Bugzilla – Bug 4681
NPR-style URLs no longer work properly in 6.5.1
Last modified: 2009-07-31 10:14:13 UTC
I have just upgraded from SlimServer 6.3.1 to 6.5.1 (v2007-01-15) and I am encountering strange behavior when I use URLs for some of the NPR programs such as "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered". I am invoking the URLs with the MyPicks plugin. The normal behavior, which you see in 6.3.1 (and Windows Media Player), is to "expand" the URL into a list of URLs and then play them one after the other. Each entry in "Now Playing" displays the title of the news segment associated with the individual URL in the list. The new behavior in 6.5.1 is to create two identical tracks for each of the "expanded" URLs and to display the text string from the XML in "My Picks" for the orignal URL instead of the title for that track. For example, the following entry from my "My Picks" XML: <outline URL="http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.php?prgCode=ME&showDate=16-Jan-2007&segNum=&mediaPref=WM&getUnderwrit ing=1" text="Morning Edition (16-Jan-2007)" type="audio" /> normally creates a list of 25 tracks. In SlimServer 6.5.1, a list of 50 tracks is created with a duplicate track for each of the expanded URLs. In addition, instead of the normal news segment title, the title: "Morning Edition (16-Jan-2007)" is displayed for each entry in the list. Other than this odd behavior, everthing else appears to be normal such as the audio and the switching between tracks. I thought this issue might be particular to my machine since nobody seems to have complained about it, but this behavior also occurs on SqueezeNetwork. Unfortunately, I don't know when the problem began on SN. It used to work properly at some time in the past. I'm running on Windows XP SP2.
I haven't looked at the code but I can explain some of what's happening. NPR returns playlists in the WAX format when using the WMA format. A section of the WAX file for your selected URL is shown below. The file has a title and multiple entries. Each entries has two URLs - the intent is that the player tries the first - if it fails then it tries the seconds. Slimserver is showing both URLs - it can be argued whether it is better to show one or both URLs. With regard to the title - it looks like Slimserver is using the <title> from the whole file for the playlist entry and not the <title> in each entry. ----------------------- <asx version = "3.0"> <title>NPR's Morning Edition - Tuesday, January 16, 2007</title> <abstract>more info at : NPR's Morning Edition Web site</abstract> <moreinfo href="http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=3" /> <PARAM name="ShowPlayList" value="true"/> <entry> <param name="track" value="1" /> <title>Jury Selection to Begin in Libby Trial</title> <author>NPR's Morning Edition - Tuesday, January 16, 2007</author> <copyright>(c) 2007 NPR</copyright> <ref href="mms://wm.npr.org/wm.npr.na-central/me/20070116_me_01.wma?v1st=&mt=2&primaryTopic=1070&assignedTopics=1001,1070,1014,1002,1012&aggIds=7339581" /> <ref href="http://wm.npr.org/wm.npr.na-central/me/20070116_me_01.wma?v1st=&mt=2&primaryTopic=1070&assignedTopics=1001,1070,1014,1002,1012&aggIds=7339581" /> </entry> <entry> <param name="track" value="2" /> <title>Baker: Texas City Blast Shows BP Safety Issues</title> <author>NPR's Morning Edition - Tuesday, January 16, 2007</author> <copyright>(c) 2007 NPR</copyright> <ref href="mms://wm.npr.org/wm.npr.na-central/me/20070116_me_02.wma?v1st=&mt=2&primaryTopic=1003&assignedTopics=1001,1002,1003" /> <ref href="http://wm.npr.org/wm.npr.na-central/me/20070116_me_02.wma?v1st=&mt=2&primaryTopic=1003&assignedTopics=1001,1002,1003" /> </entry>
Is this still an issue in SC7?
Yeah, the playlist contains duplicate tracks. We could filter out duplicates in the playlist parser, but what if someone *wants* duplicates in a playlist...
my vote: a playlist is a playlist. We should make no attempts to guess why a second entry might be there as this may vary by provider/format.
Will look at after 7.0, but this is likely a won't fix.
We're not handling ASX entry elements properly. You are supposed to ignore all but the first working item. This should be fixed as part of bug 7520.
Fixed in 7.1 change 19474.
This bug has now been fixed in the 7.1 release version of SqueezeCenter! Please download the new version from http://www.slimdevices.com if you haven't already. If you are still experiencing this problem, feel free to reopen the bug with your new comments and we'll have another look.
Reduce number of active targets for SC