Media Player Project

I've got a project I've got in beta right now that I might eventually release. Here's the lowdown.

Concept: Broadcast network emulation.

What does this mean? Basically, a random distribution of tv series you have ripped from dvd to your htpc. Before you say you can just shuffle a playlist, read on. If you shuffle a playlist, you do get a random distribution of shows, this is true, but the chronological order of those shows is not preserved. (i.e. you get Season 5 Episode 2 of show X and then a few positions down the playlist you're suddenly watching Season 1). For some shows this doesn't matter, especially if there's no overarching story lines, but for others it can lead to a very disjointed viewing experience.

The ideal solution for me here is to have a player that:

1. Chooses a random television series
2. Finds the lowest unwatched episode for that series
3. Plays the episode
4. Marks the episode as watched in a persistent store once finished

I also want this to be light weight, so I've decided to forgo writing something like this for XBMC.

Instead I've wrapped this around VLC, more specifically, VLC's http interface. (I may switch to using VLC's python bindings for an internal controller later for a more all-in-one experience -- it depends on the momentum for the project.)

The project as it stands will do the steps outlined above and a little more. It makes web calls to an open VLC player (with the http interface enabled) in the background and will constantly play new episodes while the player is active and record each episode's status as it goes.

It's very basic right now, you can add shows, remove them, and play. You can't 'unwatch' shows, etc yet. But I plan to build this out. I may even add media scrapers and turn this into a slick interface for VLC in general. Time will tell. I'm not sure if anyone else has this same desire, I could be alone. And if so, I'll happily keep this to myself. :)