Alleycat Player Release Notes (v4a to v4h)

Release notes for v4a (June 29, 2020) -- source

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.
• New sites: Twitch TV, TikTok, Deutsche Welle.
• Updated: InfoWars, LiveLeak, 123Movies, UniqueStream.

Release notes for v4b (August 7, 2020) -- source

• New sites: CPAC (Canada), WatchCartoons, OpenLoadMovies
• Updated: iHeartRadio, C-SPAN, CTV, BBC, VidNode, ClipWatching, MixDrop
• 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 v4c (September 19, 2020) -- source

• Updated: Twitter, Twitch TV, OpenLoadMovies, MixDrop
• 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 v4d (December 13, 2020) -- source

• New sites added: BrandNewTube, Rumble, Epoch Times, Lunchflix, GoMovies, Aparat, StreamTape, Vidia, RadioNet.
• Updated: LiveLeak, Facebook, Periscope, TikTok, BBC, MS/NBC, PBS, VidNode, UpStream, VidLox.
• Removed: 123Movies, GoUnlimited, StreamVid, XStream.
• 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.

Release notes for v4e (February 21, 2021) -- source

• Added: Minds, Earth TV, DoodStream
• Removed: PagalMovies, Vidia, Vidlox
• Updated: YouTube, Twitch TV, SoundCloud, CBC, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN (livestream), VidNode, StreamTape
• 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!

Release notes for v4f (February 28, 2021) -- source

• Added: Telegram (won't work with videos that require logging in)
• Updated: Rumble (livestream)
• 123tvnow.com is no longer accessible. The site is using Google Recaptcha to secure the video links. Most of the US Internet TV channels have been restored, some have been removed and some have been added. Many channels are only available at 720p. This isn't good for slow computers or slow Internet. Worse still, I have come across a lot of feeds that are 1080p but I don't include those because they are unworkable (for me anyway).
• Reminder (in case you don't read instructions): a double asterisk next to a channel name indicates that you need the Local Proxy Server in order to view it. A single asterisk means that the channel will work with a CORS unblocker.
• Another remote proxy server has become unavailable. That leaves just two. They're getting harder to find.

These notes are reposted in case you missed them:

• 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.

Release notes for v4g (May 23, 2021) -- source

• Added: Ask4Movie
• Removed: GoMovies, Lunchflix
• LiveLeak changed to ItemFix, Aparat changed to Wolfstream, ClipWatching changed to HighStream
• Updated: Youtube, Rumble, PragerU, SoundCloud, Fox, BBC, Al Jazeera, VidNode, Uniquestream, DoodStream, UpStream
• For VidNode, the m3u8 format is now favoured for playback and the mp4 format is available via the "DLoad" button.
• Internet Radio: The Fringe FM and Tune Disney Radio are currently down.
• Currently down due to a technical problem with Distro TV: Entrepreneur, Field & Stream, MMA Junkie, Lone Star, Popular Science
• Broken US Internet TV channels are fixed. The infamous trio (ustv247.tv, ustvgo.tv, watchnewslive.tv) is back after being geo-restricted to the US. I don't trust this because they also stopped trying to obfuscate the video link. Might be a temporary situation. Also, 123tvnow.com is now 123tv.live and the Google stuff is now gone. Why? Maybe Google kicked them out, Google was too expensive or maybe it caused too many problems.
• Most of the problematic US channels have a backup source. Select "webm" in the format selection box to access the secondary source if the primary source goes down. These channels are indicated with a single plus (+) or a double plus if the two sources are not from the same TV station.
• Special Note if you are using Firefox with the NoScript extension. Due to the most recent Firefox update (version 88.0.1), the page inserts employed by NoScript may cause the video viewers to stop working. The culprit is a "dead object" error involving the brightness control. The failure is rare and I have no idea what triggers it. Just reload the page when this happens. I am hoping that this will be fixed by the next Firefox update.

Release notes for v4h (June 23, 2021) -- source

• Added: Gab TV, TheArchive, XVideos
• Updated: Telegram, BBC, Press TV, VidNode
• The ".com" domain for Press TV got shut down by the U.S. government. The ".ir" domain still works and the relevant links have been updated.
• Major update for Youtube. The "get_video_info" method of getting the video information is gradually being deprecated by Google. A new API is now in use which carries with it some restrictions. Age-gated videos may or may not be playable and the method used to attempt to bypass the age gating may or may not work in the future. Especially important is that the Kraker Local Proxy Server is now needed to access YT videos. This restriction does not apply to the Invidious instances which do not require a proxy. For some videos, the old "get_video_info" method still works to bypass age-gating so, for the time being, that will be invoked if the new API fails. You can use embedded mode to run YT videos by checking "Sandbox" on the control panel (embedding may be disallowed for some videos).

Compatibility notes:

• Alleycat Player works with the following web browsers: Firefox, Waterfox, Google Chrome, Brave, Opera, Torch and Dissenter. Other browsers should work if they conform correctly to the HTML standards.
• Pale Moon does not render the video viewers correctly. This is mainly due to some extra padding in the buttons (6 pixels horizontally and 2 pixels vertically). The text on the buttons is misaligned and several pixels on the right edge of the viewer are drawn under the scroll bar. This cannot be fixed.
• Both Waterfox and Pale Moon draw an ugly horizontal bar inside the range controls of the video control panel. I don't know how this can be removed.
• Firefox version 89 uses a heavy blue focus outline around buttons and input elements. I have corrected for this by specifying "outline:none" in the CSS settings for these controls.
• Epic Privacy Browser and Otter Browser do not work correctly. I have an old version of Microsoft Edge and it has the same issue as Epic (videos blacked out). Otter chokes on the Javascript for some reason.