media buddy – a remote potato client (for media center)
Media buddy for windows phone 7 is an application which connects to your home media center pc (running windows 7) and let you access all of your TV information. It includes browsing and playing your recorded TV, looking at your recording schedule & add/update it, looking at channels and program guide, find a show and schedule a new recording.
Features –
- Streaming support for Music, pictures, videos and recorded TV.
- Browse your recorded TV by titles and date and delete or play a recording.
- Browse your scheduled recordings and series and update them.
- View channels and upcoming shows with recording information
- Color coded program guide with dynamic recording information.
- Streaming of video to your phone in different quality formats to support various data speeds.
- Client side support for favorite channels (aggregate with favorites defined in Remote Potato server as well).
- Searching of program and scheduling.
- Control your media center pc using your phone as a remote (with Media Buddy remote)
Note – Now available as free with limited functionality and ad supports. Paid version has full functionality with no ads.
Note – Media buddy requires remote potato (http://ww2.fatattitude.com/software/software-about-remotepotato.aspx) to be installed on your media center pc and configured to allow access. Please review remote potato terms and condition before purchasing this application.
A good setup guide for remote potato – http://deanhatescoffee.com/posts/remote-control-windows-media-center-with-remote-potato
Screenshots –
ashterisk(*) 
Media Buddy looks slick and has way more potential than Smart Potato
*however*
The Guide and the Search functions are not working for me at all.
Recordings, Scheduled & Streaming all work great.
Put in a search term and I get about 3 seconds of the travelling dots & then nothing.
The guide is completely empty.
Running paid version with latest Remote Potato.
Any ideas?
February 9, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Just to confirm, this was *not* a fault with this app, it simply needed a refresh of channels on the main Remote Potato server.
Dev support was first class.
February 12, 2011 at 2:56 am
The Recorded TV streaming is AWESOME. Please allow streaming of “Video” collection as well. This is my most needed feature for future release.
I am only trying this app for the second day now but I am thankful for it already. I will be purchasing it.
February 17, 2011 at 9:26 am
I can’t connect using Media Buddy. Says Authentication failed. I can connect using the browser though and login that way. Any ideas?
February 25, 2011 at 7:20 pm
hmm. strange. does your server uses password? are you using with in local network.
can you try hitting from phone browser to your server remote potato address so if that works? thanks
February 26, 2011 at 8:25 pm
Sorry – that is what I meant – the phone browser works fine using the data connection going to http://mydomain.dyndns.whatever and it asks me for a user id and password which I enter and it lets me in to see what I am supposed to. Is there a certain format I need for server name in the connection setting for media buddy? should I use “http://mydomain.dyndns.whatever” or just “mydomain.dyndns.whatever” or something else – I tried those two formats and same result both times = authentication failed.
February 28, 2011 at 6:20 pm
you don’t need to specify http:// just the servername or ip address. can you try with Ip if you haven’t tried.
Also, if you are using port 80 (which is what default if you haven’t specified in the browser) then make sure to change that when adding connection from media buddy. Default on phone is 9080 which is default for remote potato.
hope this helps.
March 1, 2011 at 5:50 pm
Authentication is good, but the it’s followed by “Settings Download Failed.” What to check?
March 25, 2011 at 12:36 am
Make sure that the remote potato server is configured properly. You can also verify that you access the remote potato UI from web browser to make sure everything is working before trying from the application.
March 25, 2011 at 10:25 am
I’m having the same problem you did. How did you get it fixed? No matter what I choose in the settings it still says it failed.
March 29, 2012 at 1:55 pm
I live in the Uk and it works great – however it won’t stream H.264 (hd) TV – it sits at 0% in buffering. All my other recorded TV works fine… just not the HD channels. Is this possible?
Thanks for the app – I can now watch my TV while on vacation!!
March 28, 2011 at 2:24 pm
Everything works so far except for initiating a recording from the guide or show information page. Get the “sorry, an error has occurred” error.
Ive tested from both inside and outside the firewall and get the same error. Is there a specific version of RP that this was tested against? Able to do this through the regular based IE Silverlight front end.
T.J.
March 31, 2011 at 8:53 am
I believe I tested with the stable build – http://www.remotepotato.com/software/software-download-do.aspx?id=36
March 31, 2011 at 9:41 am
I’ll keep trying to figure it out. The exact error is “An Unknown error has occurred, Sorry we wish we could be more helpful there.”
What ports needed to be opened on the firewall in the build you tested against? Im opening 9080-9083
There doesn’t seem to be anything else I can do to troubleshoot. Have any ideas?
March 31, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Installed and setup but it it did take me a couple of attempts to put in the IP address. I use a dyndns (xxxxx.homeserver.com) and tried http://www. www. etc etc before I realised you just need to put in xxxxx.homeserver.com
I think a setup guide would be usefull to cover these few bits.
April 11, 2011 at 2:44 pm
thanks for the feedback. I will working on some updates and will try to capture these setup instruction with the next release.
April 11, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Hello,
I was wondering if your still actively developing media buddy. I’ve been on the fence for a while and its my only concern since I have not seen an update.
