Listening to Sirius online stream using Ipaq 4150.

[myrampar]

Hello,

I am a current Sirius subscriber and was wondering if anyone has had success listening to the online music stream while using PIE.

I have a feeling it is a limitation of PIE and I believe it's lack of support for Active X controls is the reason.

I signed up for a trial of XM's online stream to see if I would have more success and the error I saw onscreen (although barely visible) was that my browser doesn't support Iframes.

Has anyone had success using another browser on their pda to listen to these online streams?

I for one think it would be very cool to have the ability to do so! :lol:

[Menneisyys]

I've played with these streams a lot too, also with Netfront 3.1. It seems the PPC isn't able to play them - it's not because of the lack of iframe support, but because of the lack of complete codec support.

[OSUKid7]

I don't have experience with either XM or Sirius, but if you're getting an error about iframes, I would access it on your PC, find the .asx or other stream file, and then just copy that to your Pocket PC. That's what I've had to do with an FM broadcast stream. They probably put ads around the media player, but if you have the direct stream, it should play fine right in WMP.

[myrampar]

Thanks for the suggestions!

While playing the stream on my desktop, I right click the Sirius player and choose Properties. Then I've copied the url, opened up WMP 10, chosen File-->Open URL and pasted it in. I get the error message that WMP cannot play the file. The error code I get is C00D1199 and the message is either the file type is not supported, it is supported but the file was compressed by using a codec that is not supported or I am trying to play it in a way that is not supported by the player.

I have also right-clicked the player and chosen View Source. I don't know much HTML, so I'm not sure if that would help me find an .asx or stream file.

It may be possible. I have sent a suggestion to Sirius that this would be a great benefit to current Sirius subscribers if they could make it available to the PPC community. I got a response that "They are forwarding the information that I supplied to their web technicians for review".

I'll keep you posted if I get any news.

[OSUKid7]

Hmm...well, as I said, I'm not familiar with how Sirius streams their content, so maybe someone who is could help more. Do you know if they use WMP for the stream, or Real, or a Flash-based player? If you see an embeded WMP control, you could try right clicking on that itself, and then clicking properties.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:
http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/12845/wbnsfmproperties.png

I'm guessing you can't provide a URL because it's a subscription service, but a screenshot might help.

Good luck!

[myrampar]

Thanks OSUKid7!

If you are curious, you can sign up for a free trial at http://www.sirius.com/servlet/MediaPlayer?activity=expand&streamNumber=undefined&.

Here is a picture of the Sirius Player:
http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/assets/common/FileObject/jpg.gif Sirius%20Player_large.jpg (http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/media/users/12632/Sirius%20Player_large.jpg) (Size: 134.7 KB)

In the image it looks like it is a WMP stream, but when I right-click the player and choose properties, this is the url to the content-
http://www.sirius.com/servlet/MediaPlayer?activity=selectStream&stream=big80s&genre=pop&token=44b76f8ef4518c186addced65e5c4

I don't see anything in the link with an extension that I recognize. What do you make of it?

[OSUKid7]

Thanks OSUKid7!
No problem. :) Just trying to help where I can.

If you are curious, you can sign up for a free trial at http://www.sirius.com/servlet/MediaPlayer?activity=expand&streamNumber=undefined&.
Thanks, may sign up for that later.

In the image it looks like it is a WMP stream, but when I right-click the player and choose properties, this is the url to the content-
http://www.sirius.com/servlet/MediaPlayer?activity=selectStream&stream=big80s&genre=pop&token=44b76f8ef4518c186addced65e5c4

I don't see anything in the link with an extension that I recognize. What do you make of it?
Hmm, yeah, that's definitely a WMP control. When you right click on it, do you see a menu like the one in my screenshot above, with the same options? Sirius might have a better streaming service than I expected. It may generate a temporary stream file each time you login, so you can't give the URL to others. It makes sense, but it pretty much locks you into using their streaming system.

You might also want to try viewing the source of the webpage. Search for urls that you recognize (will probably bee around the object/embed tags).

