Amazon Instant Video and Windows Media Center - Page 2

Wow Gareth, awesome! I will try to install it tonight and let you know how it goes. I'm currently using my Prime account mostly to watch a particular TV show, however, so it might not get much real world use for a bit.

Do you plan on implementing support for the Watchlist?

Thanks again for this, and please consider making it a pay app once it's out of beta. You definitely deserve compensation.

FYI I am able to install the addin, sign in to Amazon, and choose a movie. However when I go to play it I get an error:

Unable to display page
The server is not responding, or there is something wrong with your proxy server....

Hi there,

This uses a local web page to display the video content - I suspect that the error you are having is because it cannot find that file. can you look in where you installed it and confirm that the path is something like c:\program files\garethbarr.com\amazonmceaddin, and that you have a web folder that contains an amazonviewer.htm file. Then look in your registry under hklm\software\garethbarr.com\amazonmceaddin and confirm that the viewerpath entry matches the directory that the actual file is in. If it is wrong (which it might be), please change it to match the file path the relaunch.

Either way, please let me know.

EDIT: Let me clarify - the viewerpath should look something like C:\Program Files\garethbarr.com\AmazonMCEAddin\Web\amazonviewer.htm

Thanks for the positive feedback - I think that the ability to add to / review and payback from the watchlist would be great - I definitely want to do it, but it is a bit more complex than the current version - for starters, it seems to require authentication to be sent to access the watchlist, rather than the normal cookie, which would mean that I would have to store your password locally, so needs a bit more consideration first.

By the way, I just updated the site with a newer version of the add-in. It might not address your issue with playback (Though I would like to hear if my suggestion made any difference), but what it DOES do is to enable playback of TV content too, which you seemed interested in.

I have this same error. Since I am on 64 bit, the folder is C:\program files (x86)\...
There is no entry for garethbarr.com in the registry under HKLM/Software.

Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate

And the watchlist would be a big win!

Hi guys,

Sorry about this - will have to look at the installer.

Try pasting the following into notepad, modifying the path to match your path and the save it as e.g. amazon.reg and then double-click it to merge it into your registry and try again.

By the way - please let me know if it works for you - if so, I will put an update on the site until I can figure out what is going on with the installer.

_____everything below here_____
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\garethbarr.com\AmazonMCEAddin]
"ViewerPath"="C:\\Program Files (x86)\\garethbarr.com\\AmazonMCEAddin\\Web\\amazonviewer.htm"

That did it!

No apologies necessary. That's what alphas and betas are for.

Gareth, how difficult was it for you to develop the plugin? How much experience do you have as a software developer? I've always wanted to develop some plugins but haven't had the time to look into it.

Honestly, it really wasn't that much fun at the start - there seems to be very little helpful documentation around, and although the C# work is not hugely complicated, the decoupling of the visual interface from the logic doesn't work the way I would have expected - Media Center Markup Language is quite powerful, but very frustrating to work with, and having to compile, install, run and attach a debugger each time to step through the code was a pain.

I am not really a hardcore programmer - my background is in systems infrastructure (converged voice, video and data networks etc), but I have always had an interest in programming, and have played around in ASP & Visual Basic (Pre .NET), C#, Ruby, Python, PHP, Javascript etc.

If you are interested, I could point you to some articles that I found helpful when I started looking into this - I was thinking of putting together a page pulling all those sources together and summarizing some of what I have learnt from doing this anyway, so let me know if you think that would be helpful.

Love this idea for my Prime Content. I'd like to know if it's at all possible to get it working with Extenders like the Ceton Echo. Xbox 360 has it's own app for Amazon as does Roku. The Netflix plugin for Media Center shows up under the Movies tab and I was wondering if there was a way to have an option to add your Amazon tab to that location? Thanks for the hard work on this and please keep us posted.

Hi BenJF3. Thanks for your feedback.

