Forum Discussion

renojim's avatar
renojim
Community Streaming Expert
9 years ago

Use ECP or port 8080 to change channels on RokuTV

So I saw this thread in the general forum and it occurred to me that it would be awesome if you could send the Roku TV to a particular OTA channel using ECP or one of the port 8080 press commands. Then belltown could update his great What's On channel to be an interactive program guide that one could browse and then go directly to the desired OTA channel with the press of a button. There's press *t to go to the tuner, but it doesn't look like you can specify a channel and I didn't see anything in the ECP documentation that would help. Did I miss something?

-JT
Roku Developer Program

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  • belltown's avatar
    belltown
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    "renojim" wrote:
    So I saw this thread in the general forum and it occurred to me that it would be awesome if you could send the Roku TV to a particular OTA channel using ECP or one of the port 8080 press commands. Then belltown could update his great What's On channel to be an interactive program guide that one could browse and then go directly to the desired OTA channel with the press of a button. There's press *t to go to the tuner, but it doesn't look like you can specify a channel and I didn't see anything in the ECP documentation that would help. Did I miss something?

    -JT

    Definitely a possibility if there's a way to ECP to a Roku TV channel, although you'd still need a way to map the channel identifiers that What's On uses to the channel ids used by the Roku TV.
  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    It was proposed earlier, yet to hear a comment https://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=93039
    It would have to be "tvinput.dtv" being amenable to ECP /input

    "renojim" wrote:
    There's press *t to go to the tuner, but it doesn't look like you can specify a channel

    Wait... "press *t" - where does that come from?
  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    9 years ago
    if you telnet to port 8080 and then enter press, you'll see a list of available commands.

    -JT
  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    9 years ago
    Just found roTuner. I really need to read those release notes more often. I haven't played with it, but it seems like it would be trivial to create an EPG "channel". It should probably be part of the Roku TV built-in apps.

    I'm not having any luck at getting any program data out of it (roProgramData.GetNowNextPrograms() gives "member function not found"), but it looks promising.

    -JT
  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    "renojim" wrote:
    if you telnet to port 8080 and then enter press, you'll see a list of available commands.

    >press
    h          Home
    u          Up
    d          Down
    r          Right
    l          Left
    s          Select
    f,>        Fwd
    b,<        Rev
    p          Play
    y          InstantReplay
    i          Info
    k          Back
    =          Backspace
    o          PlayOnly
    t          Stop
    e          Enter
    a          A
    c          B
    n          Closed Caption
    ?          Search
    [          Volume Down
    ]          Volume Up
    \          Volume Mute
    ~          Input Source
    `          Input Source Prev
    *123vt     Input HDMI1-3, AV, Tuner
    x1-x9      Partner1 - Partner9
    xA-xN      Partner10 - Partner23
    !          Power
    @          PowerOn
    #          PowerOff
    .ibmfwrec  change source type: i=IR,b=BT,m=MHL,f=FP,
                                   w=WD(Wifi),r=IR_RF(T3),
                                   e=ECP,c=CEC
                                   The default is IR

    Wow that is new! It was not there before.
    Man, Roku is like treasure hunt - ostensibly more challenging than http://www.pythonchallenge.com/index.php

    A tune-to-number command there won't be of help though, 8080 is only active for developer mode'd devices. Nor will roTuner be of help. Instead, it's the "tvinput.dtv" (pseudo)app that should be made receptive to ECP /keypress. Keypress and not /input because that way all remote apps with keyboard support (and http://remoku.tv ) "suddenly" could be used to dial RokuTV channel#. "'Tis a miracle". Or maybe the Co has done that already and holding back?
  • RokuKC's avatar
    RokuKC
    Roku Employee
    9 years ago
    Use of the debug server 'press' command is not a supported technique for production purposes.

    Some relevant documentation has just been added regarding ECP support on Roku TV devices.