Thanks
April 13, 2011 at 1:55 pm
Hello, I will be releasing an update in a month or so with some features I had planned for. I didn’t get some time in last couple of months so that’s why there wasn’t much update.
Is there some specific feature you were looking for which is missing from current release?
April 13, 2011 at 2:07 pm
I purchase your app the other day after using the trial for a while. I really like your app, it works very well but I’m having a small problem. All channels I add to favorites tend to vanish from the favorite menu after doing a refresh.
Also is there a way you could implement viewing the guide in landscape view?
Thanks for this great app.
April 16, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Hi,
Thanks for your comment. Good timing. I was working on update the app to include more features and bug fixing. I will look into these issues.
If you like the app, please leave a positive feedback on marketplace.
thanks,
April 16, 2011 at 5:07 pm
Great program. I am having one problem though. I record TV shows using Media Center. Some stream just fine. Others say Playback Failed. The ones the stream always stream. The ones that fail always fail. Do you have any clue why certain shows will not stream?
April 17, 2011 at 9:31 am
Remote Potato doesn’t stream content which is copyright protected. So it might be related to that.
April 17, 2011 at 10:17 am
Unfortunately almost everyting Media Center records is protected.
April 17, 2011 at 10:25 am
Hi, thank you for this great app. I’m trying the trial version. I’ve just a problem. When trying to stream a recorded show I always get an “ErrorInStreamRequest” error. The same show stream well with “Smart Potato”. Any idea?
April 18, 2011 at 3:53 pm
When did you download the version? I remember there was a bug in the first release (which I update with-in a week) where in non english languages, it used to fail with above error. If you are using a trial version, the update doesn’t work so you would have to uninstall and install to get the latest version.
If you are running latest version, the other thing to check is which version of RemotePotato are you using? I haven’t tested it with tech preview yet.
Lastely, see if you can try the above selecting English as your language to see if that works.
thanks
April 18, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Thank you ashterisk for your answer, I’ve downloaded again the app to get the last version. I use remote potato in version 0.98.10. I Can confirm you that media buddy and remote potato are in English. Getting the same error… I don’t know why. It’s very frustrating because it work with smart potato but I prefer media buddy’s UI.
April 19, 2011 at 4:20 pm
Hi ashterisk,
I got the newest update today and it fixed the bug where favorites disappear after doing a refresh and also thanks for adding the landscape view, looks great. Great job!
April 21, 2011 at 9:54 am
I forgot to add a feature request. Not sure how hard this would be but it would be killer feature if this gets implemented within the app. Right now I use an app named “Wake-On-Lan” that I use to wake my HTPC when its asleep. Is there away you could make that happen with in Media Buddy? Just an idea…thanks
April 21, 2011 at 4:37 pm
Hi Ashterisks,
thanks for the great app.
Unfortunately, I have the same problem like Ropiav. I get a streaming error right after clicking play. everything else works fine. I can access the recorded shows via browser using remote potato directly.
“ErrorInStreamRequest”
afer about 20 seconds, it says “Playback failed.”
I re-installed the app, and also changed the language to english (US).
Just tell me want you need to fix this! I’m a silverlight programmer too.
May 5, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Hi, i managed to watch a recorded show. cool stuff! But: i figured out that the show´s name seem to be a problem: any non alphanumeric character like & or ‘ seem to be a “showstopper”. example: “Grey’s Anatomy”
or “Wallace & Gromit”
This may be an API problem, but the RP silverlight client seems to understand the requests. My Media Server PC runs in german. Windows 7. Maybe this causes the problem ?
May 5, 2011 at 1:49 pm
it´s me again..
with the new version:
“Wallace & Gromit” works fine now! Thanks for that.
“Grey’s Anatomy” still doesn’t work! Maybe the “‘” is still causing the problem ?
Cheers,Michael
May 30, 2011 at 12:27 pm
ok, it’s me again.
I was checking the http requests made by the RP Silverlight client with Fiddler2.
I think you need to HTML encode the show file names. Like “Wallace & Gromit…wtv” would turn into “Wallace & Gromit…wtv”
this is needed in the WTVStreamingVideoRequest call.
I hope this helps,
Thanks a lot for your efforts, Michael
May 5, 2011 at 2:33 pm
you get the point, wordpress changed my html encoded example into proper HTML again…
May 5, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Thanks a lot for being so detailed and doing the trouble shooting. I will fix it in the next update (should be soon).
Let me know if you see any other problem.
May 5, 2011 at 2:54 pm
Does Media Buddy fully support Remote Potatoe 1.0 not that is has been released?
Thanks!
May 20, 2011 at 9:03 am
Will support in few days :). I am working on it. All the current functionality should work but not video streaming support which I am adding soon.
May 20, 2011 at 9:46 am
Hello,
Would it be possible when viewing the guide if the channel row stay static when strolling through the guide, just like the media center guide? Not sure if that possible or not.
Thanks
May 21, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Yes, will try to give an option in upcoming updates. I personally like to use that space for viewing guide data.
May 22, 2011 at 12:40 am
Great App! One observation, I’ve noticed extremely high battery usage while the app is running under the lock screen. If I am anywhere in the app and hit the lock button, after an hour or so the battery will become quite hot and I’ll have lost over %75 of my charge. It’d be great if you could identify a fix an incorporate it into your v2 release. Looking forward to it.
