# Custom RSS Feed troubles?



## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

Is something up with the Custom RSS feed mechanism? I was using it to catch the new Geek Beat which isn't in the regular on demand listings when a few days ago all episodes were reported as 0:00 length. Trying to play nets the incompatible format error for all listed episodes -- even those that had played properly in the past.

I tried a different Revision3 feed with the same results and figured they changed something with the format of their feeds. I then checked the white house.gov feed (suggested in the FAQs as one that is in the proper format) and it also shows the same problem.

Rebooting the Series3 makes no difference. Anybody else having the same issue.

Steve


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Trouble here too...


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

orangeboy said:


> Trouble here too...


Good to hear that it's not just me. Perhaps TivoStephen will chime in once the regular work week starts with some info.

Steve


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

orangeboy said:


> Trouble here too...


Uhoh --- with no hue and cry on this issue, either it's not often used or this is something isolated to a few boxes.

Steve


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

Hi guys, sorry to hear you're having trouble.

I thought we'd added GeekBeat last month but apparently it didn't get published properly. We're investigating that and should be able to have it appear soon.

For the custom feed, can you be more specific about which feed URL you're trying and what issues you see? It'd help if you could give me step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce the problem.

Best,
Stephen


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

TiVoStephen said:


> Hi guys, sorry to hear you're having trouble.
> 
> I thought we'd added GeekBeat last month but apparently it didn't get published properly. We're investigating that and should be able to have it appear soon.
> 
> ...


Thanks Stephen,
I had been successfully using an xml for "Stranger Things TV" (whose xml link address I can't immediately find ) to view videos of paranormal phenomena up until a week or so ago. Now when trying to play a video, I get an error "This video has an unknown or incompatible format and cannot be processed by TiVo.", even for past programs that had played before.

Failing that, I tried the example found on the TiVo website for the White House speeches: http://www.whitehouse.gov/rss/speeches.xml. This example gives the same Video Playback Error noted above on both my Premiere and Series3 (model 648) DVRs.

I'll look for the xml link for "Stranger Things TV" in the meantime for you to further test with.

Thanks again!

Edit: The xml links do correctly display current and past webisode descriptions, it's strictly the playback that has issue.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

I removed and recreated the custom RSS feed for Stranger Things TV by using this url: http://feeds.feedburner.com/st-episodes


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## DBLClick (Aug 20, 2007)

TIVO Stephen. I attempted to add the BHPhotoVideo.com event space to custom RSS feed and was unable to get it. You have the Standard BHPHOTO RSS feed but not the Event Space. Is their a way to get this added to the TIVO list?


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

DBLClick, what URL please?


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

TiVoStephen said:


> Hi guys, sorry to hear you're having trouble.
> 
> I thought we'd added GeekBeat last month but apparently it didn't get published properly. We're investigating that and should be able to have it appear soon.
> 
> ...


Stephen,

In addtion to the White House link mentioned above, I first spotted the problem when trying the watch GeekBeat since it hasn't been added to the "regular" list yet.

http://revision3.com/geekbeattv/2010-07-20 would be a likely link. I navigate to Custom RSS feed and begin to enter the link. Once I've entered through "revision3", many choices of revision3 shows pop up. Selecting any of those choices will result in the 0:00 length message and incompatible format message for me.

It will list all available episodes, but each one will have 0:00 for length and have the compatibility error. As a point of reference, I was able to watch the first 3 episode of GeekBeat during her launch week using the Custom RSS feed method, the next week it just stopped working. Attempting to play those first 3 episodes again will result in the error now.

Thanks for checking in an taking the time to research this issue. Let me know if I can provide any more detail to help track this down.

Steve


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

Thanks for the details and sorry for the problem.

Our service engineering team has investigated the problem and put in a fix, so this should now be working. Can you give it another try?

Best,
Stephen


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

TiVoStephen said:


> Thanks for the details and sorry for the problem.
> 
> Our service engineering team has investigated the problem and put in a fix, so this should now be working. Can you give it another try?
> 
> ...


