OnlineVideos SiteManager

I’m an avid user of MediaPortal. Actually, since about 4 months ago, it has been my only mean of watching TV… just last week I cancelled my cable subscription and, right now, the only thing that is shown on my TV comes from MediaPortal.

I have to admit that it is not (yet) perfect but it is, by far, the best media center I’ve tried (and I think I have tried them all).
One of the things I like the most is that MediaPortal has been designed around a robust plugin API which allows developers to create AddOns that either enhance MediaPortal or provide additional features.

One of my most beloved plugins is OnlineVideos. But as much as I love this plugin I feel there are some areas that could be greatly enhanced. Such is the section in the plugin where you select which “stations” or “sites” to include.
I’m sure that many users are happy by having all the sites included but me, being a control freak, I like to fine tune which sites I want available for streaming.

So, to mainly satisfy my (apparently unique) needs I’ve started working on a small utility that can, considerably, ease the process of selecting which sites to include in the plugin.

For this initial version, here’s what it can do:

  • Display sites grouped by language
  • Filter the sites display by keywords found in their name or description
  • Filter sites by their language
  • Filter sites by their enabled status
  • Select and deselect multiple sites at once
  • Rename a site’s name directly from within the list
  • Changes are none-destructive. You need to click the “Save” button for the changes to be applied
  • Every time the program starts, it creates a copy of the current configuration file
OnlineVideos SiteManager

OnlineVideos SiteManager

Although this version covers most of my needs I’m aware that is missing a couple of things that might be useful, so here’s what I’ve planned for the upcoming release:

  • The text filter is now filtering by phrase when it should be filtering by keyword. For example, if you enter “web tv” into the text filter, the program will look for the phrase “web tv”, instead of searching for “web” or “tv”
  • The groups in the list are not correctly sorted
  • It would be helpful to be able to filter by more than one language
  • I would like to include a groups editor as the current one in the OnlineVideos plugin configuration is almost impossible to use
  • A most robust backup mechanism, in case the program trashes the configuration file
  • Ability to auto-detect the location of the OnlineVideoSites.xml regardless of the platform
  • Make the description section multi-line
  • Add icons to indicate which sites are up-datable and/or reported broken and include appropriate filtering controls for those conditions [-1]
  • Ability to update sites directly from within the program [-1]
  • And… I’m sure that, as I use it, I’ll come up with more helpful things to add to the program

You can download this version from the following link:
OnlineVideos SiteManager (1007 downloads )

And here’s the source code for Visual Studio 2010:
OnlineVideos SiteManager Source Code (930 downloads )


[-1] For these features I will probably need the OnlineVideos developers permission as it will require a connection to their server(s).