May 022010
 

This functionality has been evolving as of mid 2011 and may not work for you. Sirius/XM has been changing the format of their online streaming. Watch http://www.permanence.com/sirius/ for the latest information.

If you are a Sirius online subscriber, then you can listen to most of the Sirius channels online in most web browsers.  It’s a very nice way to listen to Sirius at work.  The quality is quite good too.  But did you know you can easily add the same Sirius channel lineup to your Windows Media Center?  Here’s how I did it.

First, of course you will need a computer with Windows Media Center.  I happen to be running Vista x64, but I believe this will work on all versions of WMC.  Next, you will need to get a small, free program called “Sirius XM streamer“, which basically sets up a proxy on your computer to the Sirius streams.  To install it, you will have to have the .Net 3.5 framework installed on your computer (also free).  Installation instructions are available on the Sirius XM streamer website.  When you get the streamer installed on your computer, go to the configuration page and enter your Sirius username and password.  The streamer should also work for XM streaming, but I don’t have XM, so I can’t speak for that.  For the default stream protocol, choose HTTP and for the format choose ASX.  Leave Listening IP set to All and listening port set to the default 51710.  Your published URL should look like http://127.0.0.1:51710.  The TVersity Media Server details can be ignored.  On the options menu, enable the start server automatically option.  Start the server and after a few seconds you should see the server running messages.

For each channel that you want to appear in the Radio list in WMC, you will need to create two text files and one JPG.  Place these files in your

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Media Center Programs\Radio

folder.  Of course replace USERNAME with whatever username you use when you run WMC. You may need to create the folder.  Here are the two text files I needed for Sirius Hits One.  I named them “Hits One.mcl” and “Hits One.htm”.  And I created a subfolder C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Media Center Programs\Radio\Sirius for the icon images.

Hits One.mcl

<application  name="Sirius 1 - SIRIUS XM Hits 1"		
 url="Hits One.htm" 			
 startimage="Sirius\Sir001.jpg" 		
 thumbnailimage="Sirius\Sir001.jpg" 		
 description="The sound of generation Now!" 			
 category="1" 				
 companyname="">				
 <capabilitiesrequired  directx="false" 	
    audio="true" 				
    video="false" 				
    intensiverendering="false" 		
    console="false" 			
    cdburning="false" 			
 />					
</application>

Hits One.htm

<script>							
function IsMCEEnabled()					
{								
return true;						
}								
window.external.MediaCenter.PlayMedia(1, "http://127.0.0.1:51710/xm?channel=2&format=asx" );
window.external.MediaCenter.Experience.GoToFullScreen()    
window.external.MediaCenter.CloseApplication();		
</SCRIPT>

You can see where the mcl file points to the jpg image to use for the icon. Those images are 124×124 pixels, regular jpg files. I didn’t do anything fancy with them, but I did try using gifs and tried to get the transparency to work, but it would not. If you have better luck, let me know. Also, I do not know what the difference is between “startimage” and “thumbnailimage”. As you can see I set them both to point to the same image, and it seemed that it had to be that way. Again, if you figure something else out, let me know.  Place the images in the Sirius subfolder created above.

I have uploaded a zip file with all of the images for each Sirius channel here

  26 Responses to “Add Sirius Streaming Radio to your Windows Media Center”

  1. As the developer of SiriusXMStreamer, I just wanted to take the time to thank you for writing this article! I’m now considering actually adding a feature to automatically generate these files (including the images) for you based on a selected subset of channels.

    Great stuff! Thanks!

  2. My pleasure. I use your program just about every day. I do have one other feature request: Can you set it up so that the current song’s title displayed in WMC? Right now it always just says “sirius”.

  3. That’s actually an often requested feature. Unfortunately, it’s not one I can do. The internal player can display the titles, because it’s actually playing back and pulling the data from the stream. When you use a third party player like WMC, all SiriusXMStreamer (SXS) does is forward the player on to the online stream. After that initial hand off, SXS is out of the picture, and it’s up to the player to parse the data in the stream. Sorry.

  4. Just tried this with my XM credentials. I keep getting an “Invalid Logon” error. Could this possibly be due to the fact that when logging into XM via their website, you are required to enter a captcha image?

