Ultravox question

[MadPenguin]

I know, I know its a shoutcast board, but there really isn't an Ultravox thread I could find that was applicable.

Since I know and accept no Winamp for Linux, (totem and XMMS both play shoutcast streams no problem), I was wondering if there is an Ultravox Client for linux? Be it a beta wasabi or something.

Anyone point me to the proper location? Or is there just not one?

[FesterHead]

For listening or broadcasting?

[MadPenguin]

listening.... don't need to broadcast.

[Jay]

if it plays a SHOUTcast stream it should be able to play an ultravox stream.

[jwhalen]

where can one get more info on Ultravox?

(hard to google, as a band has that name, among others)

[Jay]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Nullsoft+Ultravox

[drewbar]

(There isn't too much information really out there, so I'll tell you as much as I know about it from experience)

It's basically a hardware based SHOUTcast server. It's what the AOL Hosted Streams run as well as Radio@AOL and the newer Radio@Netscape. Besides the URL (http://ip:80/stream/####) you connect to it like any other SHOUTcast stream and usages should be transparent.

Though I think there is some fancier things you can do when connecting to it with some headers. At least the header response is a little different then a normal SHOUTcast server when you connect to it. And it can be treaded differently if you connect to is as Ultravox, but I am not sure if any of those extra headers make a difference in anything.

I believe newer versions (which is use on the winamp.com videos and music section) is now called AOL Streaming Server (ASS).

From a developer's or listeners standpoint any player the can play SHOUTcast streams can play streams from an Ultravox server.

[MadPenguin]

From my understanding, an ultravox stream needs a player that understands it if its in pure ultravox. In fact I've seen uvox:// calls, that don't work with http:// (which is usually shoutcast.) This probably means there isn't a straight uvox player for linux, but Totem and XMMS both handle the http:// for shoutcast.

Oh well. :-)

[Switch2Linux]

I just found out howto get the UVOX streams working in Linux. I might have to jury rig a User-Agent addon to the mpg123 plugin to XMMS, but I was able to beat AOL's little game using straight CLI (Command-Line-Interface) and wget :P.

wget -O - -U 'Ultravox/2.0' 'http://64.236.34.107/stream/13338?authToken=r%3D2551459%26sid%3D12838%26expires%3D1134926892683%26csum%3Dd5d3c75a6a015ffa&uid=XMMS&sessid='

All the XM Radio stations for example, look for when you connect to them, the User-Agent *MUST CONTAIN* "Ultravox/2.0", and the URL *MUST CONTAIN* a 'uid' variable with a value. This 'user id' variable can be any value you want, just as long as it's there. 'sessid' can be any value you want, even empty as that string above shows. Might have an adverse effect being empty *shrugs*, I'll worry about that later.

As always... AOL pays more for their commercials than they do for their software.

[Switch2Linux]

Correction, SHOUTcast specifies all it's stream information in the header part of the HTTP, where as, UVOX specifies all of it's stream information in the data part of the HTTP. Then UVOX streams will delimit their XML metadata header off. Got mpg123 from the Debian package source to start parsing the XM Radio links, however, will have to get use to the XMMS system and see if I can't rig in some XML parsing and uvox:// protocol.

This will be a worthy submittion to the Linux community - WOOT!!! Ah... the power of open source/free software! Gotta love it!

[arkadas.amereeh]

some info's is also posted here:

*streamripping link removed*

Regards,

Arkadas

[CraigF]

that and the source is at ultravox.aol.com no?

[Switch2Linux]

Yeah, ultravox.aol.com is a worthy read if you're going to learn more about UVOX. I think what I'll do is, create a plugin to download from the UVOX servers, then virtual file server (HTTP) stream it to whichever plugin codec the data requires mpg123/vorbis/aac/etc.

Still purely theory at this point, but, it beats having to reinvent the wheel.