If you have not installed the Kraker Local Proxy Server then please go read the Installation Manual.
Alleycat Player does not auto-update. Please check for an update every two to four weeks at the link shown above.
Your feedback is appreciated (suggestions or bug reports):Alleycat BBS
Press the "End" key to go to the bottom of the page. There you will find links to each of the video viewers.
Pick a station and play the radio. Music soothes the heart and mind. You need to relax in these difficult times.
The Invidious instances have changed. None of them support livestream. The only reason for keeping them is that they are
sometimes useful for getting around geographic restrictions.
There has been some churn with the US Internet TV channels because the trio of sources (ustv247.tv, ustvgo.tv,
watchnewslive.tv) which I have relied on for a long time have moved to VPN-only access (NordVPN has a financial arrangement
with the site operator). At least, that is what I think has happened. It could be that the sites are simply broken. The
main source is now 123tvnow.com with www.watchnews.pro providing C-SPAN, HLN, BBC World News and backup
for some of the other news channels. OAN is now available with a direct link via KlowdTV (I don't know for how long).
Overall, not much has been lost and some has been gained. Note that Univision (in Spanish) is currently down.
The "DLoad" button has been enhanced for the sake of Chrome-based browsers which lack the right-click menu option
for saving a highlighted URL. I use Firefox so I honestly never noticed this issue with Chrome. However, Chrome does have
the save option if you right-click on the video itself (it just doesn't work with the URL shown below the video). You can
now right-click on the "DLoad" button to save the video. Also, if you press the "Copy" button, the text in the URL input
line will be copied to the "DLoad" button as well as to the clipboard.
The above does NOT apply to HLS/m3u8 videos because this type of video is segmented. Read the Alleycat Player instruction
manual. Note that livestream videos cannot be saved (you will just get a few segments).
The popup window resize problem on Chrome-based browsers has been fixed. Tested browsers are: Google Chrome, Brave,
Opera, Otter and Dissenter. Non-Chrome browsers: Firefox and Waterfox. If you are running Alleycat Player via the
Local Proxy Server (the preferred setup), video popup windows or tabs will first be loaded from an HTML stub created
automatically in the Alleycat folder. There is actually no document in the stub because this is a trick. The point is to
force Chrome browsers to allow autoplay. You will need to enable the "Sound" option in the site permissions for
localhost:8080. Chrome is screwed up. Stop using Chrome.
Warning - I have the Ghostery adblocker installed on Google Chrome and I caught it messing around with the internals
of the video control bar (thus breaking the visual appearance and perhaps the functionality). Whatever adblocker you use,
you should whitelist Alleycat Player and/or localhost:8080 (Local Proxy Server). There is no unsafe code running
in Alleycat (your adblocker should be able to verify this).
Special Note - Focused elements in Chrome are drawn with a heavy black border. This looks absolutely terrible on the
video control bar, especially the seek presets. For instructions on how to remove the black border, please
GO HERE.
If you are interested, here are my observations to show you why the popup windows were a vexing problem:
Firefox will open a popup with a client extent that is rounded off to a multiple of 100 (both width and height). This was
not the case six months ago. Opera takes the requested client extent as the total window extent (also Vivaldi though I
don't test that browser anymore). It is impossible to open a window with the correct client extent because the size
of the non-client area is unknowable. Brave and Google Chrome will open a popup with the correct client height but the
client width will be one pixel less than the requested width.
The trick to fixing the wrong popup client extent is to 1) capture an appropriate window event, 2) retrieve the client
extent information, 3) calculate the difference from the requested extent and 4) call the window "resizeBy" function.
Technically, the browser does not report the size of the client area in a popup window at all. The only way to get the
client extent is to examine an element inside the HTML document which presumably spans the full client area of the window.
For a video popup, the size of the video element may be used (it's a little trickier for a non-video popup).
Until a few months ago, the above worked fine with a "focus" event handler. Chrome (meaning all Chrome-based browsers)
broke this by making the client extent information unavailable (extent is reported as 0x0). Why? I don't know. This still
works fine in Firefox. What other event could be used? Short answer: none. Chrome does not generate a "load" event while
Firefox does not generate a "resize" event. That doesn't matter anyway. There is no client extent information available
in Chrome. As far as I can tell, there are no other generated events. So kinda screwed, right?