Extenders are really a challenge, as this app is simply playing back flash content and the extenders don't support that, so would have transcode the content, which would likely be really challenging, but it is something that i will continue to look at, as I use a bunch of extenders myself. Just don't hold your breath on this one yet.

Agreed ref the Icon on the start menu. Again, there are limitations here in WMC, but I will definitely do something to improve the accessibility of it.

Thanks for the reply! At this point, I'm happy to have access to Prime at all and want to commend you on the effort. Amazon should be the ones making this happen. The Netflix plug in integrates perfectly so it can be done. Amazon has the resources to do so versus a single individual on their own. Please don't take that as a swipe at you, but just the fact of the matter. I want to be perfectly clear that the time and effort is greatly appreciated!

Just wanted to post another Thank-You for developing this add-on! Everything works just as described. This helps my effort to integrate all of my HTPC uses into WMC immensely.

Thanks thanks!!

I concur. I like having access and if it can be made to work on extenders like the Ceton Echo then it would be the cats behind!

Just a suggestion, there are support people for Ceton in the Echo thread that may be able to offer guidance in bringing that functionality. They are going through growing pains and anything to give more functionality to the Echo is good for them too.

Great work on this plugin. It installed without issue and accepted my login details. I can browse categories and play content. However, there is an issue - when a show is playing, there is a small window that doesn't go away in the bottom left corner of the screen. Also, the WMC controls hide the plugin controls so I can't try to force full screen, or use the on-screen controls. I'm using WMC on Win7 64bit. Thanks!

I am looking forward to trying this. It sounds great.

Another happy camper. I was surprised at how SMOOTHLY the install went from scratch.

Oh thank you guys for bumping this, I was looking for some way to integrate Amazon into WMC.

It works nicely. I'm hoping there will be a way to support it via Extender. I'm going to use Ceton Echo's for my additional outlets and would love to have access via them. I'm hoping the dev makes contact with the programmers over at the Ceton thread and they offer some guidance. The Ceton engineers who post there are VERY helpful with the advancement of the Echo Extender.

There are a number of annoying little things in the current implementation that I am hoping to knock down when I have a moment - these include not being able to fast-forward/rewind.skip ahead or back using the remote. The plugin controls also show, and I would prefer that they didn't etc. These are all things that are on my radar, and I hope to get to at some point.

The small window that doesn't go away is a strange one. It used to be that if you had content playing or paused, it would show in a "now playing" window in the bottom left, but the last iteration of code made sure to stop all playback, so I haven't seen that since. Can you please screenshot that and send to me?

I do like the idea of this, though am not hugely optimistic about the potential, since I think the limitation is built into media center and the way that extenders work, however, once I have got past the next round of code (which I am hoping will give rentals, watchlist and a few bug fixes), I will reach out to them.

I do like Ceton, and I personally use their quad tuner for my setup, but am still using the old linksys DMA extenders.

I'll take a couple screens tonight and post back. Maybe I had Live TV or something playing so we'll see if stopping all playback fixes it.

Believe me, your work is appreciated. My thinking is Ceton may have resources available that you don't. The guys in the Echo thread are constantly helping to evolve that product and are friendly. I'm mobile now, but when I get in I'll PM you a link to the thread and ID some of the engineers to you. You could PM them and just see what they say. It might not go anywhere, but it can't hurt.

Once again, thanks for all your hard work on the project. It's a shame that Amazon, with their vast resources didn't take as must interest in it!

Just FYI - I have decided to make this open source, so others with skills and experience can contribute. If anyone is interested, they can access the source at https://bitbucket.org/garethbarr/amazon-media-center-add-in/

This could spur development. I noticed that my Netflix add in doesnt even appear in my Echo Extender Menu. I can see and log into your Amazon app, but not view anything. Maybe someone with the programming skills can get your Amazon plug in working and possibly someone could would on a Netflix add on that ran in the Extras menu as well. I will keep following this thread to see what developes.