Also, I bet you could create a ‘watch live TV’ feature by foramlizing this workaround http://remotepotatoforums.fatattitude.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=90. I just confirmed this works on Media Buddy 1.5
May 22, 2011 at 12:24 am
hmm. I am wondering if I should give an option for users to disable run under lock.
May 22, 2011 at 12:40 am
The app runs under lock which is needed for music streaming playback. For the time being, exit the app before locking (or press start button and then lock). I will think about what else can be done but I am sure I will update the behavior for mango release (WP next release) and some cool features.
May 22, 2011 at 9:28 am
Thanks for the reply. I’d suggest considering making running under lock a configurable option with the default set to true. That way music streaming is supported by default, but for those of us that are experiencing issues we can disable it. Also, even though running under lock seems like a reasonable behavior it still seems to be consuming a lot of power. Perhaps that is just the cost of streaming data while under lock, not sure. However, I don’t see the same power usage pattern while streaming music under lock remotely via my Zune pass. Maybe you can look into optimizing what code is running while under lock. Hope that helps. Thanks.
May 22, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Hi ashterisk,
I’m sorry but I didn’t manage to stream a show. Same error. Even with the update and even with changing my WP7 language.
Any advise?
Thank you.
May 22, 2011 at 4:15 am
Please wait few days for v2.0. I have made some changes which should fix one issue with shows having characters which need to be XML safe.
May 22, 2011 at 9:31 am
No problem.
I’m excited to try this new release.
Thank you for keeping your great app up to date.
May 22, 2011 at 5:12 pm
This is awesome! Thank you! I stream all of my music from here! The only thing is, i have to go through all of the albums. Any way you are planning on adding the Artist or Song search functions?
May 26, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Yes, it will come soon.
May 26, 2011 at 6:07 pm
Hi Ashterisk,
I think I’ve no luck with your app.
V2 Downloaded and same error.
Don’t know why. Everything else is working.
Thank you for your effort in trying to solve this problem.
I’ll stay with smart potato who’s working great with the stream of shows.
May be in the futur it will work with my WP7. I’ll keep an eye.
Best regards,
May 28, 2011 at 3:56 pm
Sorry to hear it didn’t fix your issue. Can you send me some specific details of the problem again so that I can investigate?
Thanks.
May 29, 2011 at 12:29 pm
When trying to stream a recorded show I always get an “ErrorInStreamRequest” error.
Maybe the names of my shows?
But I Can confirm you that it’s working with the app smart potato.
May 30, 2011 at 3:48 pm
How do I use the ‘remote control your media center’ option?
Do I need to install ‘media buddy remote’ software on the media center pc? if so where can I get this from?
Thanks
May 30, 2011 at 11:03 am
In order to use remote control, you just need to enable IRa helper in remote potato service configuration.
There is no separate installation (comes part of remote potato).
Btw, in my experience, after enabling IR helper I needed to reboot the computer before I could see my actions going to media center
Hope this helps.
May 30, 2011 at 11:55 am
I love the app, but i can’t get picture viewing to work. I can navigate through the folders just fine i can see the thumbnails of the pic within a folder, but when i select a pic to view in full screen i get nothing.
The other request i have is if you can implement some way of navigating to specific days in the TV guide? For example, if i know a show that i want to record that airs in three days, there isn’t an easy way to navigate there to record the show.
Thanks again for the great app!
May 31, 2011 at 11:38 am
For pictures, give it a little time as if you have lot of pictures in that selected folder, it downloads the thumbnail first which takes a while (in my radar to make it better). After that, you should see the pictures.
Thanks for suggesting the feature in guide to look for events couple of days far. I will try to incorporate that in next update.
May 31, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Hello ashterisk,
I just started playing with media buddy and remote potato but I noticed really quickly that remote potato has a bug in the classic streaming mode where when you stop a stream it doesnt delete the temporary wmv file. So my question is, do you have plans to use the new HTTP Live Streaming (seekable) methods of remote potato.
The new streaming technology is much better than what remote potato offered before and does not have the same bug as the classic streaming.
Also if you do plan on using the new streaming technology I would be in heaven if you could also support the multiple audio streams like the silverlight web page of remote potato does. For example I have an mp4 that has both an English and Spanish audio track, the silverlight web page allows me to pick which audio stream i want.
Thank you so much for the work you are doing on media buddy. I am a software developer myself and understand how much time and effort you are putting into this project.
Thanks
June 1, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Hello, thanks for your nice words. I looked into supporting mew streaming but it’s wasn’t straightforward. I will probably support it in mango time frame when it support Silverlight 4.
Thanks.
June 1, 2011 at 9:24 pm
I get an “operation failed” message when I click on videos or pictures, and “music information download failed”when I select music. No folders or media is showing in any of these. It seemed to work 2 days ago when I was streaming video to phone, now nothing. Any ideas what the problem could be?
June 3, 2011 at 5:38 am
Have you looked at the server to see if that’s running properly? You can try to connect using browser to see if that works. My guess is that media buddy is not able to reach server but not handling the error message correctly. Hope this helps.
