Install (Fixed) SopCast Player In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat (With VLC 1.1.x)

Update: A new PPA comes with fixed Ubuntu 10.10 Linux Sopcast Player packages so use that instead of this manual fix.

SopCast Player is a Linux GUI front-end for the p2p streaming technology developed by SopCast. SopCast can play various TV channels online (watch football games, HBO, AXN Movie and so on) for free. Besides the default channel list, you can find many more (local or international) channels by simply searching Google.

The Linux SopCast Player doesn't start in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat - if you try to run it, you'll get an error like this:

andrei@andrei-desktop:~$ sopcast-player
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/sopcast-player/lib/sopcast-player.py", line 1783, in 
pySop = pySopCast()
File "/usr/share/sopcast-player/lib/sopcast-player.py", line 371, in __init__
self.vlc = VLCWidget.VLCWidget(*p)
File "/usr/share/sopcast-player/lib/VLCWidget.py", line 28, in __init__
self.player=instance.mediacontrol_new_from_instance()
AttributeError: 'Instance' object has no attribute 'mediacontrol_new_from_instance'

But thanks to a fix by ilabor, you can easily get Linux Sopcast Player to start in Ubuntu 10.10 (with VLC 1.1.x).

To use Linux SopCast Player in Ubuntu 10.10 (or in Ubuntu 10.04 - if you're using VLC 1.1.x), firstly download and install Sopcast Player and its dependencies:

• 32bit: libstdc++5, sp-auth, sopcast-player
• 64bit: sp-auth, sopcast-player. If you get an error about a missing lib32stdc++ dependency (only if you get such an error!), install lib32stdc++5 too. If it still doesn't work, there's nothing I can do as this package seems to create some issues on 64bit (but it works just fine on 32bit).

Please note that the libstdc++5 download started quite slowly for me but the download eventually worked so that might be the case for you too.

Once you've installed the above packages for your architecture, use the following commands to apply the fix:

sudo apt-get install unzip
cd && wget http://www.mattrudge.net/files/sopcast-player_vlc1.1x-fix.zip
unzip sopcast-player_vlc1.1x-fix.zip
sudo mv vlc.py /usr/share/sopcast-player/lib/
sudo mv VLCWidget.py /usr/share/sopcast-player/lib/

At this point, SopCast player should start (if it doesn't, reinstall it) but the "show controls" and fullscreen don't work. To fix this too, in the Preferences, on the "Player" tab, select "Use External Player" and under "Command" enter "vlc" (without the quotes).

Update: A new PPA comes with fixed Ubuntu 10.10 Linux Sopcast Player packages so use that instead of this manual fix.

Thanks to somloirichard.hu for the info and ilabor for the fix!