The issue is totally with Chrome. Firefox is extremely well-behaved with windows and tabs. There is no time delay and
the document is fully rendered before any events are generated. Chrome is a bitch. It takes as long as a full second to
open a window or tab and the window events are generated before the document is rendered. Essentially, this makes the
window events in Chrome pretty useless without some black magic. Is this by design? Chrome is also very obstinate about
allowing autoplay but that is another story.
The only solution is to wait for the window document to be ready before doing anything else (the document may be
blank or it may be loaded from a source). This is the messy part because it means using a 100-millisecond timer to
repeatedly check the document until it is reported as ready. There is no other way to get around the "unreliable narrator"
in Chrome. Then what? Well, then it is time to build or modify the document as needed and then create the "resize" event
handler so that the client extent can be checked and the window resized.
Firefox does not generate the "resize" event while Chrome will generate the event before the document is ready. It doesn't
matter either way. The event handler just needs to be called (from the code block that created it). In the case of Firefox
and most other browsers, that will be the end of the process. Opera, however, is stubborn and will resize the window
incorrectly on the first attempt. The act of resizing the window will generate a "resize" event which will be captured by
the event handler. Opera will then get it right. Problem solved!
I neglected to clean up the Invidious sources in the last version. The sites now listed seem to mostly work but you really
cannot rely on them. They are backup sources in case a video does not work through Youtube (due to some sort of
access restriction). Also, Invidious is accessible without a proxy server. The site displayed in blue in the dropdown list
is the only Invidious instance which supports livestream.
InfoWars links will no longer be passed through the Local Proxy Server. This was actually never necessary (no CORS issue) but
it is my policy to route all search links (but not video links) through the proxy server for logging (that is, showing the
URL on the console). InfoWars has some sort of CloudFlare bot blocker in front of it which I have not been able to penetrate.
This blocker will block ALL access to the InfoWars family of web sites except for recognized web browsers. Kraker (based on
node.js) and tools such as curl (on Windows) cannot access the InfoWars sites.
A new zoom feature has been added. There are two zoom modes. Normal zoom will scale the size of the video in both directions
(horizontal and vertical). This is useful for zooming cinematic widescreen. There is a control for this on the video control
bar and also on the page below the video. The "aspect zoom" will change the size of the video in the vertical direction.
This is for changing the aspect ratio. This mode can be accessed on the video control bar with the "F" (flip) option.
PLEASE NOTE: I am doing my best to ensure that all of the video sources work correctly on Alleycat Player but I cannot
guarantee perfection due to the number of sites supported. I do not use every service available so I might not notice that
something has stopped working. Notify me on Alleycat BBS when you see breakage. Suggestions welcome. Thank you.
Twitter updated its public API, making more information accessible than before (which previously required a login). As a
result, the mp4 video format is now available instead of m3u8.
The trio of sources for US Internet TV (ustv247.tv, ustvgo.tv, watchnewslive.tv) changed their obfuscation algorithm. This
one is devious. It uses AES encryption and it took me all of a day to crack it. I imagine that those Kodi addons will be
blocked by this for a while or for good.
Release notes for v4b (August 7, 2020)
New sites: CPAC (Canada), WatchCartoons, OpenLoadMovies
Updated the scraper for ustv24h.live (US Internet TV).
Both CTV and BBC now offer the HLS/m3u8 format. Previously, only the DASH/mpd format was available. I guess this is a pretty
good indication that DASH is on the way out. Good for that. BBC must have spent millions promoting DASH but the
development process has been badly managed and the specifications have gotten mangled to the point that nobody is really
sure how that shit is supposed to work. Interoperability has been a major stumbling block. R.I.P.
Release notes for v4a (June 29, 2020)
Welcome to the newly refurbished Alleycat Player. Actually, not much has changed. If you have used this application before
then you won't see a major difference. What I've done is provide clearer instructions for the proper installation and usage
of this app. I think a lot of people were confused because the whole thing did have the appearance of a kludge. The
Local Proxy Server is a critical part of Alleycat Player.
