Hacking Windows 7 Media Center

Add NASA TV Feeds to Media Center

by Michael Healy @ 6:15 am on February 17th, 2009 in plugins, streaming tv with 8 Comments

Care of Beullpilot on The Green Button forums comes this tip on getting NASA’s streaming TV feeds directly into your Media Center setup. The method is also surprisingly easy, simply download this zip file and add the contents to your video folder. You should now see the four NASA feeds from your Videos section in Media Center. Simple, effective and super geeky. What more do you want?

NASA TV Stream in Media Center

The quality obviously isn’t superb as it is an internet stream but the “neat” appeal for this little bit of work is definitely up there. This trick can be duplicated by downloading any ASX files from sites that stream Windows Media files.

Know of any other websites streaming in ASX? Let us all know in the comments section below!

8 Comments


Jon Deutsch
Comment #117 from Jon Deutsch [Reply]

Hmmm… nothing is showing up for me. What am I doing wrong?

Comment left February 27, 2009 at 1:57 pm Permanent Link

MHealy
Comment #118 from MHealy [Reply]

Make sure that you have placed the files in one of the folders in your video library. You can check which folders these are under Tasks > Manage Libraries. These won't appear under the movie libraries, only videos. They should appear under the same name as the file.

Comment left February 27, 2009 at 4:07 pm Permanent Link

Jon Deutsch
Comment #119 from Jon Deutsch [Reply]

Thanks MHealy. So, I created a new folder under my photos and videos directory called NASA Stations, and tried to add that dir directly to my library… but it would not show up under Videos or Photos! Yet, they did show up under playlists in My Music!

So, I eventually moved that directory to one that was already indexed by videos, and then it showed up. Weird, eh?

Comment left February 28, 2009 at 12:44 pm Permanent Link

hdjunkie
Comment #120 from hdjunkie [Reply]

Hmm, I never thought to use these shortcuts this way. There are thousands and thousands of feeds this will work with…including internet radio.
I used to use these links for some of my local radio stations. I’m going to go find the urls now.

Comment left March 3, 2009 at 5:47 am Permanent Link

hdjunkie
Comment #121 from hdjunkie [Reply]

Took me a while to remember how I did it…use a packet sniffer such as winpcap and open the wmp url you want to save.
Look for a “.asf” file. My local station “Rock 102 had an url of “http://72.26.207.26/3156-WMA-WAQY-FM-32?MSWMExt=.asf”

Now, open notepad and paste this into it…(replace brackets with carrots)

[ASX version="3"]
[Entry]
[ref href="your-url-here.asf" /]
[/Entry]
[/ASX]

Replace the url you found in the reference url entry, and save the file as “yourfilenamehere”.asx

Open file to listen to your feed. Most feeds retain the same url indefinitely, but some randomize every time you open, so this method won’t work in those cases.

Comment left March 3, 2009 at 6:42 am Permanent Link

MHealy
Comment #122 from MHealy [Reply]

Thanks for the tip! I’ll have to check out my local radio stations as well to see if they have similar streams up. I haden’t even though of using this for radio before.

Comment left March 3, 2009 at 8:55 am Permanent Link

Ken
Comment #123 from Ken [Reply]

also works for mms streams.
Play the mms in WMP and save as .asx . Put it into your video folder. Now it will show up in Media Center.

Comment left March 3, 2009 at 9:29 pm Permanent Link

kinshin
Comment #11550 from kinshin [Reply]

guys,
thanks for tip. The more easy way is open any file in this zip, and paste your link and save it. or you can even drag and drop the file into notepad and edit. :)

Comment left May 25, 2010 at 9:29 pm Permanent Link

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