  5. That’s interesting. I am actually a Sirius subscriber, but that should not make a difference. FWIW, the Sirius login page also uses captcha, so I don’t think that’s the problem. I guess I would recommend that you recheck your settings and try again. Oh, and I don’t think it’s the Sirius/XM servers because I have been streaming all day. Good luck :)

  6. awesome I’m running windows 7 64 bit home premium. using Stevens siriusxmstreamer and used the step above to create links in WMC music radio folder and Sirius is working awesome! sucks you’ll have to create all this for whatever stations you want to listen to but whatever it’s worth the time.

    Thanks Guys!

  7. I’ve been using this app for close to a year now on an almost daily basis on my HTPC. Works great and I love it. I am glad it all worked out for you, and I hope my tutorial helped!

  8. i have been searching to find this – thanks so much!

    got any idea where i can find .jpg’s

  9. I have a zip file with all the icons in jpg and gif format. Like I said, I had better luck with the jpgs.
    http://skipstechtalk.net/files/SiriusIcons.zip

  10. Hey guys, thanks a lot for siriusxmstreamer and this article. I’ve been trying to stream over media center to my xbox 360 but I can’t seem to get it to work… There is the built in part under extras but I can’t navigate on my xbox so I stumbled upon this method… Everything works great on my PC but my Xbox is still trying to find a tuner unfortunately :\

    Not sure if there is anyway around this… I might have to just give in and get some ipod cables for my TV.

    Reason I’m trying to do this … I have a nice stereo but my ipod can’t read apps through my receiver only songs on the ipod itself. This isn’t too bad but having XM is pretty awesome and I’d love to have both options :)

    Anyway if you end up checking this maybe you have a solution. Later and thanks again guys.

  11. Skip,
    Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge! I am having trouble viewing the “Hits One.mcl” & “Hits One.htm” files (tried in both IE and FF) — the “Hits One.mcl” box is completely blank and the “Hits One.htm” box has a few lines of code. Is there any way that you could post/upload the actual files, or send a copy of them to my email?
    Thanks again!

  12. Kevin, I am sorry, but this isn’t going to work anymore. Even if you had the code. A couple of months ago Sirius/XM changed the streaming format to a proprietary system and the only way to listen to Sirius/XM online is to stream it through their website.

  13. Actually, it should still work with most Sirius stations. The legacy streams that SiriusXMStreamer uses were brought back online a couple weeks after the outage. XM is still missing a lot of stations, but Sirius is only missing a few.

  14. Wow, if that’s true, that will be good news! According to http://www.permanence.com/sirius/, this should not work any more. Sadly, I am on XM, so I am probably missing a lot of stations. Anyway, I have corrected this post so you can see the code again. Good luck and please report back how it works out.

  15. I guess I should have looked at the permanence site before posting my last comment. It does indeed look like this will work again. I guess I have a new HT project in the next few days :)

  16. Is the MCL file script blank for everybody else? I’ve been searching for a way to do this for a while now.

  17. That’s strange… I thought I fixed that. I’ll look at it again when I get home tonight.

  18. were you able to make the update? its still broken from my pov.

  19. Oops, sorry about that. I forgot last night. Everything should be working now. I’m not sure that the channels are still the same as when I first wrote this up, but you should get the idea.

  20. Yes!, thanks so much, this worked perfectly. You’re right the channels have changed yet again.

  21. I’d like to thank you again with helping me out with this, do you know if there’s any way to make it work outside WMC as a song or playlist? My goal would be to figure out how to play a game and listen at the same time.

  22. I appreciate that feedback. Thanks, and you are welcome!
    As for playing outside of WMC, how about VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
    I haven’t tried it, but I don’t see any reason why it would work. You wouldn’t need to do all the stuff in this post though just for that. Just point the VLC input stream to your local URL.

  23. Thanks for this very helpful info…my Sirius computer connection stopped working and when I called Sirius for help they said that their end of the connection was fine and must be my computer…after checking my Firewall and other security stuff, I came up with no reason for it not to be working. I’m glad I found your site…saved me a visit from a computer geek!

  24. You are welcome, and thank you for the kind comment!

  25. I can only get one channel to show up. Only one that shows up is the most recently added. WHat am I doing wrong? Thanks

  26. @mark A; I don’t have an answer for you. I have never seen that before. Sorry :( Let us know if you do figure it out. It might help someone else in the future.

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