Channel Issues & Questions

[WilDD]

New channel available for those who want to play multimedia slideshows

Easy Show allows you to create multimedia slideshows consisting of images, videos, and audio. Share your slideshows with others using Dropbox, Google Drive, or a Web Server. Make changes to the slideshow while it is running by simply adding or removing files. Easy Show also supports USB and UPnP/DLNA.

Easy Show Website: http://wilddtech/show
Easy Show Channel: https://channelstore.roku.com/search/easy+show
Also available from the Roku Channel Store under Personal Media



Roksbox gives you the ability to play your own videos and movies, listen to your own music, and show your own photographs on the Roku Digital Video player. Your media can reside on a Plug and Play device (UPnP/DLNA), your computer's hard drive, on an external drive, on a network attached storage (NAS) device located on your home or local area network, on a USB attached device (on USB equipped models), on Dropbox, or on a HipServ based device.

Roksbox now supports Plug and Play (UPnP/DLNA) devices.

Version 2 screenshots.





Multilevel Video Subcategories now supported
Directory Structure Option - no XML required
USB Support

The documentation is located at http://www.roksbox.com.

To access the private channel, go to https://owner.roku.com/add/CU2SC.

The channel code is: CU2SC

After you enter the channel code, go to the channel store on your Roku player and add the channel.

Stream your media from:

- Plug and Play (UPnP/DLNA)
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- HipServ based devices
- A USB Device
- A NAS Device
- A Web Server


See the documentation at http://www.roksbox.com

Current Features

Videos

* Stream your videos to play on the Roku Digital Video Player
* Use XML files to organize your videos, or have Roksbox use your directory structure
* Stream from a web server, or from the USB port (XR model only)
* Categorize your videos by genre
* Unlimited multilevel subcategories
* Can use your existing video organization scheme, or create a new scheme
* Uses GUI software to organize your videos
* Automatically populates movie information and poster art from internet databases
* Resume playback from where you last left off
* Stream YouTube RSS feeds and videos
* Displays the following information:

Title
Actors
Description/Synopsis
Length (Runtime)
Year Released
Rating
Director
Genre
Poster Art

* Pause/Fast Forward/Rewind

Music

* Stream your music to play on the Roku Digital Video Player
* mp3, aac, flac (USB and http)
* Use XML files to organize your music, or have Roksbox use your directory structure
* Stream from a web server, or from the USB port (XR model only)
* Categorize by Artist/Album
* Create and play Playlists
* Uses GUI software to organize your music
* Automatically populates MP3 ID3 tags and album art
* Shuffle songs
* Turn continuous play on or off
* Bookmark audio for future playback at bookmarked location
* Displays the following information during playback:

Artist Name
Album Name
Song Title
Album Art
Length (Runtime)
Progress Indicator

* Pause/Skip Forware/Skip Backward


Photos

* Create photo slideshows to play on the Roku Digital Video Player
* Use XML files to organize your photos, or have Roksbox use your directory structure
* Stream from a web server, or from the USB port (XR model only)
* Define your own categories and subcategories
* Create your own slideshows
* Uses Gui software to organize your photos
* Shuffle photos
* You decide the amount of time (seconds) to display each photo
* Optionally display captions for each photo
* Pause/Skip Forward/Skip Backward

[scrager]

You may want to get involved in this thread:
http://forums.rokulabs.com/viewtopic.ph ... 7a214fee37

You could probably add to the project by helping wubo incorporate onscreen setup in to the channel so that the channel can be distributed as a private channel instead of through developer mode. His server side is a bit more advanced, but it sounds like your channel side may have some of the features that people are looking for.

[dellsweig]

I like the approach ElWubo took a little better and hope the two ideas can be merged into one.

Issues:

1) my media resides on different drives on my media server. I do not want to have to re-organize my server nor do I want to have to convert ANY of my media. It is what it is.

2) I dont want to expose my media with a web server. I dont mind having a purpose built server with a single port exposed on my NAS. HTML is way too open an interface and coule easily be compromised. With the Python based server approach (elWubo) I have a single client and a very restrictive server. Much better - in my opinion.

3) I like the on screen configuration of this project. I also like having it available as a private channel.

4) For now, I will stick with the elWubo approach - we will see how these evolve

I think you are going to need to supply a small program - GUI based - to generate the users HTML. Most Roku users will have a hard time with this concept let alone actually editing files and creating html. If you want the reach of this channel to extend beyond the active members of these forums you need to consider this.

Just look at some of the questions that get asked in the forums. I think you will have to agree.....

[scrager]

1) my media resides on different drives on my media server. I do not want to have to re-organize my server nor do I want to have to convert ANY of my media. It is what it is.

