oviano

You didn't try hard enough Go here : http://sourceforge.net/p/slingfront/code/HEAD/tree/ Then click on "Download Snapshot" in the dark grey header bar, and you'll get a .tar file containing a snapshot of the last code. I don't get the full screen/taskbar issue you mention, it works fine for me. I've tried it on several different PCs. Regarding your remote - you'll need to map your Harmony to use SlingFront's key mappings if they are different from the regular web player's. I have a Harmony too and I basically set it up as an "MCE Keyboard" device and just mapped everything exactly how I wanted. But as far as the missing key mappings are concerned (page up/down, favourites, myDVR and swap) - do you know what codes these are using? You can find this out by enabling console output on your browser; in Mac Safari you use the "Develop" menu and choose "Show Error Console". Then, navigate to the regular web player @ newwatch, connect to your stream and then click on the buttons on your remote. You should see things like this in the console: 10:43:18 777 : APP FSM >>> Action : OnRemoteControlKeyPress: {keycmd: id.remote.boxoffice.sky, keycode: 62} 10:43:58 522 : SLINGPLAYER-APP FSM >>> Action : OnRemoteControlKeyPress: {keycmd: id.remote.back, keycode: 36} 10:44:38 457 : SLINGPLAYER-APP FSM >>> Action : OnRemoteControlKeyPress: {keycmd: id.remote.red, keycode: 74} Hopefully whatever browser you are using has a similar option to view the log information. The thing I'm not sure about though is how universal these codes are going to be? Keycode 62 above appears when I click on the "Sky" button on my Sky+ HD remote. I happen to know (from loading the Sky bin file into RemoteMaster) that this is mapped to the button "Custom14" in the master list of 81 buttons. Does this mean that keycode 62 is always going to equate to "Custom14" or can't we make that assumption? I don't know. If we could make that assumption then it would be useful to work out a list of keycodes for all 81 of the buttons and make these all mappable inside SlingFront. EDIT : just had a glance at the code and I can see that there are already definitions for the Page Up/Down and Favourites keycodes, so it just needs a few more lines adding to map these to keys in SlingFront.

Ok Tom, I have uploaded the file "SlingFront additional keyboard mappings.zip". It contains just the two files I modified; search for the text "Added by Oliver Collyer" to find my changes. Many thanks.

Thanks for the update. I downloaded the source and had a crack at adding the missing keyboard shortcuts that I require for play, pause (separately), rewind, fast forward and stop. It works fine - so is there a preferred procedure for submitting changes like this? I commented the changes with an identical comment (there were only a small number) so I could send the files and you could add them to your main branch manually or should it be done through sourceforge (never used it, but prepared to learn)? This is assuming you want the changes of course! Oliver

I occasionally get a double keypress from my Harmony remote too, mainly after changing the Slingbox settings for a particular setting, when I click to go Back from the menu it seems to not only go back but relaunch the stream again, as if I have clicked OK twice. Unless that is intentional, but it seems strange behaviour if so. Only I can't explain why I don't get doubleclicks elsewhere. As for the myDvr button - I'm kind of in the same boat in that I could do with being able map a few more keys. For me it's the record, rewind and fast forward buttons. You could try looking in the application data settings folder and see if there is anything editable there? Tom - it's been a (relative) while since the last update, are you working on a new version, out of interest?

The Slingplayer for connected devices shows either 'tcpLAN' or 'tcpWAN' in the stream info, which is useful for diagnosing issues where the box isn't showing up properly over the LAN. It would be great if this was added to SlingFront too.

For me it was mostly an issue when the menu overlaid the stream - it would be very sluggish even just using the arrow keys to highlight each box in the UI. Once the video was stopped the UI was sufficiently responsive.

I'm using similar hardware (nano XS AD11) and I got around it by using the 'Stop' functionality when the stream is playing to stop the stream and return to the UI. It'd be nice to have an option to make it work more smoothly though, I agree.

Thanks for the update. Can't get the 60fps to do anything though - if I connect to my 720p60 source and set it to 1280 x 720 and 60fps it just connects at 320 x 240 and 30fps. The same stream can be viewed in IE10 at Best (HD) and appears as 1280 x 720 @ 60fps, although not the first time I connect - I have to connect to a lower quality first (which shows up as 30fps) and then reselect Best (HD) to force it into 60fps. Maybe if you implement being able to change these settings while within the stream (i.e. without disconnecting) SlingFront would behave the same way, I don't know?

