getting it and overwritting all files to see if it helps...

[opilion]

Perhaps you could also allow users to configure what types of conflicts they want to be notified about. "Not a first run", for example, is a given if I am recording new episodes only - It might be desirable to suppress these messages.

op

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by opilion

Perhaps you could also allow users to configure what types of conflicts they want to be notified about. "Not a first run", for example, is a given if I am recording new episodes only - It might be desirable to suppress these messages.

If you are talking of the warnings screen of the FSUI, since I am not sure of how much data I can send there, I was thinking of only sending the conflicts there. The "Not a first run" is part of the Rejected category but not a conflict as such... I guess I will have to see how much interaction with the FSUI is possible and I should probably look in the upload section for plugin/addon that interact directly with the FSUI...

What I do have in mind is to replace the current ListView/buttons (that recontacts the server each time a button is pressed) with a series of pages accessible by tabs. This way I will have more control over each page and be able for example to add some radio buttons to filter the "Not a first run", "Blocked by the user", etc. from the Rejected page, as well as to have some reload buttons and such. So that filtering will definatly make it at some point.

[opilion]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

If you are talking of the warnings screen of the FSUI, since I am not sure of how much data I can send there, I was thinking of only sending the conflicts there.

That would be perfect! I can't believe that this isn't inherent BTV functionality

Thanks for working on this!

op

[jeffreyd_tx]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

I still need to work on the error handling part to better track problems. You do need .NET framework installed and all the included files, but nothing else...

I would assume it is not able to connect to the BTV server. By default it connects to http://localhost:8129 with a blank password. You can can change those in the BTV-Negociator.ini file if needed (early version .3 had my machine name (HTPC) in there...). It also reads the license number from the registry. If you were not using the version .5, I'd suggest getting it and overwritting all files to see if it helps...

I am using Beta5 with .net. I changed the host name to the UNC name of the server box... let me try by IP...

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by jeffreyd_tx

I am using Beta5 with .net. I changed the host name to the UNC name of the server box... let me try by IP...

I have no idea what UNC is, but on my side it works with either the host name or IP address (has given by /ipconfig /all on the server) from another machine using BTV-Link or using localhost on the BTV server itself... The latest version (.6) that I just uploaded should make it easier to test and track your problem. Let me know how it goes. I know that DaWanderer's BTVLibrary offers many methods to contact the BTV-Server, so I could implement the others, if I had any clue what they are...

Someone had written some code to get the server from UPNP, but that seemed to imply adding a 100-200k UPNP.dll file freely available from Intel.... I would rather avoid having to do that if possible...