June 3, 2011 at 7:40 am
The new version of Media Buddy required Remote Potato V1.0. Can you please make sure that your server version is the latest?
June 6, 2011 at 2:02 pm
Is the client working with v1 of remote potato, I can access it through the website and another client, this one stays with connection failed…
June 6, 2011 at 8:35 am
yes, its tested with V1.0 and infact requires it. what issue are you having?
When adding new connection, please make sure to enter the server address with out http:// prefix.
June 6, 2011 at 2:01 pm
I am getting an error while trying to stream media from my media library. I can stream the media fine to my PC over the web and I can stream recorded TV fine using the app. Do you have any suggestions? Does Remote Potato do transcoding to a file format the the phone will support?
June 6, 2011 at 12:07 pm
This is some issue with streaming media library when using MMS streaming protocol which is what is supported on windows phone. Because of this, at time, you would get error. I have a post on this – http://remotepotatoforums.fatattitude.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=769&sid=611762c47e112a26e344cb38d7dad0af
June 6, 2011 at 2:01 pm
Not sure what’s happening here. I verified that I can stream shows to a laptop via the web through RP. Next, I verified that Media Buddy is able to see the RP server and download guide and recording info. Then, I try to stream a show and I get a message that states “Streaming started”, then about 30 seconds of blank screen then “Streaming failed”. Any ideas?
June 7, 2011 at 4:59 pm
The streaming on windows phone (i.e Media Buddy) is limited to old MMS streaming and known to have issues when streaming video files (not recorded tv). When streaming thru web, are you using MMS streaming?
June 7, 2011 at 6:03 pm
Hi, thanx for making a great application.
I sent you a couple of beer, cheers mate! 😉
I have one problem though, and it started last week.
When I try to refresh recorded tv, it sais “fetching of recorded tv failed”.
I tried the other win phone 7 app for remote potato, and there it wotks ok, but its not as good looking as your app. Hope you can help me with my problem. Ive dl’ latest version both on phone and pc.
Thanx!
June 10, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Can you please make sure that you are running Remote Potato v1.01 stable? The latest version requires v1.0 of remote potato server.
Please let me know if that works. thanks.
June 10, 2011 at 4:53 pm
Just noticed you mention you are running the latest on PC. hmm.. not sure then. if it was working before, I should work. If nothing works, you can send me your connection information to ashterisk@live.com and I will try to connect and troubleshoot.
June 10, 2011 at 4:54 pm
Hey, my media buddy just stopped being able to stream and I always get ‘Fetching of recorded TV failed’. 😦 I’m running Remote Potato v1.01 stable and I can confirm that it works just fine via web browser. EVenthing just stopped working last week, after working great for about 3 weeks. In media buddy, I even deleted the connection and re-added it and it still has the old cached info. I think there might be some rogue caching going on or something… I’m addicted to Media Buddy now and not having my TV everywhere I go is killing me…
June 11, 2011 at 7:28 pm
Sorry to hear that. Can you please try uninstalling and re-installing to make sure that its not caching issue? I don’t think its caching but that way we can eliminate that possibility.
Also, if you could share your temp connection info, I can try to connect and see what’s happening. You can email me the info @ ashterisk@live.com.
thanks
June 11, 2011 at 9:47 pm
Hey -the uninstall/reinstall did the trick. Guessing it was a cache issue. Perhaps a corrupted cache from closing the application during a refresh? Perhaps you can consider doing a force refresh that deletes all previous cached information. If that is too expsensive, perhaps offer the force refresh in the connections section. BTW, there is a typo in the menu option in the connections page. It says ‘Delect’ instead of ‘Select’. Thanks for the response, since it was definitely a client issue how can I assist you in debugging if this happens in the future?
June 11, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Glad to hear that its working now. This is the first time I have heard this issue. Please let me know if it happen again. I will probably add some check in the app to get more information in that case. Thanks for reporting the typo. I will fix it in next update.
June 16, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Thx I had the very same Media Buddy issue. The reinstall worked for me as well.
July 15, 2011 at 3:05 pm
Hi,
Great asoftware – many thanks.
I have 3 observations/requests:
1. I am getting the ‘Fetching of recorded TV failed’ type of message when trying to stream any media. A reinstall of your WP7 app fixes it for a while – then it comes back. I’m use the very latest RP software on the media center and all works well from a PC web browser.
2. I also notice the MediaBuddy seems to leave temporary wtv files behind in the folders which seems also to mess things up. This doesn’t happen if the videos are streamed from a web browser.
3. My extensive DVD collection is in WTV format. These do not show up in your app. I’ve spoken to Carlos and he says you just need to make a simple filter change. Could you please do that for the next version? I’ve included a link to the RP conversation below:
http://remotepotatoforums.fatattitude.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=783
June 18, 2011 at 4:15 am
Thanks for your feedback. I will update the filter in the next release. For temp file, I am not sure what needs to be done but that’s my top priority bug to fix.
I will also investigate issue with failing to retrieve recorded tv.
Thanks.
June 18, 2011 at 8:44 am
Using the media buddy free version and remote potato 1.0.3.0.
