As much as what SiriusXM does behind the scenes ever makes sense, it would appear that the WMA streams have been fixed. XMTuner works again – as well as it did before; Bearing in mind the channel lineup changes have heavily affected XM subscribers – with many channels no longer playable before this latest issue.

If this stays resolved, i’ll pick back up with development of a “fix” release for the channel lineup changes – though I doubt it’ll be perfect (especially for XM, Sirius may be easier)

As many of you are starting to notice, SiriusXM has either pulled the WMA based streams from their legacy player that XMTuner (and other 3rd party solutions) use or there’s a technological failure on their side causing things not to work. This affects all channels.

There’s nothing that can be done except to wait and see what the outcome is. If they have pulled the streams, there’s nothing to do. If its just a systems glitch, then things will go back to “normal” once its resolved.

As many of you are now aware, XMTuner has been partially broken by the recent channel lineup changes that SiriusXM made. The reason seems to be that the legacy player that XMTuner is dependent on, does not provide the updated lineup – so XMTuner isn’t able to get an updated list and adapt as gracefully as I imagined it would. I’m not yet aware of what is involved in fixing XMTuner, so I’ll have to take a look and see. This will happen early this coming week.

I know I haven’t been as responsive to XMTuner-related inquiries. This occurred at a particularly bad time for me, as I’m a full-time student and this is final exam week. So I’ve had no time to devote to investigating.  I should also point out, that despite the way it may appear, there is not a development “team” working on XMTuner. It is not supported by a business of any-type, this is a project I took on with a friend (who has since largely moved on, as the project evolved) in my free time. Many of the recent e-mails I’ve received have implied that they think I have a large amount of resources or that they are talking to a software development company – which is not that case. The contact form goes to me personally and I do read all e-mail I receive.

So, this post is mainly to answer the question “Will there be an update to XMTuner?”  The answer is “maybe.”  I plan to take a look and see what’s going on and to try to fix it, and if I can, I’ll release an XMTuner 0.6.4 (with the program guide fix and a couple of other high-priority items as well). I’ll post again with the outcome once I have it.

Its been mentioned that XMTuner is showing (at 30 second intervals or so..) an error about updating program guide information. This is known. SiriusXM has changed the page on their website (or reconfigured how their redirects are being handled) which made the guide data no longer available where XMTuner expects it. This will be fixed in a future release.

Why a future release? What’s broken without it?  Honestly, its not particularly major breakage, it only affects program guide information (i.e. what shows are being aired when from the website, e.g. “12am-6am Maximum Music on 60s on 6”) and XMTuner can operate just fine without the information loaded. This error is not related to any issues with “What’s On” information which is loaded seperately and maintains current artist/title/album detail for music channels and so forth.

Why is the song information slow then?  Ask SiriusXM.  XMTuner uses the feed that the old xmradio online player used, which also powered the now playing information on the xmradio website.  Sirius had no equivalent feed, their player got metadata from the channel stream (using windows media captions) which only worked for the current playing channel. This feed was maintained from the old xmradio.com website to the new website but as of late is frequently out of date, for reasons unknown. The new player on siriusxm.com seems to get its data separately, but the website is also often behind as well.  I’ve also noticed issues with SiriusXM’s official app for the iPod Touch, so hopefully they’ll get it resolved in the future. XMTuner checks this feed for updated information unconditionally every 30 seconds as long as the server is running, and will show errors if that feed fails to load.

Hope that helps clear up the status of things

– Chris

As many of you noticed, XMTuner 0.6.2 failed completely when logging into Sirius accounts. Sorry about that.

XMTuner 0.6.3 has been released which resolves this issue, along with fixing the missing channel logos and details for all users. Additionally, as a bonus, a long-standing bug with Sirius 800-series channels failing to be able to play has been resolved.

This should resolve the situation with the new player, for now, until the next time SiriusXM chooses to change things. If you have any problems, please remember you can always send me an e-mail for help.

To get the update, click update in XMTuner or download it from the website.

– Chris

Its been brought to my attention that XMTuner 0.6.2 does not work with Sirius accounts, (bad user name and password) as I don’t personally have a Sirius account to test with I am unable to resolve the issues that Sirius users are facing.

If anybody with a Sirius account would be willing to come forward to help out, please send me an email.

XMTuner 0.6.2 is now available, it’s a patch release, working around the significant changes that the new SiriusXM player introduced to the world today. You can get it from the website or clicking update in XMTuner.

This release has at least one major known issue: Channel Icons don’t work. Don’t be surprised to see the default Satelite icon in places where normally there’d be SiriusXM provided graphics. This release focuses on restoring basic functionality, anything beyond that that happened to work is a plus.

The player changes that happened today are major. I can’t overstate that enough. All of the previous player has pretty much been replaced, including how it works (its now Adobe Flash based) and even, it would appear, what the stream type it provides is (XTMP). XMTuner 0.6.2 is a patch, it seems to work, but may be broken again by SiriusXM at any time as they continue to migrate their systems to this new player.

If you encounter any issues related to this release, please let me know, and I’ll try to see what can be done about it.

On Feburary 4th, 2011, SiriusXM merged their websites into a new common website at siriusxm.com and launched a completely new online player, based on Adobe Flash.

This has broken XMTuner. I’m aware of the issue and am working to find a way to get things back up and running.

Watch this space for updates.

XMTuner 0.6.1 is a bugfix release for XMTuner 0.6. This fixes the login error experienced by XM users after changes to the XMRO login page.

For details: http://www.xmtuner.net/releases/0.6.1

Get it now from either the check for updates button in the application or download it here…

I have been made aware of issues XMTuner users are experiencing today, Monday, November 8th, 2010, when trying to use XMTuner to login into their XM Radio Online account.

If you are being greeted by the error message “Login Failed: Bad User Name or Password”, this post applies to you.

The problem is because of changes made by SiriusXM with regard to how they handle password encryption for XM Radio Online subscribers.Which unfortunately causes XMTuner to fail to be able to login to XMRO.

I am not aware of any changes for Sirius Internet Radio customers, if anybody is having issues with Sirius, please contact me immediately.

XMTuner 0.6.1 will be released to fix this issue by tomorrow morning.An announcement will be posted here when its available.