Your engineering team weren't lying. Success! Both test feeds I worked with (Stranger Things and White House) now again playback without error. Thanks TiVoStephen!


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

TiVoStephen said:


> Thanks for the details and sorry for the problem.
> 
> Our service engineering team has investigated the problem and put in a fix, so this should now be working. Can you give it another try?
> 
> ...


Stephen,

Something weird is still going on, but the good news is the videos are once again playing! The length indicator on the main screen of each episode is still reporting 0:00 which may give the impression the episode is doinked.

I tested several of the revision3 GeekBeat episodes and Whitehouse.gov and my observations are consistent with both programs.

Thanks for the quick fix!

(The Custom RSS feed app is very handy --- soon to be much more useful once my Series3 can use a real keyboard for input!)

Steve


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

hizhonor said:


> Thanks for the quick fix!
> 
> (The Custom RSS feed app is very handy --- soon to be much more useful once my Series3 can use a real keyboard for input!)
> 
> Steve


I agree wholeheartedly with both statements! :up:


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## DBLClick (Aug 20, 2007)

TiVoStephen said:


> DBLClick, what URL please?


Thanks for your help: the URL Is:
http://bhphoto.xml.feedroom.com/pod...b34b00&hvar=http://www.video.bhphotovideo.com


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

TiVoStephen said:


> I thought we'd added GeekBeat last month but apparently it didn't get published properly. We're investigating that and should be able to have it appear soon.
> 
> Best,
> Stephen


What ever came of your investigation, Stephen? While the now fixed Custom RSS Feed solution does get me my Cali "fix", it would be great having "GeekBeat" show up in the NPL.

Steve


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## weatherson (Dec 16, 2009)

I had a similar issue with some of the Cnet feeds and it took a reboot of the Tivo to get them working again without the compatibility error. Been fine ever since on my S3HD. I would also appreciate getting GeekBeat.tv published in the list as using a custom RSS allows me to watch from the feed interface but will not auto-download the episodes. Thanks.


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## weatherson (Dec 16, 2009)

By the way, GeekBrief is still listed but obviously, there will be no new episodes going forward.


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

hizhonor said:


> What ever came of your investigation, Stephen? While the now fixed Custom RSS Feed solution does get me my Cali "fix", it would be great having "GeekBeat" show up in the NPL.
> 
> Steve


Sorry for delays -- we're still working on this one.

Best,
Stephen


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

TiVoStephen said:


> Sorry for delays -- we're still working on this one.
> 
> Best,
> Stephen


Thanks for the update and sticking with it!

The Custom RSS feed mechanism is such handy feature. Has any consideration been given to moving it's selection from the bottom of the multi-paged topic list to the top for better visibility? I suspect many users aren't even aware that's it's available.

Steve


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## Chew (Jan 22, 2003)

hizhonor said:


> Thanks for the update and sticking with it!
> 
> The Custom RSS feed mechanism is such handy feature. Has any consideration been given to moving it's selection from the bottom of the multi-paged topic list to the top for better visibility? I suspect many users aren't even aware that's it's available.
> 
> Steve


I agree, would love to have Custom RSS at the top to make it easier to access.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

Chew said:


> I agree, would love to have Custom RSS at the top to make it easier to access.


I use the ->| button to get to the bottom.


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

orangeboy said:


> I use the ->| button to get to the bottom.


Yup ... That'll work. My comment was more of a marketing bent rather than functionality, however. How many users aren't even aware this can be done because the option is burried at the bottom of the pile? Move it to the top and let's see how popular this can be!

Steve


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## hizhonor (Feb 4, 2002)

TiVoStephen said:


> Sorry for delays -- we're still working on this one.
> 
> Best,
> Stephen


Looks like GeekBeat was added to the VOD list as of Monday. Thanks Stephen!

Steve


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

weatherson said:


> I had a similar issue with some of the Cnet feeds and it took a reboot of the Tivo to get them working again without the compatibility error.


