free App "vuplusTV" for Apple TV

Hi,

I apologize for just joining the forum to give you notice, that my free App "vuplusTV" for Apple TV 4 is now available in the AppStore.
It is small and easy to set up and allows you to watch Live-TV or the Recordings on your Vu+ recevier via LAN/WLAN using the OpenWebIF interfaces.
Just give it a try as it is for free. Just search the AppStore for "VU" then you can install and try it.

If you have any issues with the app, just let me know through forum mail.

Enjoy!
PS.: I hope you don't regard this as spam, as I anyway do not earn any cent for this app, I made it for your and my convenience, so everyone can watch TV on an Apple TV ;-)

 

Hi the app keeps crashing, any help appreciated Kind Regards James

 

Hi app is great but keeps crashing please help

 

Hi, your app works great. I was looking for something like that. Now, I only need the atv remote for everything. Thank you.
But I have a little suggestion fir approvement: can you add a rewind button when looking movies? And, in addition to the forward button a jump button for 1 min.? Something like that? When your app would be the perfect app

 

BIG THANKS for an amazing app and the fact that you are sharing your work for free. I fell in love with it immediately! It works smoothly and have no hickups what so ever on my ATV4.

As you probably know when people get excited they (and me) tend to ask for new features (which is a way of showing appriciation!) - however I am more than willing to pay for that. So why not perhaps make a vuplusTV "premium" if you want to get paid for more work put into the dev of new features where as you keep the basic still free? I for one sure would pay for the possibility of adding username/password and domain name (not just IP to the box) so I could use my ATV4 from my cabin to my home 100/100mbit (should be enough) without the hazzle of VPN´ing. Domain name for simplicity of people with DynDNS requirements.

 

Hi please can you Help,
Great App thank you for your hard work.
only problem i have is i can access recordings but when i say go on movies and select a channel the app stops and i go back to the apple tv main screen, I would really appreciate any help

 

Does anyone else have problems when trying to access live content regards James

 

Hi guys,
In my case i have no luck for the connection, always says :no connection to stb, retry in 5 sec.
Maybe the issue is caused for webif requires a authentication and in the app config I can't specify any ceedentials?
Many thanks

 

Sorry, I haven't seen the notifications about your replies. So let's try to catch up all of your comments.

@Jimmer: I have seen some crash reports, not sure wether yours were in there (depends on your setting on the ATV to share usage and crash reports with developers).
Anyway, most of the crashes are caused by bugs in VLCKit. Building newer version either did not work in time or the results were poor in performance. But indeed, the reason for this poor quality was, that I linked against libstdc++. This lib is not even available anymore on the latest tvOS SDK - so I moved to libc++ (the clang C++ library). This resolved a lot of bottlenecks and the latest VLCKit build I made from HEAD is stable and performance is great - even though watching a 1080i stream occupies about 100% CPU. So the crash that happens most often is potentially solved with the latest VLCKit, at least I haven't seen this one before, also no freezes during playback.

@Jimmy75: I use HTTP-Live streaming also for watching recordings as written in the App description. This limits the feature set a lot. HTTP-Live streaming does not allow rewind, as then the stream would need to be sent backwards. Also the option to jump in the movie or offer improved fast forward is very limited. With the latest VLCKit at least the performance is so much better that eg. 576i (PAL) streams smoothly fast forward with 16x speed.
To add rewind or jump - like continue watching a movie where you stopped previously - would only be available with direct FTP or SMB access to the drive. I may consider this for a future release. VLCKit would help on that, but I haven't tried that much, but I am willing to learn ;-)

@dogztar, @angel84: I have seen more request about username/password in the vuplus-support.org forum (I have a support thread there, but mostly in german language). I was not aware, that this really makes sense, often just because people have a private VPN that requires this. But at the end, it does not really improve security. So I have added username/password at least for the OpenWebIF access. The password is shown, stored and used in plain text, so you should not re-use a password from other sites. For most requests I use the tvOS scheme for this purpose (using HTTP basic authentication), but for movie playback I had (so far) use the URL scheme for this authentication. Until the new version is ready for release, please go to the settings screen and use "usernameassword@IP-ADDRESS". Some users reported to me, that this works fine. Also you can use a hostname (also via DynDNS) instead of the IP-Address. I named this field like this, as it is the most simple way for most users, and local DNS often is not reliable in home networks.