If that doesn't work, I'd say Sirius has done a superb job at securing their streams. That's unfortunate for you, but hopefully your suggestion will yield a Pocket PC login system in the future. :)

[myrampar]

When right clicking on the control, I don't get the same menu as in your screenshot above. I can select Properties and I just get a general properties sheet like you would for any web page. However, the connection is not encrypted. I can also choose View source and in looking through the html code saw a few refernces to asx.

What is interesting is that I am currently listening to the stream right now and when I click the long link in your last post that I gave you, another window opens up and I have parallel streams going on my desktop.

Same song and everything, just a split second behind. I wonder if I kept the stream going if you could open it also. I highly doubt it, but it might be worth a shot. That way you could see it first hand.

If/when you get around to signing up for the trial, let me know if you come up with anything! :D

[jcsickz]

hey guys, I worked for about 6 months to figure out a similar problem, and this weekend, I figured out a temporary but good solution.

Problem: launch.com (similar to the streaming xm and sirius stations) would not open on my pocket pc ie or anything else.

Solution: Get windows media encoder (latest version) and stream it from your pc's sound card to your pocket pc.

It should work like a charm, it does for me. One problem you'll encounter is not being able to change channels while on your pocket pc, but you can make a logmein.com account (ppc compatible) and remote control your pc from your ppc and change channels.

Hope this helps!

[OSUKid7]

I signed up for the trial, and I'm not seeing anything either. :( It looks like SIRIUS uses several hash codes and keeps track not only if you're logged in, but if the stream is playing in the browser. As you said, you can play the .jsp page stream in WMP if it is already started in the browser WMP control, but if it's not playing there, you can't start it in the standalone player.

I thought I was on to something when I went to a page such as http://www.sirius.com/mediaplayer/asx/starlite.jsp and viewed the source, which seems to contain a rough XML of several entries, but I wasn't able to play any of those.

I can't get over how great a job SIRIUS has done locking down their streams. jcsickz's solution works, but as he said, you won't be able to change channels, and you'll have to have your PC accessible from the Internet so you can listen to the stream away from home. I'm also guessing that reproducing the streams isn't legal...and since it's available on the Internet, it would be even less legal. :| Hopefully SIRIUS will offer streams on Pocket PCs soon.

[myrampar]

I did use jcsidkz suggestion and it does work, but you bring up a couple of good points OSUKid7.

I guess we will just have to wait until Sirius fixes it so that we can stream the music using PIE or another PPC browser. However, I did come across some interesting links in my search to figure out a solution.

Check out this link (http://www.siriusbackstage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18785&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=bd86b2815dfb118704db7ac799bc774c). There is a cool program called ItsOnSirius that "Jeremy" has written to make it easier to connect to the Sirius online stream and also allows you to create song seeks for artist or title and have it automatically change the channel when a requested song comes up on one of the other Sirius channels. This functionality is available with the tuner I use between the car and home, but is not available using Sirius' online stream.

If you go to page 8 of the thread, the fourth post from the bottom contains a link from the author to the latest version.

On page 7 of that same thread, the first post contains a link to a program called StepVoice Recorder which allows you to record streams from any sound source in real time and encode them to mp3 format at the same time. I have downloaded the old freeware version and used it to record the programming from the ItsOnSirius stream. Then just copy the mp3 file to a storage card and play it on the PPC. Of course the stream is only 32k but if you want to record a couple of hours of 80's and listen to it on your PDA, this works. 8)

One other thing, it appears that you can install ItsOnSirius on multilple computers and listen to the stream at the same time. I have done this on different computers on my LAN, but haven't tried to leave it going on a computer at home and try to use it at a hotspot.

Thought I would pass this along for the benefit of other PPC Thoughts members that also subscribe to Sirius.

Thanks all for your help!

[mattbugz]

I'm also a Sirius subscriber that would like to play the streams on my PPC. I could not get the Media Player to play the streams natively. Someone would probably need to create an application similar to the ItsOnSirius Radio.

www.itsonsirius.com