I didn't have to reboot, but the CNET HD feed (which is basically all of their other feeds put together AFAIK) didn't update between last Friday and Wednesday. Going to CNET itself, I saw a few newer videos..

I thought the Tivo just did what iTunes does -- look at a podcast feed.

(It's a pain that the tivo only keeps 10 episodes.. so I have to go manually download episodes most of the time..)


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

TiVoStephen said:


> Thanks for the details and sorry for the problem.
> 
> Our service engineering team has investigated the problem and put in a fix, so this should now be working. Can you give it another try?
> 
> ...


Any chance of adding support for alternate ports for the RSS feeds? I'd like to use my own feeds, but using something other than port 80.


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## T.DurdensOthr1/2 (Jul 31, 2010)

Why do my messages not get posted? This is the third time I've tried to post. WTF.


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## T.DurdensOthr1/2 (Jul 31, 2010)

What's it gonna take to get Hulu RSS Feeds to work with my TiVo? Who do I need to talk to to make that happen?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

T.DurdensOthr1/2 said:


> What's it gonna take to get Hulu RSS Feeds to work with my TiVo? Who do I need to talk to to make that happen?


You need to talk to Hulu.


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## T.DurdensOthr1/2 (Jul 31, 2010)

Thanks! On a side note.. I was just checking out this TiVo Galleon software and am REALLY impressed. I might be able to get my videos streaming for free after all! 
1) Play MP3 files using the built in player or with your favorite Winamp skins.
2) View your photo collection using many slideshow effects and background music. 
3) View interesting information about each MP3 file such as album covers, lyrics and web images of your favorite artists. 
4) Listen to online streaming radio stations including Shoutcast stations. 
5) Organize your media files in many flexible ways. 
6) Play your favorite playlists including iTunes playlists or dynamically create playlists. 
7) View local weather forecasts and alerts. 
8) View internet webcams. 
9) Read your email. 
10) Read your favorite RSS feeds. 
11) Automatically download recordings from your TiVo using keywords. 
12) Automatically download your favorite podcasts. 
13) View local movie listings. 
14) Copy video files from your PC to your TiVo using GoBack. 
15) View Internet Slideshows. 
16) View online Videocasts. 
17) View upcoming events in your area. 
18) View traffic conditions in your area. 
19) Change the look-and-feel of Galleon by using your own skins. 
20) Share your apps over the internet with your family and friends. 
21)Group all the Galleon apps in their own menu . 
22) Send instant messages with Jabber 

*rushes home to check out all the cool stuff*


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## T.DurdensOthr1/2 (Jul 31, 2010)

I can't seem to get any of the RSS Feeds that had video to work anymore. I spoke to the website owner and he says he hasn't changed a thing. Any ideas about what might be going on?


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## bsdbytes (Sep 8, 2010)

Is there a way to have a custom RSS feed automatically fetch new episodes without having to manually download them?


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

bsdbytes said:


> Is there a way to have a custom RSS feed automatically fetch new episodes without having to manually download them?


No.


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## tuscadero (Jun 12, 2010)

Why not and how difficult it it to intergrate into the TIVO OS?



orangeboy said:


> No.


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## orangeboy (Apr 19, 2004)

tuscadero said:


> Why not and how difficult it it to intergrate into the TIVO OS?


Sorry, but I don't have those answers. I'm as much outside the walls of TiVo engineering as you are.


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## bsdbytes (Sep 8, 2010)

RSS readers are fairly basic. I cannot imagine this would be difficult to implement.


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## djl25 (May 26, 2005)

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but: are custom rss feeds completely dead? I recently spent some time inputting a few that I knew were valid and they all came back with the 'no feed at that address' error. Anyone know for sure?


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## bsdbytes (Sep 8, 2010)

I've given up on the RSS feeds. I'm using an Apple TV for podcasts and Netflix and use the TiVo for everything else.


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## TiVoStephen (Jun 27, 2000)

Post some of the feeds here and we can double-check them. Most of the time, the ones that are invalid are in either incompatible formats or have malformed XML.