A bunch of Internet TV channels went down since the last version of Alleycat Player. They have been restored for the most
part but some Canadian channels are missing or not working well. I am looking for better sources.
BitChute (also MixDrop) has an issue with Firefox due to the "Referer" header which is incorrectly being sent to the
destination server. This affects playback for some videos. This was not an issue until I started running Alleycat Player via
Kraker. The fix is to stream the video through Kraker.
Vimeo live streaming (m3u8) is supported. Requires Kraker or a CORS unblocker.
Brighteon videos will play with Kraker and also with the remote proxies marked with an asterisk.
InfoWars videos play as m3u8 but the mp4 version is available via the DLoad button.
Only podcasts are supported on iHeartRadio.
For Twitter short links (like "https://t.co/..."), use DIG to get the tweet ID.
For Periscope long links (like "https://www.pscp.tv/w/..." followed by 80 or so chars), use DIG to get the ID.
Sites accessible with a Podcasts DIG:
- https://podcasts.apple.com
- https://itunes.apple.com
- https://www.stitcher.com
- https://radiopublic.com
- https://overcast.fm
- https://www.podbean.com
- https://www.spreaker.com
There are three symbols used to indicate the options available for a particular site. [#] means no DIG option because
the video ID is always exposed. [?] means that video ID numbers are not available (you have to DIG). [+] means
that both ID numbers and the DIG option are supported.
Here is a rundown of each site, the available video formats and the site URL (link will open a new tab or window):
? = unknown or auto-select (m3u8/mpd)
* = user selectable (via format box)
! = use the Sandbox option to embed the video.
KRAK = only accessible with the Local Proxy Server (Kraker)
CORS = only accessible with a CORS unblocker (or Kraker)
Go to the Movie viewer, select a TV stack and press the button for the desired channel.
That's it. All channels are m3u8 live streams and most are not region locked. Some channels require an initial
lookup (thus requiring a CORS proxy or unblocker) to find the direct stream URL. Such URLs are temporary and will
time out (anywhere from a few hours to two days). Alleycat Player will refresh the link after two hours.
Some channels have two stream sources. This is indicated with a plus sign (+) after the channel name. A double-plus
indicates that the streams are from different local stations. Select "webm" in the format panel to access the
secondary channel.
Internet Radio
Simply go to the bottom of the page and press a radio button to play the Internet Radio. That's it.
For your convenience, the radio will pause when you play a video. Press the Clear button to unpause.
You can also open a radio station in a popup window.
You can input your own URL for either an mp4 or an mp3 or whatever your
browser supports. To play a YouTube video in audio-only mode, just enter the 11-character video id.
To find some radio station URLs, you can use the AudioRealm DIG tool supplied with the Movie viewer.
Also supplied is a stack with links to iHeartRadio and Virtual DJ. These will pop up a window with an embedded web site.
Star FM Rock Classics
Rockin Doc Radio
Lynx Classic Rock
Rock Radio
Gem Radio New Wave
Retro Hits
Dance Wave
Salsa Mexico
Hot Mix Dance
Lounge Radio
1Mix Radio Trance
Starlite Radio
Virtual DJ: ClubZone
Virtual DJ: TheGrind
Virtual DJ: Hypnotica
Virtual DJ: PowerBase
Radio Free Americana
Venice Classic Radio Italia
Tropicalisma FM
Rockabilly Radio
Dandelion Radio
Entranced FM
Toxxic Radio
Radio Swiss Jazz
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1-Extra
BBC Radio 2
BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4-Extra
BBC Radio 5-Live
BBC Radio 6-Music
Nashville FM
Country Power Station
Hot Mix Hip-hop
Wu World Radio
Danheim: Mannavegr Audiomachine: Decimus Classic Rock - Greatest Hits
Radio El Dorado
Asia Dream Radio
Streaming Sound Tracks
Radio Africa Online
Radio Mi Amigo Int'l
Nagaswara FM
Schlager Time
iRie Rockers
Tune Disney Radio
SRC FM
Rahva Radio
Splinterwood
Nature Sounds Star Trek Music Creedence Clearwater Revival