It seems to work and can even find all the recorded tv on my Windows Home Server however the picture is grainy and not very good. It doesnt seem like this happens to enyone else so it is likely my setup. The recordings are not HD and my tuner card is pretty old. Peoples faces look distorted etc.
Anything I should do to make the playback better quality?
June 23, 2011 at 6:53 pm
You can select a different quality profile from the app bar on the recorded video info page before selecting play.
June 23, 2011 at 8:53 pm
Es util otalbes paramy
July 3, 2011 at 11:15 am
the trial version doesnt display full pics or play songs? I can see thumbnails and song list but full image view is blank page and songs dont play. Want to confirm if this is a setup issue or difference between paid and unpaid.
July 10, 2011 at 10:57 am
I am getting the wrong aspect ratio on WP7. On Android, this is fixed with using the correct video player, how do I fix it on WP7?
July 22, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Some of the time, this app works great for me. However, the majority of the time when trying to stream my media content(primarily video), it finds all the videos, even shows the preview image and it shows the video length, but then I get the message ErrorExceptionOccured when trying to start playback. In addition, and I am not sure if it is related, sometimes when I try and browse my music, it will find the album list fine, but no album art is shown(normally it does show up) and then when I select an album, it says “Downloading music information” for a few seconds, but then nothing ever appears below? If iy helps, I am using a Samsung Focus.
July 25, 2011 at 10:41 pm
When ever I try to stream my Media Center Recorded TV shows to my windows 7 phone… I get a errorAC3codecnotfound…..any suggestions?
August 17, 2011 at 1:37 pm
You may need to install the streaming pack from – http://www.remotepotato.com/downloads.aspx on your media center machine
August 17, 2011 at 1:54 pm
Hmmm. Why? This is not required for Remote Media Center on Android…
September 3, 2011 at 5:16 pm
Codec pack needs to be installed on the server for streaming to silverligh
September 3, 2011 at 11:12 pm
I bought media buddy version 2.0 from market place tonight after trying out the free version yesterday. Scheduled recoding is working, but currently recording show is not added to recordings. Therefore I can’t watch anything that is currently being recorded. Would you please assist me cause I need to use this app with remote potato 1.06
August 22, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Just purchased this app from the app store (its awesome BTW so I posted a short review) and had two comments/questions:
1. Is it possible to get FastFwd/Rewind without requiring you to stop the stream? I thought RP just added a few more control ports to the server so that you can ask for FF/RW while streaming? If nothing else is it possible to have the FF button on the app perform the task of stop/set position/play to we dont have to do it manually?
2. right now the episode list for a series is sorted by recorded date – personally I’m not sure how useful sorting by recorded date in the series view is. To me it seems more meaningful to have it sorted by original air date. This would be useful (for me atleast) since I want to watch the series in order – I watch the oldest episode and work backwords to current.
August 23, 2011 at 11:21 pm
Arg. AC3 codec not found.
Will not stream recorded tv. It is not protected.
Works fine with “remote media center” on my android device, so I know remote potato is properly configured.
September 3, 2011 at 4:59 pm
weird – installed Remote Potato on my MC – Media Buddy 2.0 on WP7 – connects to server – but none of the buttons work??!! just the tv/media button are white – the rest are offwhite – does this mean anything?
September 9, 2011 at 12:26 am
so I uninstalled to attempt fix by reinstalling but not Zune will not reinstall my paid up app! Arrggh! surely I can reinstall?
September 9, 2011 at 3:15 am
well stuff a duck it finally installed NOT by Zune but thru phone!! Now let’s see if I can connect to MC. Cheers.
September 9, 2011 at 3:35 am
gordon bennett! reinstalled app does not connect – server or other error…
September 9, 2011 at 3:58 am
all good now – relax everyone and I apologise if I have not added value with prior posts
1. resolution was that in restarting server app password was wrong so idiotic
Now I will add value: If you need to diagnose use a browser on server go to http://yourserverIPaddress:9080 – this must work for Media Buddy to work.
September 9, 2011 at 4:39 am
I have the same problem as Eddie. Just purchased for WP7 and using Remote Potato 1.0.6 New recordings not showing up and deleted ones still in list on phone, I have to uninstall app and reinstall to update. Please help
September 11, 2011 at 8:13 am
Recording data is cached in the app and doesn’t refresh unless explicitly asked for. You can refresh it by clicking on refresh at recordings page..
September 11, 2011 at 8:46 am
I tried the obvious things but now pressing the refresh seems to work! One more thing though, I don’t seem to be able to cancel a recording but this seems to be a problem with Remote Potato
September 12, 2011 at 1:53 am
Hi – Media Buddy works for a day then fails with messages like “Fetching of recorded TV failed”, “Music information download failed”, on Pictures “Operation failed”
The app authenticates on load OK, it will show recording list, but play a recording and “Operation failed”. Pressing Refresh downloads schedule information successfully.
I can fix by uninstall/reinstall but getting tired with that. The Remote Potato on server is working fine.
Any ideas?? How do I refresh the cache?
September 13, 2011 at 2:40 am
I’ve had this as well and also had to uninstall/reinstall. Also have problem of guide not downloading- reinstalled and hey presto it works!
Is there a limit on how many times Marketplace lets you download the same app?
