JW Broadcasting in XBMC or KODI

*Updated March 13th, 2015

If you are a fan of XBMC (KODI is the new name of XBMC) you can watch with ease JW Broadcasting material now thanks to a plugin.

As of March 13th, thanks to the author of the plugin Jonathan Demarks, this plugin works on Windows as well as Linux.

To start, you need to download the plugin. It's available here:
https://github.com/ca0abinary/plugin.video.jwtv-unofficial

Once downloaded, run KODI/XBMC

Follow these screens to install it:

Go to system

Go to Add-ons

Go to "Install from .zip file"

Choose this .zip file

Once this process is done, you should be ready to use JW Broadcasting in XBMC/KODI.

Here is how you find it in XBMC/KODI once the process is done:

As you can see, I was able to easily watch the February 2015 Featured Program. The "play bar" on the bottom goes away after just a bit of time, which you already know if you are an avid XBMC/KODI user.

And again, many thanks to the creator of this wonderful plugin, Jonathan Demarks!

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact me. My contact information is on the side panel of this website.

XFCE still rocks!

I know I will come off as a bit of a fan boy, but...

After exhaustively looking for a different desktop environment for Linux, I can say that XFCE is still number one in my book.

I have tried just about all of them, including window managers.

Gnome, Unity, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, Openbox, Enlightenment, Blackbox, Fluxbox, i3, rat poison, awesome, fvwm...

If you name it, I most likely tried it. (I know this is no where near the full list.)

Why do I like XFCE? Simply, it has just enough bells and whistles to be easily used by most people, and yet it is very light on resources.

It's a tricked out pony, especially if your number one concern is functionality.

I personally like Xubuntu's slant on things, making XFCE just pretty enough to be gentle on the eyes, without compromising speed and stability.

This is my screenshot. An awesome desktop environment.

I seriously suggest you try XFCE with your distro today.

And if you are an Ubuntu user, then try out Xubuntu!

Watchtower Library 2014 in Ubuntu 14.04 *UPDATED*

*If you have already done these steps and it still doesn't work, 

please check out the update section below!

After getting my Watchtower Library 2014 installed, it would not open.

I did some research, and found you need Wine 1.7 to run it.

Sure enough, a simple upgrade to Wine 1.7, and Watchtower Library 2014 runs like a champ now.

Here is a guide thanks to WineHQ on installing Wine 1.7:

Open the Software Sources menu by launching the Ubuntu Software Center and selecting Edit->Software Sources. Choose the Other Software tab and click Add.

Then, copy and paste the line below.

ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Warning: Beta packages

The 1.7 packages here are beta packages. This means they will periodically suffer from regressions, and as a result an update may break functionality in Wine. If the stable 1.6 Wine version works for you, then you may not want to use these beta packages.

Installing Wine:

Once you have added the repository, you are ready to install.

To get the most recent Wine 1.7 beta, click this link to install the wine1.7 package.

To install the older, stable Wine 1.6 version, click this link to install the wine1.6 package.

Upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu

If you are upgrading the entire system, such as going from Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04, you will need to come back to this page and add the repository again. The built in update manager will not switch the Wine repository automatically.

Alternative Command Line Instructions for Installing Wine:

It is also possible to add the PPA and install via the terminal. This may be useful on Ubuntu flavors and derivatives.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

Then update APT package information by running 'sudo apt-get update'. You can now install Wine by typing 'sudo apt-get install wine1.7'.

If you'd like to browse the PPA manually, you can visit its Launchpad page.

This guide found at https://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu

Remember, if you choose to not install the microsoft fonts with wine, then you will need to follow these instructions for turning the "blocks" into letters:

http://dennygoot.blogspot.com/2013/04/watchtower-library-text-is-all-squares.html

If there are any questions, please feel free to email me at dennygoot@gmail.com.

-Denny

* UPDATED April 4th, 2015 *

Thanks to conversations with Stefano Tabanelli both by email and the disqus comment board on this blog, we now know that on some versions of Ubuntu, Wine needs to be set to a different "windows" mode (or version).

There are two ways to change the windows mode. One is to do it globally, the other way is to specifically control one executable. 

The advantage of the first is that all wine applications will be effected. This way is easier, but if you use wine for more than just the Watchtower Library, you may need to use the "specific executable" option.

For both options you first need to start the "Configure Wine" link. 

It can be found in Xubuntu here: (click on pictures to make them larger.)

In regular Ubuntu, you can find it by searching for configure wine in the Unity launcher on the top left.

Once you have the Wine configure window open, then you can change the windows type right at the bottom right like this:

Stefanos noted he chose windows 2003 here and it worked for him. I set mine to windows xp and tried it and it also worked.

This is setting the default, or global setting.

If you need to be "executable specific", then instead of choosing the windows version here, we instead choose "add application".

Here is a visual walk through for you:

Once this is done, it should solve your problem. 

Remember, if you choose to not install the microsoft fonts with wine, then you will need to follow these instructions for turning the "blocks" into letters:

http://dennygoot.blogspot.com/2013/04/watchtower-library-text-is-all-squares.html

Again, if there are any questions, please feel free to email me at dennygoot@gmail.com.

-Denny