Howto: Slingplayer on Your Aspire One

It struck me that it would be really great to be able to use my Slingbox from my Acer when on the road. Slingplayer on Linux has been covered quite comprehensively in other places at this stage but I just wanted to let you all know that Slingplayer runs without any real issue on the Acer Aspire One 8GB Linux version under the Windows emulation software wine. I am using the xfce desktop but I can see no reason for this not to work on the default desktop too in advanced mode.

Here are the steps I took.

1. If you don't already have it, install wine.

Code:

sudo yum install wine

2. Run winecfg to create your wine environment

Code:

winecfg

4. Close the wine configuration window - we will return to customise it later.

5. Download Slingplayer for your location from http://www.slingmedia.com and save it to your desktop.

6. Download dependencies files Slingplayer requires to run under wine from here and extract the files to a folder on your desktop.

7. Using file manager open the folder you created in the previous step and copy all the Dll files and paste them in your /home/user/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32 folder choosing to overwrite system files.

8. While still in the system32 folder choose the Terminal option from the File menu in your file manager and issue the following command to register the dll files you just added.

Code:

wine regsrv32.exe msxml3.dll qcap.dll quartz.dll

Leave your terminal window open. We will use it again in a minute.

9. Open winecfg again as you did in step 2 and click on the Libraries tab.and add the following overrides. gdiplus.dll, msxml3.dl quartz.dll. Select gdiplus.dll, click edit and set it to native only. Do the same for msxml3.dll. Click 'Apply' at the bottom of the winecfg window.

10. Click on the Audio tab at the top of the winecfg winodw and select to use the ALSA driver only. Set the Hardware Acceleration option to Emulation, the Default Sample Rate to 22050 and the Default Bits per Sample to 8. Check the Driver Emulation checkbox. Click apply

11. Click the Graphics tab and check the following boxes only. Allow the window manager to decorate the window, Allow the windows manager to control the windows and Enable a virtual desktop. Enter 1024 and 760 in the Desktop size boxes. In the Vertex shader support options choose Hardware and check the box for Allow pixel shader (if supported by hardware).. Click OK to exit winecfg.

12. Now we can install Slingplayer. Go back to your terminal window and change your working directory to your desktop with

Code:

cd /home/user/Desktop

Then issue the following command to launch the installer.

Code:

wine slingplayerinstallerfile.exe

where slingplayerinstallerfile.exe is the name of the setup file you downloaded from http://www.slingmedia.com. Go through the installation wizard just as you would in Windows and when the installer asks you to install Wiindows Media 9 conponents do so. Complete the installation. When the installation completes it will ask you to restart Windows. Choose to do so. Slingplayer should eventually launch but if it doesn't after a couple of minutes, close the installer window and launch slingplayer using the following command from Terminal.

Code:

wine /home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Sling\ Media/SlingPlayer/SlingPlayer.exe

13. All going well Slingplayer should launch and locate your Slingbox which you can add but before viewing you need to click on the Player menu and then choose Preferences and ensure the 2 VRM9 checkboxes are checked.

14. You may now click the Play button and start streaming. I got a notice informing me that I needed to update the firmware in my Slingbox and finding that I could not continue streaming without doing so, I did without issue.

15. One final optional step eanbles you to add a shortcut to launch Slingplayer to your main menu in the Other submenu. Open up winecfg and add your slingplayer executible to the applications list.

Happy viewing.

 

As a Slingbox user on both PC and iPod platforms I though this would be great for recently acquired AA1. I'm pretty much a newbie at Linux, but have successfully installed Skype, Gimp etc, but this is my first foray into Wine. I'm still running the Acer UI with minor tweeks, Linux, SSD expanded to 14G. I see this Howto has been here for about a year with no comments - does this imply no-one else has tried it or everyone gets this working first time?

however ... It didnt work for me

The following steps caused issues:

Step 8

I got the following msg (note this is copied by eye so might have typos)

wine regsvr32.exe msxml3.dll qcap.dll quartz.dll
Successfully registered DLL msxml3.dll
ALS lib conf.c:3949: (snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters 0
ALS lib control.c:3949: (snd_ctl_open_noupdate) Invalid CTL default:0
Successfully registered DLL qcap.dll
Successfully registered DLL quartz.dll

(also note the typo in the given instructions "regsrv" - "regsvr" (well, at least on my install it was a typo))

Step 9
The "Add", "Edit" and "Remove" control buttons are greyed out in the Libraries Tab of winecfg, so cannot complete this step.

Step 12
Tried this regardless of above issues and received a huge error / abort list including:
fixme:advapi:CheckTokenMembership ((nil) 0x125c18 0x33fe04) stub!
errle:OLEPictureImpl_LoadPNG Trying to load PNG picture, but PNG supported not compiled in.
errle:OLEPictureImpl_LoadPNG Trying to load PNG picture, but PNG supported not compiled in.
.....
wine: Call from 0x7ee2efd0 to unimplemented function winhttp.dll.WinHttpOpen, aborting
wine: Unimplemented function winhttp.dll.WinHttpOpen called at address 0x7ee2efd0 (thread 000e), starting debugger...
Unhandled exception: unimplemented function winhttp.dll.WinHttpOpen called in 32-bit code (0x7ee2f052).
Register dump:
......
Stack dump:
......
wine: Call from 0x7ee2efd0 to unimplemented function winhttp.dll.WinHttpOpenRequest, aborting
....

Questions
1) Is this script still valid - I see it is now aver a year old?
2) Are the "ALS....." "error messages" from step 8 significant?
3) Is there some assumption that Wine had been previously set up and working?
4) Is there a setting to restore solid normal use for "Add".... to Libraries tab in winecfg?
5) Is step 12 dependent on successful previous steps?
Many thanks in advance

 

I've got slinplayer working by following these scripts (on ubuntu) here:

http://www.slingcommunity.com/group/dis ... ipt-1.0xb/