September 13, 2011 at 2:57 am
Another issue I’ve come across is that sometimes when I try to load the guide I get thrown out of the app. This can happen 2 or 3 times in row before it works.
I like this app and when it is working it is great but it should not need to have to keep being messed about with or reinstalled.
Any help/advice would be appreciated!
Thanks
September 13, 2011 at 4:43 am
+1 from me – agree with levers
this is a great app with plenty of potential (many thanks ashterisk) – we are happy to help and support it’s advance.
i think if there was a way to clear the app’s cache without reinstall that would be a help in diagnosing issue
September 13, 2011 at 3:08 pm
thanks guys for the feedback. I will definetly address this in the next update. Ideally i want to understand the root cause but atleast I will provide a way to clear the cache manually if it get into this state.If you can consistently get into this state, I would love to hear the steps.
thanks
September 13, 2011 at 4:32 pm
For all the people who got “Fetching of recorded TV failed” and then had to uninstall & reinstall, can you please try the following workaround next time if you hit this problem.
1. delete the connection to the server
2. re-add it and try
if the above works, this would be easier than uninstall and re-install.
September 13, 2011 at 9:13 pm
Hi Ashterisk, I did try this and it does not work
September 14, 2011 at 2:20 am
Good news is that the app after the last reinstall seems to be stable now – Ii am no longer getting errors previously reported and the app initialises properly every time.
September 17, 2011 at 4:59 am
Hi, I get the ‘Setting Download Failed’ bug stated previously (Authentication succeeds), but only when using app away from home while not connected to my home wireless. I have two connections setup for home and away. I’m using dyndns, and can connect to remote potato from a PC fine, using local IP and dyndns address so I don’t think it is the server setup. Any ideas? Tried reinstalling and deleting the connection etc.
October 8, 2011 at 2:51 pm
the most likely caused is the connection error. In previous version of media buddy, it incorrectly thinks its connected when actually the connection returns server not found. I will be fixing this issue in the upcoming update but in the mean time make sure that you can connect to remote server by using the browser.
October 10, 2011 at 11:57 am
Why is the guide displaying all channels, not simply the favorites?
October 8, 2011 at 8:20 pm
That’s the current desing, Guide display the full channels list. You can go to your favorite channel from channel list by selecting guide from app bar. Let me know if you have some suggestions to make it more user friendly in the future.
October 10, 2011 at 11:58 am
Thanks a lot for Media Buddy 🙂
I use it only for streaming music from my server to my phone so for me the following things are missing:
– “Artist”, “Genre”, “Year”… and “Folder” instead of only “Albums” (If this is possible it might be best to still have “Albums” after klicking on “Artist”)
– “Play all” to play all songs of one artist or one folder / genre / album
– multi tasking to keep it running while working with the phone (this one might be the most hard one to program)
October 11, 2011 at 5:55 am
I love Media Buddy, and I have a few suggested features:
It would be great when in the Media section to have the letter jump-to’s just like you have in recorded tv. I have lots of folders and files for pictures and videos and it would require a lot less scrolling if I could jump right to a section starting with a specific letter.
It would also be great if when showing a folder you could look into that folder and if there is a folder.jpg file, or whatever name you like, that you would display that .jpg instead of the generic folder icon. This would make finding folders a lot easier by picture, but defintiely not as important as the letter jump-to.
And lastly, and I know this is a stretch, but I live in an area with spotty cell coverage, so streaming while traveling doesn’t always work well. If there was a method to precache/buffer an entire show while getting good reception and then store it for later viewing while traveling, that would be sweet.
October 12, 2011 at 5:29 am
Pingback: Entertainment 2.0 #148 : Xbox TV? | The Digital Media Zone
I just purchased media buddy and cannot get it to work. After verifying the connection, it says “settings download failed”. I can access remote potato from a web interface with no problems. please help.
October 20, 2011 at 8:40 pm
What version of remote potato server are you running?
I think it’s not able to connect to the server so please double check the connection information.
Thanks
October 21, 2011 at 8:00 am
Mayow mohamed
October 21, 2011 at 7:51 pm
running version 1.0.6.0
the setup instructions are so vauge. do you offer anything more detailed?
i can connect @ home over my wifi network, but when i’m on the cell network i get the ‘settings download failed’
October 22, 2011 at 2:38 pm
If you are not able to connect outside your network, the issue is related with your home ip and router/firewall. RemotePotato server does a very good job of walking thru this. let me know what specific problem you are running into and I will try to help. BTW, you can verify that your firewall/router is configured properly when you are able to access your home remotepotato server using your phone webbrowser outside your network.
October 23, 2011 at 12:07 pm
i really don’t know what else to tell you unless you can be specific about a certain setting. I get the “settings download failed” each time.
i have gone through the remote potato setup at least 20 times, and gone through the router settings over and over. i’ve got the right ports forwarded, i’ve got my dyndns acct setup and login details entered in remote potato and the phone client.
October 23, 2011 at 6:33 pm
ok, step by step –
1. from your windows phone, try your remote potato server from IE i.e http://yourdnsname:8080 or whatever you have confgiured.
2. verify you are able to connect to your server.
In the current media buddy version, the settting download failed is an incorrect message somethign when the client isnot able to connect to server. I will fix that in next update.
