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ammoun's avatar
ammoun
Visitor
10 years ago

Working on my first channel

Hi everyone,

I'm about to start working on a private channel and I had a couple of questions please.

I know how to get to the SDK, documentation and all other resources, but I thought if some people could suggest ideas that could save me some time.

So the concept is this, I have about 20 Http live feeds, and I would like to watch them from Roku. The only concern is that, the channel links are not static. So I have to ping a server that sends me these http streams.

So I need to refresh the feed once I open the Roku channel, and then every time I switch between feeds inside the Roku channel. I hope that this make sense.

If you ever came across anything similar, please feel free to give your thought even concepts that you may know I wouldn't recognize for now. For example I saw in the examples a way to put the feeds in an XML file, what if my streams links are dynamically generated. Also is there something like an internal change event that I listen to that gets triggered when I switch between streams inside the Roku channel?

Thank you!
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2 Replies

  • ammoun's avatar
    ammoun
    Visitor
    10 years ago
    If this is not the best place to seek advice, please let me know. Thank you
  • belltown's avatar
    belltown
    Roku Guru
    10 years ago
    "ammoun" wrote:
    I have about 20 Http live feeds, and I would like to watch them from Roku. The only concern is that, the channel links are not static. So I have to ping a server that sends me these http streams.

    So I need to refresh the feed once I open the Roku channel, and then every time I switch between feeds inside the Roku channel.

    Usually that kind of thing is handled in the server using HTTP redirects. Each of your 20 live feeds would be assigned a fixed url. The server, upon receiving a request for a particular fixed url, would respond with an HTTP 302 (Moved Temporarily) redirect containing the current url for that particular feed.

    Your Roku channel would just specify the fixed feed urls, and the Roku OS would handle the redirection automatically, so there would be no need to refresh the feed, "ping" the server, or listen for any kind of change event. You'd just write a standard Roku feed-playing channel, and whenever your feeds' url change, your server administrator would change the redirection url in the server.