29 replies to this topic

[IanB!]

Hey,

So this is my first stab at writing a Plex plugin. I've been procrastinating over when to release it but I think it's stable enough at the moment. There are a few known issues which I'll be working on iron-ing out, and i'm sure there will be some unknown ones too. If anyone does find bugs, please post them here and i'll try to resolve them ASAP. Here are some details of what the plugin will (and wont) do:

LoveFilm Plugin
This plugin will allow you to completely managed you're LoveFilm lists. This includes the following:

• Searching through their online content
• Adding/Removing items from your rental list
• Changing the priority of titles within your list
• Watch trailers (when available)
• and some other stuff too

The plugin requires the user to "Activate" their account online to allow the application to access their personalised content. This is a one time operation and should hopefully be fully explained within the plugin. Let me know if you have any problems.

I've attached a few snapshots...







However, this plugin does not provide access to the LoveFilm Player. Personally, I would have loved to do this but since the plugin uses the API provided by LoveFilm, I have to keep within the Terms & Conditions of it's use. In order to implement LoveFilm Player support, I would require the user to enter their username and password into the plugin. This is strictly against their T&Cs. However, I may continue to look into this and how one might go about writing a completely separate plugin in order to provide this functionality, no promises though!

Known Issues
Here is my current list of known issues:

• Multi-disk Titles - I'm not currently handling titles which appear on your rental list as multiple disks, e.g. TV shows. I'm still trying to work out how best to display/group these together, etc.
• Unhelpful message when cannot find trailer - Trailer support is a bit experimental.

[Updated 21/02/11]

• Translated to German, including German url's. I'm hoping that this works, but is currently untested.
• Fixed minor issues, including not being able to rate a previously unrelated title

[Updated 26/02/11]

• Reviews now available
• Resolved issue with titles which are not yet available for rental

Attached Files

•  LoveFilm.bundle.zip   727.81K   793 downloads

[IanB!]

Hey, if anyone could translate the attached file into German, I would really appreciate it. The format of the file is:

Key : Value
I only need the Value to be translated as the key would remain the same for all translations.

Also, if you're a German LoveFilm user, I'd really appreciate you get in contact. I've got a version of the plugin that I think should work but would like to confirm before I submit it to be included into Plex Online. Let me know...

Update:
* Not needed anymore, managed to persuade someone at work to do it for me. Hopefully they've not added any funnies!

Attached Files

•  de.txt   2.93K   270 downloads

[Lachunk]

Hey, Thanks again for getting this up! The plugin seems to work fine. Had an initial issue with it not playing any trailers but as soon as I restarted PMS they all started playing.

[IanB!]

Hey, Thanks again for getting this up! The plugin seems to work fine. Had an initial issue with it not playing any trailers but as soon as I restarted PMS they all started playing.

Cool, glad you like it. I've been fixing a few minor bugs so will hopefully update the one available in the next few days. One of the problem with the trailers is that they're not always available. At the moment, I assume it is until the user selects the option. Then if I can't find a trailer, PMS displays a very unhelpful message about "Source Input" or something. If you see that, it really means "Trailer not available". I could check before hand and not let a user even choose Trailer, but then that would add time between them selecting the title and seeing the full details of it. Lots of considerations, and can't decide

Anyway, let me know if you see any weird issues (even if they're really small).

[IanB!]

Plugin updated!

[IanB!]

Plugin updated. See main post for recent changes...

Also, let me know if you're having any issues with it or any suggestions on how to improve it in the future.

[be_ddiawl]

i subscribe to the watch online feature, does this do it? i cant seem to find out where!

[Advocate]

Where do I put this plugin? I've tried putting it in ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/plugins/video but it doesn't show up in Plex.

[IanB!]

i subscribe to the watch online feature, does this do it? i cant seem to find out where!

Unfortunately, this plugin does not support the LoveFilm Player. This is because it's against the Terms and Conditions associated with LoveFilm and therefore, if I added support, they would block the whole plugin. I've contacted LoveFilm to see if they would allow me to further extend it, but no comments as yet. The plugin at the moment, simply allows you to search through the LoveFilm title database and to manage your queue(s).

[IanB!]

Where do I put this plugin? I've tried putting it in ~/Library/Application Support/Plex/plugins/video but it doesn't show up in Plex.

You should place the file in /Library/Application Support/Plex Media Support/Plug-ins. It will then appear in Plex under the Video's section. Let me know if you have any problems...

[Ping]

Hi Ian,

Worked a treat cheers -

Added films, and reviewed lists - all great.

Not tried to removing a film yet

Would be good to be able to select media types, ie not blueray in my case, but not that important.

Keep up the good work and if you need any lobbying with love film, tell me who and where. Would love to see the streaming password allowed in the t&c's especially given you have to register with LF to use the plugin.

Only problem is my plugins keep disappearing though, just leaving iTunes. Is this a plex issue?

[IanB!]

Hi Ian,

Worked a treat cheers -

Added films, and reviewed lists - all great.

Not tried to removing a film yet

Would be good to be able to select media types, ie not blueray in my case, but not that important.

Keep up the good work and if you need any lobbying with love film, tell me who and where. Would love to see the streaming password allowed in the t&c's especially given you have to register with LF to use the plugin.

Only problem is my plugins keep disappearing though, just leaving iTunes. Is this a plex issue?

Hey Ping,

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions. When I get some free time i'll have a look at getting some media type preferences in.

Regarding the LoveFilm streaming, i'm planning on submitting the plugin to be distributed via Plex Online relatively. Once i've done this, i'm going to post details of it on the LoveFilm API Developer Forums. I'll let people know via this forum and then people can make posts on the LoveFilm one asking for streaming, etc.

I've also noticed the plugins disappearing occasionally. I'd be very surprised if my plugin could be the cause of this. Much more likely to be a Plex issue... I hope!

Ian

[plexberry]

Been using this plug-in for a couple of weeks now and it's awesome!

Thanks greatly!

:-)

[Declan]

How do I set this up to work with the German LoveFilm store?

[IanB!]

How do I set this up to work with the German LoveFilm store?

Thanks to Declan, we've found out that LoveFilm do not currently support German users via their API. If/when this changes, i'll update the plugin and push it out.

[goeste]

any news on this? I would really appreciate the german LoveFilm Plug-in to work

[IanB!]

any news on this? I would really appreciate the german LoveFilm Plug-in to work

Unfortunately not. I'd love to support this but until LoveFim provide support, its not going to happen. I take it they still havent released a iOS client which supports German users yet?

[t.lo]

Unfortunately not. I'd love to support this but until LoveFim provide support, its not going to happen. I take it they still havent released a iOS client which supports German users yet?

Actually, there now is a German Lovefilm player for ipad and iphone. Does that mean that you can port the UK Lovefilm player to Germany? That would be wonderful!!!

t.lo

[IanB!]

Actually, there now is a German Lovefilm player for ipad and iphone. Does that mean that you can port the UK Lovefilm player to Germany? That would be wonderful!!!

t.lo

I looked into using the iPad/iPhone application as a start for a new version of this plugin. Unfortunately, LoveFilm really don't want people to get access to the underlying streams and have jumped through a number of hoops in order to prevent this (including encrypting the stream URL information with AES). It's probably better that I focus more on making the existing implementation more reliable, which I'm hoping will be soon.

Once this is working better for the UK site, I could look into the German one, if there was enough interest. However, I would need help from German users, since I don't have a German login and I'm guessing the site is also geo-blocked.

Will try to keep people up to date...

Ian

[sim667]

Does anyone know whether this app will work on the apple tv2?