Forum Discussion

tvamsi's avatar
tvamsi
Newbie
3 years ago

The Options/Star remote control button doesn't work in Amazon Prime Video

The guidelines published at https://developer.roku.com/docs/developer-program/design/masterui.md#staroptions-button don't seem to be honoured while in video playback in the Amazon Prime Video channel. The star button simply does nothing. It should bring up the closed-captioning/language options like in other channels but this channel seems to have had to implement a convoluted and annoying set of steps to do the same thing.

Is this a failure in the Roku UI system or should I contact Amazon (if it should have been implemented according to standard by the channel's developer)?

Thank you.

Best regards.

Vamsi.

1 Reply

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  • AvsGunnar's avatar
    AvsGunnar
    Community Streaming Expert
    3 years ago

    tvamsi 

    The buttons are not universal in the different channels/apps.  The developers of the channels/apps can assign different features to any of the available buttons.

    The instructions (* button) are for the Roku UI and are integrated with the Roku Channel.  Of course, the developers are free to use this mapping as well in their channel/app development, but they do not have to.  Additionally, it is mentioned in those developer docs that developers are restricted from using the * button "during video playback".  Reserved for the Roku UI. (cannot be used for another feature/action).

    • Do not design your channel to use the Star/Option button during video playback.

    For Prime Video, in order to get to the closed captioning, you need to press the Down arrow to bring up a Menu Info Overlay, and then use the Up and Right arrows to select Subtitles.

    Some other channels/apps use a similar procedure to toggle this Menu overlay.

    In this manner, they can override the Roku defaults during the channel/app usage without affecting the actual default Roku defaults in the UI, thus affecting other channels/apps.