Roku Developer Program

[renojim]

"mikebdoss" wrote:

"cptdondo" wrote:
Is it possible to run MyMedia without being connected to the internet? I have a mobile platform, and my internet connection is not always available. I need to be able to start and run the app without being connected to the internet.

MyMedia works fine without an internet connection, as long as your local network is up and running.

The only problem you could have is with the rendezvous, which requires an Internet connection. If your server's IP address changes, you will have to go into the settings on the channel to manually configure the IP address. If your server's IP address never changes then you should be fine.

-JT

[Anonymous]

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[renojim]

Anything that can run Python should be able to run the server. I'm running it on a Seagate Dockstar which I believe has 128MB of RAM and a Marvell processor of some sort.

-JT

[dgrace]

An odd thing I saw last evening. I have just recently been using Handbrake to convert movies for watching on my Roku. When finished with one last night the Viewed Date showing below the icon was a day off. Where does that come from?

[renojim]

The date/time is in the GMT timezone since when this project was started there wasn't any way to set the timezone of the box. I'll have to check to see if I convert to local time in v2.0.

-JT

[dgrace]

Back to weirdness and shuffling music. You may remember that long ago mymedia just stopped shuffling for me. You and I tried lots of things, then it began working again, with no obvious one thing to account for it. Well it started up with that again. I replaced the entire server side, removed album art from an artist (didn't help), found that I could directly play anything I wanted, then if I'd go back a level, could use the Play All button, then would try the Shuffle All and that would work. I'd try another artist folder, no shuffle. What I did do last and now its working, was to go into the Settings screen and change the Autorun subfolders in mymusic to YES and now its working as designed. Just wanted to pass this along for you digestion (or indigestion, as it may be).

[renojim]

I'd have to go back to the previous version to check the code, but I thought the "autoplay subfolders" setting wasn't used at all when shuffling. I've been using the v2.0 beta for quite a while now and that setting has been completely removed since it really isn't necessary.

-JT

[jambalaya]

First of all, congratulations on a beautifully simple media playback solution for the Roku! I already own an Apple TV hooked up to my HDTV, but I purchased a Roku 2 XS because I still needed composite video-out for my older TV's (showstopper for Apple TV). Anyway, very pleased to see my mp3/mp4 iTunes collection playing back as-is now through the Roku. The Roku and Apple sit side-by-side on the home theater shelf and look like twins.

I have one installation improvement suggestion (on Windows) - the standard Python 2.6 install associates python.exe with .py files, but also pythonw.exe with .pyw (the windowless version of python). So the best way to auto-launch a hidden version of python is to rename mymedia.py to mymedia.pyw, and create a shortcut to it in the startup folder. No need for the supplied .bat and .vbs launcher files. The shortcut also (by default) ensures the startup folder is the server folder (where mymedia.pyw lives).

And I have one support request. When you purchase iTunes music nowdays it is in unprotected .m4a format (which is actually just an AAC audio-only mp4 file). I verified this morning that Roku USB Media Player recognizes the .m4a extension and plays it correctly from a USB stick (including parsing the album/artist info), so this is a native Roku playback format (i.e. no need for transcoding because Roku natively supports AAC). It would be awesome if MyMedia would recognize .m4a file extension (it currently rejects them). Hopefully this is a configuration change somewhere?

Cheers

[renojim]

"jambalaya" wrote:
... So the best way to auto-launch a hidden version of python is to rename mymedia.py to mymedia.pyw, and create a shortcut to it in the startup folder.

That's a good suggestion. I never knew about pythonw.exe or .pyw files, but I never claimed to be a Python expert.

"jambalaya" wrote:
And I have one support request. When you purchase iTunes music nowdays it is in unprotected .m4a format (which is actually just an AAC audio-only mp4 file). I verified this morning that Roku USB Media Player recognizes the .m4a extension and plays it correctly from a USB stick (including parsing the album/artist info), so this is a native Roku playback format (i.e. no need for transcoding because Roku natively supports AAC). It would be awesome if MyMedia would recognize .m4a file extension (it currently rejects them). Hopefully this is a configuration change somewhere?

This one's a little tougher. The documentation does not mention .m4a as being a supported format. Is that the same thing as .mka? It does say, These formats available over usb only: "mkv", "mka","mks", so it may be that .m4a is only supported over USB.

-JT

[jambalaya]

"renojim" wrote:
This one's a little tougher. The documentation does not mention .m4a as being a supported format. Is that the same thing as .mka?
-JT

Actually a .m4a is literally a .mp4 (except with no video track). I was able to successfully play a .m4a in MyMedia by copying it from the music folder to the video folder and renaming the extension to .mp4. You get a black video of course but the audio plays just fine. So it seems it would be a small tweak to get these files recognised as music rather than video. The Wife buys a couple of iTunes songs a week so it would be really great to have .m4a's played in situ in the music folder.

Thanks JT
-JB