1) If the remote box is powered off then it correctly displays "No Signal", however upon powering on the box the "No Signal" banner has a habit of remaining in the top left hand corner indefinitely - or at least until I choose to show the stream info in the same location, after which it disappears. 2) when you choose Settings -> Edit Slingboxes -> <Slingbox Name> and then hit Back, you are taken right back to the root menu. I would find it more logical for it to return you to the previous menu. A few times it has caught me out and I have instinctively click on the Exit button at the bottom and this of course quits the application as I'd forgotten I'd been taken back to the highest level menu and was anticipating this button taking me back one level. 3) in the settings for a particular Slingbox, adjusting the framerate to 20, 25 or 30 seems to have no effect - the framerate always seems to be that chosen by the Slingbox. Also, 50 and 60 fps are valid framerates for the new Slingboxes too (well, see my other bug post regarding not being able to actually get 60fps in Slingfront, but I can certainly get 50fps). 4) I don't know why, but sometimes it takes a long time at the "Loading Slingboxes" stage. I just did a test and simultaneously launched the regular web player on one machine and hovered the mouse over "Directory" and launched Slingfront on another - the directory on the web player appeared listing my Slingboxes within a couple of seconds, whereas it took ages for Slingfront to bring up the main menu. In fact, quite often I find it times out or something and doesn't even produce a list at all - in which case the main menu consists only of "Settings" and "Exit". Could it cache this list or something? Is the delay because Slingfront is waiting for a response from each Slingbox or something whereas the webplayer isn't? I suggest this because in the WDTV player you get the directory displayed first and then beneath each Slingbox in the directory it initially displays "Waiting for answer..." until the Slingbox replies at which point it changes to something like "Remote - available" or "Busy" or whatever state the Slingbox is in. I'm probably barking up the wrong tree but there does seem to be a difference in behaviour. 5) a really minor graphical glitch; from the main menu, click on "View Slingboxes" and keep the mouse positioned where you clicked it. On the next menu (the one listing the Slingboxes), focus your eye on the "Back" button at the bottom and watch how it's colour increases brightness slightly as you move the mouse down onto the second slingbox down in the list. I did say "minor bugs" in the topic

I think I've uncovered a problem. I have an IPTV box that outputs 720p60 to a Slingbox 350 on my LAN. Firstly, using the Sling web player with IE10 I can get a smooth picture from this Slingbox, confirmed by the stats (ctrl+click) reporting 60fps. There is one glitch whereby sometimes when I first connect it only gives me 30fps and I have to switch to a lower setting (like 'Better') and then back up to Best (HD) to get 60fps. However, with SlingFront it seems to be impossible to get 60fps. To give this some context, if I put my Sky+ HD source, which outputs 1080i25 into a Slingbox 350, through SlingFront I can get a nice smooth 50fps picture. Also, if I switch my Sky box to output 720p50 then SlingFront at least attempts to stream 50fps (ie the stream info reports 50fps), although because the Sky box is remote I struggle to get enough bandwidth. So there seems to be an issue with displaying the stream from the 720p60 source. I've also tried the same test on three different machines and in each case IE10 can show the stream in 60fps, but SlingFront refuses to go above 30fps. In each case the bitrate shown in SlingFront is comparable to that which IE10 achieves.

Yep, something like that would be great. So you could easily flick down to a lower resolution if your Internet connection goes bad. I know the Auto setting is meant to do all this but I find it's a bit too conservative - I never get the highest resolution even though 80-90% of the time my connection can handle it.

I know you can bring up the menu and navigate to edit the settings for the slingbox you are viewing but this is quite longwinded if you just want to switch to another resolution quickly. So could we have the possibility to either bring up the resolution menu directly via a key or be able to assign some keys to specific resolutions?

Ah yes, thanks, I had assumed that one would just issue a remote Stop command but I can now see that it disconnects the stream. Probably covered by my feature request for more mappings but could we have separate stop and disconnect commands?

Yes, me too. I just finished setting up a Harmony remote to control this and it's great to finally have a way of controlling one of the new Slingboxes in as seamless as a manner as SlingCatcher works with the older Slingboxes. And with none of the delays in issuing commands that the "Slingplayer for Connected devices" players are plagued by. I can't stress enough how good this is for the Sling community. Well done!

Thanks for the update. It's getting better each time. One thing that is a little frustrating is trying to adjust the resolution and fps using a remote control. Navigating with the up and down buttons cycles through the options within each one (eg cycling through the different resolutions) whereas I feel it would be more logical if these buttons navigated from one control to the next and then you pressed ok to bring up the menu and then the up/down buttons could be used to choose the one you wanted. At the moment you need to press the tab key to switch between the controls. I can get around it by setting up a tab key on my Harmony remote but it makes it a but fiddly.

Yes the coloured buttons are working for me too now, thankyou.

