RadioParadise HD Plugin for Windows Media Center

So I’ve become a big fan of RadioParadise. It’s a listener supported, commercial free radio station which plays a great mix of new, old and eclectic rock, with a random mix of everything else when they feel like it. Actually, it’s best explained if you just go there and listen. I also have a shortcut on my phone and it’s the only music I listen to in the car now.

So I’m a fan of the music, but the cool thing they’ve added this year is an HTML 5 192K HD feed along with a photo slide show called RadioParadise HD. The photo’s are all high resolution, meant to seen on the big screen, but the really cool thing is that they are uploaded by the community, so if you have some high quality 16×9 photos, you can upload them and potentially see your own pics there.

So, obviously, a Media Center Plugin is needed so you can use your remote to bring up the music and slide show. A couple things you’ll need.

IE9: Since the HD player is implemented in HTML 5, you’ll need IE 9, Firefox or Chrome. I tried all three and (surprisingly) had the best experience with IE 9 as far as running in kiosk mode and resizing correctly. Chrome has security issues being launched from WMC and FF seems to crash after running the feed for a few hours.
Autohotkey: An extremely cool and easy to use scripting utility. Used to turn off the screen saver and hide the mouse.
nomousy: A utility from the autohotkey community to hide and restore the mouse upon exit
Media Center Studio: To build the plugin.

First, install Autohotkey and cut & paste the following script into a file called rplaunch.ahk (or you can just download my pre-built binary from here):

; Disable Screen Saver
DllCall(“SystemParametersInfo”, Int,17, Int,0, UInt,NULL, Int,2)
; Hide the mouse
Run, C:\bin\nomousy.exe /hide
; Run IE in kiosk mode pointing to the rphd stream
RunWait, “C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe” -k http://radioparadise.com/rphd.php
; Show the mouse
Run, C:\bin\nomousy.exe
; Enable Screen Saver
DllCall(“SystemParametersInfo”, Int,17, Int,1, UInt,NULL, Int,2)

Obviously, you should change the file to point to where you installed nomousy, or just install it in C:\bin as I did. Then just right click on the .ahk file and select “Compile”. You should now have an rplaunch.exe binary. Put this in C:\bin as well.

Now run Media Center Studio. Warning, the UI here is a little obtuse, so just follow these steps:

Once you start the app, click on the “Start Menu” icon on the main toolbar (my version has a blank icon)

Now click on the Entry points expansion button in the lower left hand corner

Now click on the “Start Menu” tab at the top, and you should see something like this:

Now Click the “Application” icon, and fill it out as follows. Note I put my rplaunch.exe in a location with no spaces in the directory names. I can’t swear that a location with a space doesn’t work, but it was on of the variables I eliminated during my testing.

To get the Back and MediaStop buttons to exit the app for you, press the green “+” button, and then press the keys on your keyboard/remote:

Hit the disk icon in the upper left (Save), close the tab and you should be returned to the Start Menu. The new app should show up in the Entry points list.
Drag and Drop your new app from the Entry Points to the location on the Start Menu you desire. Hint: The TV and Movies row is not editable by default, so put this in the Music row, or go read this thread.
Hit Save again and restart Media Center.