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## djl25 (May 26, 2005)

Thanks for checking in, Stephen. I did get it to work; the problem was that the feed scrapes a web page and it was taking too long, so the TiVo would just time out. I noticed a couple of things I thought I'd pass along:
1) Alternate ports aren't a problem, this feed isn't on 80 and it works fine
2) The feed has to be accessible from the internet, so if it's on a home computer you have to use a dynamic DNS and point the TiVo at that (a 198.168.*.* address won't work)
3) I couldn't get the optional fields to work (I have an HD). Am I right in assuming that those fields only get used if the feed is indexed?



TiVoStephen said:


> Post some of the feeds here and we can double-check them. Most of the time, the ones that are invalid are in either incompatible formats or have malformed XML.


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## tagous (Dec 4, 2011)

I am trying to get the TEDTalks RSS feed on my Suddenlink Tivo. When I try ted.com/talks/rss it shows up in the tivo menu but gives a "video playback error" when I chose the "watch now" or "download" option. Any ideas ?


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## evangineer (Apr 22, 2007)

Per *<tivo.com>*abouttivo/resourcecenter/developerpublisherdetails/index.html...

TiVo is expecting the <guid> to be the URL for the video. I believe this is an incorrect interpretation of the specification. 
The guid is the unique id for an <item> so that feed readers can compare if they have seen this <item> before. 
It is not strictly a URL. While many feeds use a URL, it is not required to be.

For example, Ted talks uses:


```
<guid isPermaLink="false">eng.video.talk.ted.com:1496</guid>
```
which is why an error occurs when TiVo attempts to download the video from this "URL".

The specification states that the <enclosure> tag maintains the URL, size, and media type of the download.

Which Ted talks encodes as:


```
<enclosure type="video/mp4" url="[B]<download.ted.com>[/B]/talks/MarcGoodman_2012G.mp4" length="66060233" />
```
The RSS 2.0 specification has been interpreted in many ways. Practice on the web reveals common 
interpretation of the specification.


 points to a web pages that contains *or is *the content.
<guid> can be anything. It is a string that is compared with case-sensitivity to identify one <item> 
from another. If the <guid> tag is not present feed readers use the <enclosure> 
url as the identifier for the <item>.
<enclosure> points to the content and describes its size and type.

I have created an RSS feed proxy in my home that performs an XSLT transform on the 
incoming RSS feeds to create or overwrite a <guid> tag with the enclosure tag's url. Pointing my TiVo to my proxy 
makes everything work. 

The URL I provide to TiVo that points to my proxy and passes the URL of the interesting feed looks like:


```
http:/ /192.168.1.2/tivorss?feeds.feedburner.com/TEDTalks_video
      ^ without this space
```
The proxy prepends http prefix.​I would like to see TiVo use the <enclosure> tag's URL to download the content. I think many the majority of 
RSS feeds would work if this was implemented.

Note: I don't have sufficient permissions in the community to post URLs. Please interpret emboldened, 
bracketed domain names (e.g. <tivo.com>) as http:/ / prefixed domain names without the brackets.


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## Bill Roberts (Aug 6, 2012)

I've never created or used a proxy. Can you furnish any details on how to do that? 

My tivo is connected wirelessly to a Trendnet TEW-652BRP router running the 2.00.36 firmware. I also have the Tivo Desktop running on a Windows 7 64bit PC. I assume the proxy is a setting on the router. I also have 2 linux (Ubuntu) PCs on the network.


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## evangineer (Apr 22, 2007)

Bill Roberts said:


> I've never created or used a proxy. Can you furnish any details on how to do that?


A proxy is a service that I have running on a PC on my network. It is a program I wrote that transforms RSS feeds to perform heroic measures to make incoming RSS feeds compatible with TiVo's interpretation of the RSS specification. I am currently looking into putting it in the cloud and making it available to all, but have not setttled on a hosting environment for it.


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## wmcbrine (Aug 2, 2003)

Oh, I missed this the first time...



evangineer said:


> TiVo is expecting the <guid> to be the URL for the video.


Geez. It takes a really special developer to screw up RSS. :down:


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