Thanks - are you referring to the IR commands sent by an MCE remote or those issued to the remote STB by the blaster though? I was planning to setup a Harmony remote so that its coloured buttons map to some keys of my choice and then map these keys inside SlingFront to the red/green/blue/yellow functions.

No, you're limited to the selection of controls available on the settings page. None of the controls I've listed above are present in this list and thus can't be mapped to a key.

I would find key mappings for the following functions very useful: Page Up Page Down Rewind Fast Forward Record Red Green Yellow Blue However, why not provide the means to map all the keys recognised by Slingboxes? I think there are 81. You could then just provide mappings for a subset, but it would mean people could provide mappings for the ones they want if the default subset doesn't cover things satisfactorily.

I've been trying out Slingfront on a fairly low spec HTPC (Zotac ZBOX nano XS 11 plus to be precise) and while the video and audio stream satisfactorily, I find things get in a bit of a pickle when the menu UI is overlayed onto the stream. The stream freezes and glitches and the UI components can take a long time to draw making it painful to use. So would it be possible to have another setting whereby when you return to the menu you could have it disconnect from the stream rather than darken the screen and overlay the UI? Alternatively, you could just add an additional straightforward 'Disconnect' action which you could map to a key and do it that way.

Many thanks for the update. I've tested all those changes and they seem to work nicely. One small thing - I think the info box should stay visible until you press the key again, i.e. make it into a toggle rather than fade out after a few seconds. This would be more useful IMO. Anyway, I plan to stick this onto a spare HTPC I have lying around and get a feel for using it with a remote control, at which point I expect I'll have some more feedback. I know I will want to able to map the red/green/blue/yellow buttons on the remote to the equivalent functions on the remote STB, so adding keyboard shortcuts for those would be tremendous. I don't want to push my luck though - great work so far

Yes HDMI. I would say the picture quality is marginally better using this (which is essentially the web player plugin) compared with the WDTV. There isn't much in it though - the WDTV hovers around the 2.3mbps mark for me at Best (HD) whereas the web player hits 3-4mbps but not hugely different. I'm not *entirely* convinced the WDTV players isn't under reporting the bitrate or something as I'd have expected a worse 1920 x 1080 stream at 2.3mbps. This is all from a 1080i25 Sky+ HD output by the way. As far as SlingFront is concerned I haven't yet seen if it can run at Best (HD) because the Auto setting hasn't yet been kind enough to switch to it yet, but given that this app seems to be some kind of wrapper UI around the ActiveX Slingplayer plugin I would expect it should work. My main reason for having high hopes for SlingFront and why I say it walks all over the WDTV player is not about video quality but just that I know the web player performs more reliably than the flash-based WDTV player and doesn't suffer the awful delay in issuing commands. If a few small fixes/improvements can be made I'd hook a mini HTPC up with this app in a flash as a replacement, one of those Zotac ZBOX devices might do the trick.

A couple more things to add after a further bit of tinkering. - if the remote STB is on standby it seems that the app aborts trying to connect due to lack of a video signal. It needs instead to display a message and then the user can use the controls to turn on the power. I would suggest also adding the Power Toggle button to the mappable commands as it would be important for users where their STB is set to go into standby mode. - the last couple of times I've connected to my remote UK Sky+ HD box, there has been some audio/video sync issues, just by half a second or so. I verified it was the app by trying with the web player in Chrome and it was fine. When I tried again using the app I got the sync issues again. - I suggest adding the coloured buttons, red, green, blue and yellow as mappable buttons, as these can be quite important for some STBs, like the Sky box Hope this helps.

This application gets a big thumbs up from me. Had a little play around this morning and a few small suggestions: - are you planning on being able to choose the video quality setting? I like that Auto is supported, but sometimes Sling's algorithm for choosing the setting isn't great in my experience - I'd like to be able to disable it from auto connecting to the last Slingbox - the UI could do with a improving - in particular the big blue boxes for the buttons could be drawn in a more pleasing manner, rounded corners, textures etc. - sometimes when navigating the UI there are flashes of white appearing - for example when you choose Settings then General Settings, part of the screen temporarily has some white appearing which gives it a clumsy feel - when streaming, the I key brings up the info box, but this also activates the Info button on my Sky box, bringing up a program info banner. Since this interrupts the stream (because it has send a command) this means the info box contains information that isn't so valuable. - a minor one this, there is a typo in the keyboard control editor - it says 'NextSligBox' instead of 'NextSlingBox' Overall though I think it looks great. I've been wanting something like this for ages - something to combine the performance of the web player (responsive remote commands etc) but designed for the TV. I can already see it walks all over the WDTV player that I've been fighting with for months. Good work, polish this up and I'd pay money for this - even more so if you make a Mac version (would be ideal for setting up with RemoteBuddy and a Harmony remote).