[Rhythmbox-devel] Live Radio Browser

[Ryan Hayle <hackel walkingfish com>]

Hi,

I've been toying with the idea of integrating a "live" radio (shoutcast) 
browser into Rhythmbox.  So far I'm basing this effort on the 
streamtuner project by Jean-Yves Lefort 
(http://www.nongnu.org/streamtuner/).  This program has plugins for 
various directories (Shoutcast, Live365, Xiph/Icecast).

Right now I'm working on just dumping the list of live streams into 
RhythmDB and erasing the database on each refresh.  This doesn't seem 
like it's the best means to accomplish this (a lot of overhead), since a 
new list is pulled for each genre or search.  Does anyone have other 
suggestions?  It would be helpful to support multiple sources for each 
IRadio station, but I assume that is forthcoming since I remember it 
used to be in net-rhythmbox.

I also wanted to ask what people thought about the interface.  It 
wouldn't have to change much from the current IRadio interface, but how 
to integrate the two is a question.  Also the possibility of sub-genres 
which I mention below.  There are some extra columns which could be 
added (now playing, bitrate, current/max listeners), as well as a 
refresh and "go to URL" button.

Colin mentioned the idea of sub-sources, where each of the directories 
(shoutcast, live365, etc.) would be a sub-source of the IRadio source, 
which would just store favorite/non-published stations.  This seems like 
a good approach, but much more technically complicated.  I know nothing 
about it, but apparently could also be used for the "play queue" as a 
sub-source of the library.

On a side note, Streamtuner also supports "sub-genres" (e.g. the 
"Classical" genre has Contemporary, Opera, and Symphonic sub-genres). 
This seems like a good idea, and might be worth considering 
implementing, though I don't know how it would work for local 
files...just a thought.

Please let me know what you think!  I'll hopefully have an arch archive 
up soon, but I'm exceedingly new at most of this and trying to learn 
quickly. :)

Thanks,
Ryan