Comments on: CastCatcher 1.1 Awaiting Apple’s Approval

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:17:29 +0000

oh killer!

thanks guys for the attention to detail, and response to your customer base! I’m looking forward to seeing your progress and new projects.

By: amro

amro — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:38:21 +0000

Justin,

I went ahead and added the ability to play shoutcast streams (only!) directly to version 1.2 so the stream (http://83.149.110.11:8002) will work.

By: drew

drew — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:24:39 +0000

Justin,

The url you gave appears to be a stream url, but currently CastCatcher doesn’t support it directly.
We may add this to 1.2 but no immediate promises. In the mean time, you can use one of these two workarounds:

Go to:
http://classic.shoutcast.com

and find the station you want to listen to. Then right click on the “Tune In” button and copy the link
for the playlist. It should look like http://classic.shoutcast.com/sbin/shoutcast-playlist.pls?rn=9631&file=filename.pls

As soon as 1.1 comes out, you can use http://shoutcast.com instead of http://classic.shoutcast.com.

Open your favorite text editor and paste the following:

[playlist]
NumberOfEntries=1
File1=http://83.149.110.11:8002
Title1=Name Here
Length1=-1
Version=2

Then save the file as myfile.pls and put it on a webserver (most isps give it to you free), then add the url to the playlist file to castcatcher.
It’ll work as long as it’s a valid shoutcast stream.

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:22:50 +0000

So, when searching shoutcast, how can we find the stream URL…

for example castcatcher doesn’t take http://83.149.110.11:8002

and i cant seem to locate the .pls version of that stream…or any stream for that matter…

By: amro

amro — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:48:19 +0000

Sorry, Didn’t notice your question about the playlist there — that will also be fixed in 1.2. We’ve implemented a fix that will (hopefully) prevent issues in the future. The issue is simply that the various streams send metadata (or don’t) in different ways. We only support reading metadata for real shoutcast streams, at the moment. Other streams can be played back but we would need to write special code to read their metadata one-by-one. This playlist actually contains a live365 stream URL, and it will properly play with version 1.2. It’s already been fixed, the main bottle neck is Apple’s review process, at this point. Thanks for the question.

By: amro

amro — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:46:06 +0000

Hi Anthony. It’ll support shoutcast.com’s .pls?id=xxxx and the .pls urls. 1.2 will add support for directly playing mp3 streams (squeezebox servers make one available, I believe).

By: Anthony Harrison

Anthony Harrison — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:40:19 +0000

I noticed mention of “Removed .pls suffix”, I suppose that will help shoutcast’s “…tunein.pls?id=xxx” format, but will it also support what many of the public radio stations do?

http://wamu.org/streams/live/1/pls

By: amro

amro — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:57:19 +0000

Hi Rich,

This is a known bug and was fixed in version 1.1. It’s already in Apple’s hands for review and should be popping up on your phone very soon (matter of days at the worst). As soon as this update hits, you’ll be able to use the URL you pasted directly in CastCatcher. Very sorry for the inconvenience. You may be able to work around the issue now, depending on whether or not the station you want to listen to provides a link to their playlist file directly on their website. Please see this post:

http://blog.return7.com/adding-stations-to-castcatcher

Thanks.

By: Rich

Rich — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:52:21 +0000

I am having trouble adding a station. I want to at KGO-AM. I went to shoutcast.com and copied the “tune in” link into castcatcher, but I got a message saying the url had to end in pls. The link was:
http://yp.shoutcast.com/sbin/tunein-station.pls?id=30849

Also, it would be great to be able to search for stations by type — I’m particularly looking for news, talk and sports links.

Please help! Thanks.

By: amro

amro — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:32:22 +0000

Hi Steve,

It appears
that KSPC radio does not offer a shoutcast stream that CastCatcher can pick up. You can find other stations at shoutcast.com. You might suggest it to them via some sort of feedback form on their site.

Thanks,
amro

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:28:57 +0000

Could you add support for KSPC radio? The audio stream is rtsp://134.173.70.95/vbrickvideo1

I can get it to work on my PC and it seems to work through Quicktime. The web address to KSPC radio is http://www.kspc.org

By: return

return — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:15:26 +0000

v1.0 (functional but as you can see it’s been upgraded) will be available again within a day or two (we had to redo our developer contract with Apple and while they’re processing it, CastCatcher cannot be purchased). V1.1 will be available as soon as Apple approves it (we estimate 5-7 days). So yes, it will be available on the US App Store very soon.

By: The Quiet One

The Quiet One — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 02:01:57 +0000

Is this or will this be available in the US iTunes store at some point in time. I am seeing a listing in the iTunes Store as a September 10, 2008 release. I would have purchased it if it were available for the US.