"belltown" wrote:
I'm not sure what happens with memory though.
I'm pretty well convinced that the following is close to true.
The built in components have their own bucket of memory and its - A. Bigger then a given device's 2D API graphic memory( an arbitrary amount decided by the firmware designers) and B. Separate from the graphic memory. I say this because I've built a 2D version of roGridScreen and it can't handle the same # of thumbnails that the the built-in component does on the same low-memory-box like a 2XS - and theres no other explanation - same box, same thumbnails, and basically the same code approach (i.e. no other bitmaps sucking up memory). Also the 2D memory is "shared" with the video decoding memory - something the built-in components don't (i'm guessing) have to deal with.
The 2D API wasnt added so we could build actually nice looking UI's that weren't hampered by the built-in components restrictions - it was added because someone at Roku wanted to make the Roku a "game" platform. Of course as it turns out, the 2D API is actually better suited to UI's then games because of the all the hardware restrictions the Roku has ( CPU
and RAM
and openGL etc.) so it's still the red-headed stepchild, and no one has bothered to fix the glaring flaws mentioned in this thread, but hopefully they will, and realize that its the future of the Roku UI and actually (gasp)
improve it.