    On Roku TV, you can launch the TV input UI using the ECP launch command. For example launch/tvinput.dtv, launch/tvinput.hdmi1, etc.
    https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/External+Control+Guide#ExternalControlGuide-launch/appID

    You can also use the ECP keypress command in some cases, e.g. keypress/InputTuner, keypress/InputHDMI1, etc.
    https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/External+Control+Guide#ExternalControlGuide-KeypressKeyValues

    To launch the TV input UI tuned to a particular TV channel, you can use launch/tvinput.dtv&ch=<CHANNEL_NUMBER>.
    https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/External+Control+Guide#ExternalControlGuide-launch/tvinput.dtv

    You can query the list of available TV channels using query/tv-channels.
    https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/External+Control+Guide#ExternalControlGuide-query/tv-channels
    https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/External+Control+Guide#ExternalControlGuide-query/tv-channelsExample
  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    OTA channel info is interesting!
    Which firmware do these ECP extensions for RokuTV apply to? 7.0, 7.1 ...

    Also, i don't see the ability to change channel while inside tvinput.dtv by punching digits ?
    The one thing people have been asking for?
  • RokuKC's avatar
    RokuKC
    Roku Employee
    9 years ago
    "EnTerr" wrote:
    OTA channel info is interesting!
    Which firmware do these ECP extensions for RokuTV apply to? 7.0, 7.1 ...


    It applies to all Roku TV releases.

    "EnTerr" wrote:

    Also, i don't see the ability to change channel while inside tvinput.dtv by punching digits ?
    The one thing people have been asking for?


    I'm not sure if you are talking about a proposed UI feature, or the ECP feature.
    The ECP launch command can be used to change TV channel while inside tvinput.dtv.

    (The ECP input command can be used as well).
  • EnTerr's avatar
    EnTerr
    Roku Guru
    9 years ago
    "RokuKC" wrote:
    "EnTerr" wrote:
    Also, i don't see the ability to change channel while inside tvinput.dtv by punching digits ?
    The one thing people have been asking for?
    I'm not sure if you are talking about a proposed UI feature, or the ECP feature.

    It doesn't matter! 🙂
    Ok, so it matters a little, i'll get into that - but the thing people were asking was to be able to "dial" into a channel by punching numbers. Regardless if on universal IR remote or/and on remote app - they'll take it either way.

    So yes, (A) best case scenario would be if there is a UI element to it, where digits input into RokuTV will show up - and a long pause (or Enter) the tvinput.dtv will switch to that channel. Just like regular TV or satellite/cable box reacts to IR remote. Notice i haven't mentioned "ECP" in this paragraph - it should as well work with the IR digit codes of the respective manufacturers (i believe RokuTV listens for different IR codes for TCL vs Hisense - and i presume it's from their customary "code page" - at least it's not the same codes as Roku boxes use). So, in a perfect world any kind of input will do - both taking advantage of universal IR remote numpad, as well as ECP. Or HDMI CEC, if there were MHL stick with a tuner.

    (B) The minimum use case is for tvinput.dtv to just do that for /keypress/Lit_[0-9.]|Enter , w/o any UI element. Easy-peasy. And the beauty of it - again - is that nobody will need to update their remote app for this to work! Let's go with an example, a popular J/S remote: http://remoku.tv/ being able to "dial" channel# as-is, w/o any changes to the site.

    Just like the beauty of the "apps" tvinput.dtv, tvinput.hdmi1, tvinput.hdmi2 that suddenly appeared in /query/apps and magically started to work in my remote app! I never extolled the elegance of this - but yes! - it is clever, works well and hurt nobody. Praises to whomever came with it! I was double happy - that my app did not crap out because of the new type of entry AND because it suddenly could control RokuTV inputs! "Magic!" 🙂 And so could ECP (and later IR) dial by channel# - sans need to explicitly document even.

    The minimum case (B) might be a stepping stone towards the full, "best case" implementation (A). Or not. That's why i said "it doesn't matter". It can be incremental thing (or not).

    The ECP launch command can be used to change TV channel while inside tvinput.dtv.
    Ha! Well that's new. The behavior of ECP i know is that /launch/FOO gets wholesale ignored if FOO is already running.

    (The ECP input command can be used as well).
    This is news too. Undocumented but i'll take it 8-)
  • renojim's avatar
    renojim
    Community Streaming Expert
    9 years ago
    This is all good news! So RokuKC, any idea why GetNowNextPrograms() doesn't seem to work? I can see a great opportunity for Roku: utilize the OTA EPG with a "guide" channel, RMP, and a USB drive and you've got a DVR. Tell me a smart TV with basically a free DVR wouldn't be a hit among cord cutters.

    -JT