October 23, 2011 at 9:02 pm
When I enter the address in wp7 browser, it says “unsupported address” and that it cannot display that type of address
October 23, 2011 at 9:09 pm
you need to enter the full address including http://yourdnsname:8080 . that should work.
October 23, 2011 at 9:39 pm
I’m using the full version (v2.0) … couple issues:
1. When I initially loaded my music collection in MB on the phone, it lists all the tracks, but with the wrong album art. It looks like it’s assigned the same 3 or 4 album art covers to the entire library. Playback of the tracks works properly, just incorrect album art.
2. Not getting playback of any of my recorded TV, even the non-protected stuff. Shows up just fine, press PLAY, then goes to “Buffering progress – 0%” forever. I’ve loaded the RP streaming pack already.
Any ideas ?
October 30, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Thanks for trying media buddy. I have never seen the problem with the album art. Can you try with remote potato web UI to confirm this is issue with the app?
I will investigate on my side as well
October 30, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Album art issue appears in the remote potato web ui as well … any ideas on that eternal “buffering – 0%” issue as well ?
October 31, 2011 at 10:53 am
Have you opened up ports. Streaming uses 9081. You should open ports 9080- 9083 as alternate ports are used when 9081 is already in use.
October 31, 2011 at 12:22 pm
On my router these ports didn’t work but somewhere I read that 80 is ok, too – and it works for me 😉
Btw – how about my ideas from October 11, 2011?
Are you planning to add Artist, Genre… to music in a future update?
November 1, 2011 at 8:42 am
Media Buddy seems to be stuck in time for me. I have a very large collection of recorded shows. I can connect via my WP7 browser and all recorded shows and scheduled recordings appear. When using Media Buddy, it reflects the state as of 9/19/2011. I have deleted and reconnected the server and the “cached data” refreshes only to that date. Recorded shows I have deleted still appear in the programs list and shows I have recorded since 9/19 do not appear. Any suggestions on what to try next? (I’m using the Pro version, BTW, and I loved it when it worked).
November 1, 2011 at 12:01 pm
you can refresh the recording data from the recording page refresh button. The main page refreshes the core data but not the recording
November 1, 2011 at 3:44 pm
Sorry i didn’t specify but I tried refreshing from the recording page and get “Fetching of recorded TV failed.” In addition, the Guide is empty (shows channels but no grid) and any search returns “Search failed.” To correct my earlier post, the last recorded show displayed is from 07/04/2011. The last Scheduled recording is dated 9/19/2011. Shows I have watched and deleted still show up on the Recorded shows list.
November 2, 2011 at 6:33 am
Me again…web access works great. I installed Smart Potato Lite on my phone and it works fine. I uninstalled Media Buddy and reinstalled and now “Authentication Completed Successfully” but “Settings Download Failed”. Any ideas?
January 12, 2012 at 8:06 am
Can you check the username password info in settings. Sometimes the error message is incorrect when authentication fails. Sent from my Windows Phone
January 12, 2012 at 8:34 am
Thanks. It turned out I mistyped the server name so connection success and authentication success were both bogus. Now it’s all great, again.
January 12, 2012 at 11:58 am
I downloaded your app today. I can’t seem to play any of the recorded shows. I get an error saying “AC3 Codec Not Found”. In other instances it says “Operation Failed”. I am using HD7s with Mango. Any ideas?
Secondly, i can’t seem to view any of the pictures. I am able to see the folders & the actual file but when i click on it all i get is a black screen.
November 8, 2011 at 10:45 am
You need to download and install codec pack from remote potato on your media center machine.
For pictures, it should load. do you have lot of pictures in the directory and does it show you thumbnails?
November 8, 2011 at 12:36 pm
I followed your advice and downloaded the codecs. The error msg went away. Now after buffering, it says streaming started but the playback doesn’t begin.
I have about 30gb of pics. When i open the folder i will see the window photo gallery logo instead of the thumbnail. I waited for a long time for it to turn to a thumbnail but it never did, nor does it open the picture file.
November 8, 2011 at 12:53 pm
hello
November 27, 2011 at 7:29 am
Is it possible to make computer wake up from sleep when connecting to remote potato server? That would be very useful for everyone who is using htpc. I think it wouldn’t be impossible to add magic packet during connection? Then no one shouldn’t use different programm for waking up.
p.s. you have made nice programm and everything is working fine for me
December 7, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Hey Ash,
Great app, the work is much appreciated! Everything works top notch for me.
I have a rather large music library. Would it be possible to be able to browse by “artist”, “genre”, “album”, or “song” rather than just “album”? It would be nice to be able to slide the active “sorting” left or right to choose from the three; or maybe just choose the sorting from a settings dot. Either way, it would make the library much more manageable.
Thanks again!
Brian
December 21, 2011 at 12:56 pm
Yes, this is the most asked feature and I do intend to add this. Thanks for using it.
December 21, 2011 at 5:51 pm
Thanks for the app. I have everything working with one exception. Shows natively recorded in WMC play fine on my Focus, but *.WTV files I copy into the Recorded TV folder from a temp folder where streaming content is encoded as WTV do not play in Media Buddy (or as WMSP thru the RP web interface. Silver Live works fine, as does playback inside WMC or even Win Media Player.
