[joe-frank-list] playing joefrank.com streams in linux

[shiro at uclink4.berkeley.edu]

Good news for those of us without windows or mac computers - it is possible to play the subscription streams from joefrank.com in linux.  It isn't quite point-and-click, but it's reasonably straightforward.

To do it, you need the win_32 codec package for mplayer, available at 
	http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/
Unpack them and place them somewhere. /usr/local/lib/codecs is the default.

Also get a recent copy of mplayer and or xine. I haven't tried it in xine myself, but their web site claims it will work if you add a line like "codec.win32_path:/usr/local/lib/codecs" to ~/.xine/config.  Note that if you're building mplayer from source, you need to install the win_32 codecs before running the configure script, or else it will ignore them.  The mplayer site is here: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

Then subscribe to joefrank.com and select a show.  (You'll probably get errors about missing plugins.)  Take a look at the html source, and get the url for the wma file.  Give the url, protected by quotes, to mplayer.

Versions tested:
MPlayer 1.0pre5-3.3.4
win32codecs-20040703
Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1

I've tried both the free sample streams and the paid subscription streams, and everything works.  Pausing works fine, but scrolling in either direction causes the player to hang.  I think some of the codecs are archetecture dependant, so it may only work on x86 systems.

Enjoy!

- Erik