Forum Discussion

lewashby's avatar
lewashby
Channel Surfer
2 years ago

Developing a personal/private media player

Hi, hew here to the developer forum. For a while I was trying to use a Plex Media server running on TerraMaster, to save time I won't go into the reasons I want to replace Plex for my personal media, but I am looking to replace it. Although I was able to us Roku's My Media and it was able to stream the videos from my TerraMaster Plex server I wasn't able to pause, or rewind, or both, I can't remember for sure, but I would also prefer my own interface that works with the Roku remote. I would like to create my own Roku app that can serve up m own videos, images, music on an interface of my design. I'm currently a php developer and although I'm no expert with htmls/css/javascript I can usually get by. I would like some advice and feedback on getting started and what I'm looking at. How big of a project this will be. Thanks.

Roku Developer Program

9 Replies

  • shansou504's avatar
    shansou504
    Reel Rookie
    20 days ago

    I wrote an app to that does this and can attest it is a huge, huge project. After months of work, my app is fully functional and has all the of the deep linking requirements in order to get it published; however, after a month of no response from the Roku team my app is still stuck waiting to get certification issues resolved. Does anyone know how to pass deep linking certification for an app like Jellyfin or Plex where the user has to input their server in order to get to their content? The deep linking tests seem to assume your content is accessible in a public facing website, which even then I'm sure would have an authentication process the deep linking test is unable to satisfy. Has anyone successfully published an app and gotten past this step in certification?

    • renojim's avatar
      renojim
      Community Streaming Expert
      19 days ago

      I'd probably look for a way around it like hosting a video somewhere and using it for the deep linking test.

      • shansou504's avatar
        shansou504
        Reel Rookie
        19 days ago

        I was able to figure it out doing just that yesterday and everything passed certification. I set the app to default to a separate, static content feed hosted on GitHub. It’s not ideal to have that hard-coded into the app just to fake out a deep linking test, but at least it worked. Thank you for the advice. Surely there’s a better way around this requirement.

  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    2 years ago

    I agree with TwitchBronBron  - that's a huge project, especially for your first one.  Keep in mind that Roku devices can only play back a limited number of formats and there's no way to add any.  If you couldn't pause or rewind or whatever, I assume your Plex server was transcoding your media into something Roku could use.  The Plex channel/app on Roku may work better for you than whatever you were using.

    • lewashby's avatar
      lewashby
      Channel Surfer
      2 years ago

      renojim

      Thanks, I was using the Plex app on my Roku and connecting to my Plex server on my TerraMaster. Both the server and the app say that they're up to date but the back also will no longer connect to the server on the TerraMaster claiming that the server is out of date. But I wanted to ditch Plex for several other reasons as well.

  • TwitchBronBron's avatar
    TwitchBronBron
    Streaming Star
    2 years ago

    That's a pretty big project! I did this exact thing for a while, but it got to be too much. Scraping media metadata and integrating with imdb/tmdb/tvdb is a pain. Writing a Roku app from scratch and integrating with your custom php backend is also a decent lift. 

    I would recommend giving Jellyfin a try. Their entire codebase is open source. So it's easy to submit big fixes or new features. They have a pretty decent server plugin system. And if you really need to deviate outside of that, you could just fork it and publish your own versions of the server or Roku app. 

    • lewashby's avatar
      lewashby
      Channel Surfer
      2 years ago

      TwitchBronBron

       

      Thanks. So will the jellyfin interface/GUI be visible from my Roku TV and I'll be able to use the Roku remote for navigation?

      • TwitchBronBron's avatar
        TwitchBronBron
        Streaming Star
        2 years ago

        That is correct. Think of Jellyfin as an alternative to Plex. You run the Jellyfin server app on the computer that holds your media. Then you install the Jellyfin Roku app to consume the media on your Roku, using your Roku remote. 

         

        But unlike Plex, it's all open source.