So a new version is brewing as a (still free) update to the App. It comes with the following new features:
- HTTP Basic Authentication for access to OpenWebIF. (Not sure, if I can do this for accessing streams as well - I check with VLCKit)
- completely new user interface for bouquets and recordings using CollectionView. All in one view (easy switching between bouquets or recoding locations)
- using the PIcon set installed on the STB
- TopShelf extension, that allows to directly start Live-TV streaming from the Home Screen

With the TopShelf there are currently still some small issues with preparing the images due to some bad restrictions imposed by Apple. I am still in negotiation with Apple about these. Problem ist, that the extension has time constraints when preparing the info, with rendering all images at once it gets aborted by the system. Also App and TopShelf extension should have a shared container, so the App could render the images and the TopShelf could use it - but this shared container is write protected, which is absolutely senseless. I will have to file a bug at Apple about this.

As a brief teaser I added some screenshots - design is still undergoing refinements eg. TopShelf images are smaller now (Poster format).

Thanks for your interest and your support. I plan to start beta for the update via TestFlight soon. Feel free to apply for participating in the beta then - I will let you know, when the App is reviewed by Apple for TestFlight.

Cheers.

 

upps... : plus p results in a emoticon... so it is username : password without blanks

 

About issues when playing back recordings: till now I used the filename ofthe recording for playback. In Version 1.1 (Build 13) I changed it to use the reference. Maybe this is solving the problems. This version is uploaded for TestFlight beta (waiting for beta-app review). Anyone, who had problems with playing recordings (movie is not starting) please get in touch with me, so I can add you to the beta program. For this, I have to enter your AppleID to Apple Services - maybe better to send this via PM ;-)

 

Version 1.1 is now released in the AppStore!
Enjoy and I welcome any feedback...

 

sorry, it has been a while...
Version 1.2 is in testflight. If you like to participate, let me knw via mail ;-)

New version has some bugfixes in VLCKit and in the app improving the stability. Also support for view modes etc.

 

Thanks! This app looks awsome. I do have a small problem tho, all I get is a black screen. I can see my channels and the box is responding when I change channel but all I get is a black screen and no sound. Any idea why? I have an Apple TV 4. Thank you!

 

This may depend on the settings of your box and it is hard to investigate the issue from remote.
Can you open OpenWebIF in your browser on a Computer and open the streams in VLC?
Maybe you can download the service list and share it with me. PM me or send me a mail.

 

I can open OpenWebIF on my computer and view in VLC without problems. I have also tried Dreamdroid on an old phone and its working fine there to. I tried MrMC on the Apple TV 4 and it's working. It must be something wrong in my settings in vuplusTV? I just launched vuplusTV and got the error:



This is my settings(same as the other apps i tried):



The service list, is that the services.m3u?

Thank you!

 

Yes, it is the services .m3u.
It looks like the pp can communicate with the box, as it is showing the model name - which is taken via OpenWebIF.

Please Try the following URLs in your browser:
http://192.168.1.100/web/about
http://192.168.1.100/web/getservices
http://192.168.1.100/web/getlocations
http://192.168.1.100/web/movielist

These should return the basic info the App needs - Box Info, Bouquets & Services, Movie Locations & their contents.

Then there is one more URL within the /picon/ path (plus the service reference the picon belongs to) - but this one is not critical (doesn't abort).

Can you please share the XML you get in return for the above URLs?
Maybe better via private message or mail.

 

continued via mail... and investigating.
In the meantime, version 1.2 hit the store...

 

Version 1.3 is now in beta.
I have refactored a lot of my code, reduce code duplications and added unit test for the xml parsers. Those have been rewritten and i now send less requests to the box to gather the info. Of course I have fixed several bugs.
But you should not see these changes ;-)
What you can see is a clock on the Boquet and Radio selection screen.
Ah, yes... the Radio Tab is new as well...

 

Will This Work with VU+ Ultimo 4K?