Monthly Archives: April 2009

TunerFreeMCE

Overriding the click positions

The way that TunerFreeMCE plays, pauses and goes full screen for flash based content is it simulates a mouse click in just the right place. The software has some pre-seeded click positions for the most common window sizes, and does it's best to calculate the rest. This is done by looking at the file C:/ProgramData/MillieSoft/TunerFreeMCE/resolutions2.dat. That file is automatically updated on the fly too every time the list of programs is built, so any changes to the click positions, e.g. due to new banner adds on the pages, can be pushed out automatically.

Sometimes though, for whatever reason, your media center just doesn't quite display things in the same position as everyone else. You can set your own positions for the clicks by copying resolutions2.dat to C:/ProgramData/MillieSoft/TunerFreeMCE/resolutionOverride.dat. If that file exists, it will be read first, and does not get overwritten by the system.

The format of the file is as follows;

XResolution:Yresolution,bbcPlayNonFSX,bbcPlayNonFSY,bbcRevNonFSX,bbcRevNonFSY,bbcFSX,bbcFSY,bbcPlayFSX,bbcPlayFSY,bbcRevFSX,bbcRevFSY,bbcHighResX,bbcHighResY,bbcLivePlayX,bbcLivePlayY,bbcLiveFSX,bbcLiveFSY,huluPlayNonFSX,huluPlayNonFSY,huluFSX,huluFSY,huluHighResX,huluHighResY,huluPlayX,huluPlayY,bbc16CheckX,bbc16CheckY,bbc16OKX,bbc16OKY,fivePlayNonFSX,fivePlayNonFSY,fiveRevNonFSX,fiveRevNonFSY,fiveFSX,fiveFSY,fivePlayFSX,fivePlayFSY,fiveRevFSX,fiveRevFSY,C4PlayNonFSX,C4PlayNonFSY,C4PauseNonFSX,C4PauseNonFSY,C4FSX,C4FSY,C416CheckX,C416CheckY,C416OKX,C416OKY,C4PauseFSX,C4PauseFSY,BBCHDPlayY

where “bbcPlayNonFSX” means the X coordinate of the bbc play button not in full screen and so on. 

e.g.
1920:1080,646,524,680,524,1252,524,60,1012,147,1012,1034,568,710,552,1185,552,652,560,1308,245,1308,473,16,1065,748,613,765,654,484,500,534,500,1004,500,700,1055,739,1055,770,495,470,584,1075,584,483,637,723,727,30,1050,630

To change the click position for your screen, just keep one line in the file that has the closest resolution to yours in it, and delete the others. Do not put a return at the end of the line – it must not have any blank lines in it. Once you have that one line, edit the resolution to be the same as yours, and then change the click point that you need to correct. For example if you have 1920×1020 resolution, and you needed to change the coordinates for the bbc play button from 646,524 to 690,550, you would have the following change;

1920:1020,690,550,680,524,1252,524,60,1012,147,1012,1034,568,710,552,1185,552,652,560,1308,245,1308,473,16,1065,748,613,765,654,484,500,534,500,1004,500,700,1055,739,1055,770,495,470,584,1075,584,483,637,723,727,30,1050,630

Don't forget, when new functionality is added (e.g. the BBC HD streams recently), you may need to get a new copy of the resolution file to work from, because new click coordinates will be added.

 

Latest

BBC Programs go HD

The BBC have just started streaming some of their programs in 720p – the first time you can get real HD television in the UK without Satelite or Cable. With Version 2.8.1, TunerFreeMCE has added support for these streams. Just set the preferences to default to HD, and the HD streams will be shown when available. Also upgrade to this version to allow non-HD feeds to keep auto-playing and going full screen.

One word of warning – HD streams are broadcast at 3200kbps, so an hours program is 1.44 GB of data, so make sure you have an unlimited data plan if you want to watch HD content.

Latest

TunerFree MCE integrates with twitter

TwitterVersion 2.8 of TunerFreeMCE brings a fantastic new feature – integration with twitter. When you link your twitter account to TunerFreeMCE, your status will be updated when you watch a program, so your followers will be able to see what you are watching.

Also added is the ability to see what programs other people have been watching, so you can keep an eye on what's popular this week. Check out the instructions for information on how to link twitter to TunerFreeMCE.

Latest

TunerFreeMCE Bandwidth

I got a message today about a user who had hit their monthly download limit in no time at all using TunerFreeMCE. My first thought was that this must be a glitch or a bug. Then I looked at the size of the new Hulu content. With their new encoding, each Hulu page is about 150K, and there are nearly a thousand of them. That means that each time TunerFreeMCE does a scan of Hulu, it downloads about 120MB in total. That compares to about 5MB for all of the UK content. On it's own, that's not too bad, but by default it does that every hour. That's getting on for 3GB a day. And that's just for the background processes, not for watching any video, which is in fact small compared to that (less than 1GB an hour on high resolution).

If you are using TunerFreeMCE and are on a download limited broadband connection, you definitely want to take some action to avoid this. What you should do is;

1) Go to the preferences screen, and change the frequency of download from 1 hour to 12 hours. 1 hour is overkill and I will change the default in the next release, and add a 24 hour option too.
2) If you are in the UK, go to the preferences screen and turn off Hulu. That will dramatically reduce the data requirements.

That should bring the data usage way down to a far more acceptable level.

Latest

Channel 4 moves to flash

As predicted, another TV provider has moved from WMV to Flash. This time it's Channel 4 who switched over on the 1st April. When I read about it, I thought perhaps it was a poor April Fool's joke, but of course it wasn't.

Version 2.7.0 of TunerFreeMCE provides support for the new flash content for Channel 4, and the good news is that it is really fast to parse and provides reliable streams. It also allows me to split out in to Channel 4, E4 and More4 again, and to get better broadcast date information. The bad news is that it isn't too reliable at going full screen. I am hoping that C4 stabilize their screens a bit to allow me to make going full screen more reliable soon.