MB returns “ErrorExceptionOccurred” and WMSP in the RP web interface returns “Cannot stream this content – there was an error on the server. The file may be in use, or an incompatible type.” on these files. Thoughts?
January 11, 2012 at 7:55 am
I too prefer your app to Smart Potato, but I have a few issues with some aesthetics. The most important on my list is when sorting albums. If the album name begins with the article ‘A’ it gets sorted under the letter ‘A’. That’s not bad but I believe it is more common for the articles (like ‘a’ and ‘the’) to be over looked by media managing applications and for the albums to be sorted by the first word after the article.
My only other issue so far is that the thing I like about Smart Potato more than your app is that Smart Potato is just a bit more visually attractive. Although, the features of Media Buddy do beat out the features of Smart Potato. Media Buddy is just a bit boring visually.
I really do enjoy it. Thanks.
February 26, 2012 at 11:28 pm
Hi,
would it be possible for this app to stream music that is available to the MC, but stored on a local WHS? This would be awesome if it could.
The rest of the app looks great
Tony
March 15, 2012 at 4:36 am
When I try to access music that is stored on my WHS, but referenced via the MC, I can see a list of albums etc, but on selecting one, after about 2 mins, I get a message: Songs information download failed 😦
Locally stored music off the MC can be found and played.
Thanks
Tony
March 19, 2012 at 4:21 am
Remote Potato runs as a service by default, perhaps it’s a permissions issue?
April 6, 2012 at 9:05 pm
One more query, the app seems to only play one song at a time, I see that we can request songs be queued, would it be possible when selecting an album that an option be added to play entire album, by automatically queuing all the songs
March 19, 2012 at 4:28 am
hey ashterisk,
I have bought a few of your apps and I am a big fan, you make having a windows phone worthwhile. My problem with media buddy is that when I go to play a video it plays perfect but when I leave the video and try to watch it again I get an error saying “Errorexceptionoccured” this only happens on videos I have watched already. If I go to watch a video for the first time it plays perfect.
Watching videos I have saved on the computer is the only reason I bought media buddy, so not being able to watch them more them once makes the app kind of useless to me.
Please help me solve this.
thanks,
-Alex
April 18, 2012 at 11:34 pm
I will try it and see what might be the reason. Can you let me know if you are trying within home network or outside (if the later then what ports are open?)? you need to open 9080-9084 for streaming to work properly.
You may also want to ask at http:/remotepotato.com as the expection seems to be coming from remote potato server
April 19, 2012 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for the fast reply!
I do have the correct ports open and the issue occurs both on internal and external networks.
I Just noticed that after I watched each video that there would be a WMV file next to the original video file that was 0 bytes if I went on my computer and deleted that WMV file I could play the video again.
April 23, 2012 at 8:52 pm
Streaming doesn’t work on the lumia 900. When i select a recording to play it says: Started playback, streaming started…. long pause. It never tries to buffer the video. Then i get a playback failed message. Please fix!
Streaming worked great on my focus but when i upgraded to the lumia 900 this broke.
April 25, 2012 at 6:32 pm
Im having the same issue, getting the \”errorExceptionOccurred\” when trying to start a video, and i also get 0 Kbyte files in many (not all) the folders of the videos im trying to play.
The 0 Kbyte files are the exact same name as the original file, just with a .wmv tagged on, for example:
Original video is called \”Videofile.avi\” after the error msg theres now the original file + the 0 Kbyte file with the name: \”Videofile.avi.wmv\”
Photos and music works fine, im only having issues with videos 🙂
Hope you will be able to help 🙂
July 13, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Bought app. Get ErrorAC3Codec not found when replaying tv.
August 3, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Bought app. Get Error3ACcodec not found.. Or something of the sort when trying to stream recorded tv. Any thoughts?
August 3, 2012 at 7:38 pm
Ok. I just found in the middle of this chain a comment you made to download streaming pack from rempot site directly. I’ll try that and report.
August 3, 2012 at 7:50 pm
Great app love it.
August 11, 2012 at 6:26 pm
Great app love it very clear pictures.
August 11, 2012 at 6:27 pm
I want to try
August 13, 2012 at 9:13 am
Very quickly this web page will be famous among all blogging viewers, due to it’s good posts
September 23, 2012 at 7:41 am
Super
October 20, 2012 at 2:26 am
Super application
October 20, 2012 at 2:28 am
Hi
October 30, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Are you working on a windows 8 rt version for Media Buddy?
November 21, 2012 at 10:49 am
It would be great to see a Windows 8 “modern” UI version that supports ARM.
January 17, 2013 at 8:30 pm
No I can see the video then I will commet
February 8, 2013 at 2:41 am
Videos
March 1, 2013 at 8:53 am
Videos daunlod
March 1, 2013 at 8:57 am
Pingback: IPAAPK – Media Buddy
Q:Is there another way I can buy this app(full version)without a credit card?
April 3, 2013 at 10:51 am
Ok
April 11, 2013 at 1:40 pm
Is this app even being developed for anymore?
April 24, 2013 at 2:16 pm