Unfortunately for video, you will probably have to reconvert. Transcoding certain formats to h264 mp4 on the fly is just way to processor intensive to be feasable. Some audio may be possible, but I think it is going to be a long time before you see it working for video.

2) I dont want to expose my media with a web server. I dont mind having a purpose built server with a single port exposed on my NAS. HTML is way too open an interface and coule easily be compromised. With the Python based server approach (elWubo) I have a single client and a very restrictive server. Much better - in my opinion.

Just so you know, wubo's python server is an http server. If you know the url of the feed you have access to any of the files that the server is sharing. I can see your point that a full blown web server may have more security holes possible, but you could also look at it from this point of view: an open source web server (apache) has millions of users that find bugs and fix them; the python server has maybe a few hundred users and one developer. Security holes may be found but not reported.

Either way, whatever your server, you want to make sure the server is internal to your house and you have a firewall or router in place to protect it from the outside world.

3) I like the on screen configuration of this project. I also like having it available as a private channel.

If wubo got an on screen configuration in to his project, it could be a private channel. I think if we merged the on screen portions of this project with the server portions of wubo's project, it would be a much better product.

[WilDD]

"dellsweig" wrote:
I like the approach ElWubo took a little better and hope the two ideas can be merged into one.

Issues:

1) my media resides on different drives on my media server. I do not want to have to re-organize my server nor do I want to have to convert ANY of my media. It is what it is.

I think with most web servers you can create ailiases which look like a folder under the root of the web server, but they "point" to other devices and folders that can be located somewhere else.

2) I dont want to expose my media with a web server. I dont mind having a purpose built server with a single port exposed on my NAS. HTML is way too open an interface and coule easily be compromised. With the Python based server approach (elWubo) I have a single client and a very restrictive server. Much better - in my opinion.

Python is a web server. I don't believe there is any way to stream media files to the Roku player without using a web server. Roksbox will work with Python or any other web server. I'm using Roksbox on a NAS with an embedded web server.

3) I like the on screen configuration of this project. I also like having it available as a private channel.

4) For now, I will stick with the elWubo approach - we will see how these evolve

I think you are going to need to supply a small program - GUI based - to generate the users HTML. Most Roku users will have a hard time with this concept let alone actually editing files and creating html. If you want the reach of this channel to extend beyond the active members of these forums you need to consider this.

I guess you're referring to editing the config file to get Mongoose set up. I can see where that could be a little confusing to the average user, but Roksbox doesn't require Mongoose, it will work with any web server, including Python. I thought Mongoose was fairly easy to install, so that is why it's used in the tutorial. I don't know what you mean by creating html - Roksbox doesn't require any html code. It uses only GUI programs to generate XML files. The user doesn't need to know anything about html or XML.

Just look at some of the questions that get asked in the forums. I think you will have to agree.....

I haven't had a chance to look at the other forum, but by the lenght of it, it looks like a lot of people are having a lot of fun there.

[el_wubo]

If you'd like to join the fun, I'd welcome patches to the client code to move more of the configuration there. If you're a git user just fork the github page and let me know when you have something for me to pull.

All the best!

http://github.com/netguy204/roku_media_server

[ashes00]

The channel looks nice on my roku. I am trying it out to see all the features

-Ash

[WilDD]

The music documentation is now on the wiki site (http://roksbox.wikispaces.com/Tutorial).

[WilDD]

ashes00 and anyone else - post messages here if you have any questions of problems. Once you get things set up on the server side (your configuration), the results on the Roku side will be worth the effort.

I am also looking for suggestions on how to make things better and easier. If you already use some media organization software, I might be able to make it work with Roksbox. Let me know what you use, and I'll check it out. The more software we can make work, the more options people will have, and the more versatile it will be.

Also, I am looking for Linux and OSX users who would like to help out. I already have one OSX volunteer.

[ashes00]

WilDD: I have read through entier tutorial, and have to say you are very descriptive, Great job! I know i could get this up and running with my technical level. However this is not very simple for most people to use. Having to install mutiple apps to build the multipl xml files each time a new files is added to a libray is very repetitive. I bet it works like a champ after its been setup. I am always adding more media field to my libray, so it would be a large pain to have to create xml files everytime. Automation needed

Something to think about would be, possibly working with someone that could code a GUI to work with an exisiting CLI app for this xml creation. Even better have it run from the DVP client, so its an easy Update video libray button from the DVP client. Regarless i am very impressed with what you have done here. I agree with others, that if you work with el.Wubo & others this could become something amazing that is easy for everyone to setup and use. Take care

-Ash