[Error: Load failed] on chromecast-supporting websites

[havumigi]

Hi,

First compliments for the work so far, it's a great concept and what's implemented so far works very well for me.

The key feature for me would be to be able to script my HTPC to launch live tv channels. The provider I use has iOS and Android mobile apps and a web interface which all have chromecast support built in. Under OS X I can go to a URL, click the chromecast button and I get full screen video (e.g. not just a cast of the full tab).

When I try to load the URL with castnow I get:

DEBUG=castnow* castnow http://zattoo.com/watch/bbc-one
castnow launching... +0ms
castnow player status: loading plugins +3ms
castnow player status: scanning +1ms
castnow player status: connecting +164ms
castnow player status: launching +595ms
castnow player status: loading +4s
castnow player error: [Error: Load failed] +2s
Error: Load failed

I'm not sure if Zattoo is accessible internationally. In any case it's behind a user login. Sorry if there's not much for you to work with - but I hoped you might be able to advise of any general approach to get castnow to handle a web page which flawlessly supports chromecast from a browser?

thanks!

[xat]

I'm planing to implement an more open plugin system which will support custom plugins.

To make your example running you would need a specialised castnow zattoo.com plugin. That plugin would basicly take the input ( "http://zattoo.com/watch/bbc-one" ) and try to extract the video source out of it which it then passes on to chromecast. I don't think that will be so trivial in the case of zattoo since I guess they have authentication stuff going on.

[havumigi]

OK thanks. This is not my field but I had a look at the source of the web interface pages to see if there was anything to extract and it certainly wasn't obvious to me. Is there some specific construct I could look for, which would let castnow imitate the logged-in web session?

Otherwise I will probably stick to my other plan of scripting GUI events to the chrome browser...

[xat]

You could have a look into the network-tab of Chrome to find out the video source or maybe Zattoo has an API which let's you resolve the video source. The video source must be something that Chromecast is able to play.
I don't have an construct for the login stuff, would need to inspect the zattoo authentication process to be able to figure something out. This could also be against their Terms of Use.

[xat]

I'll close this one for now.

[havumigi]

thanks for the replies! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this project.