Discussions

[TheBatGirl]

...then there's the samsung tv w/built-in roku app - the samsung remote has buttons, but the roku app doesn't see them... more useless

[dubob]

I recently bought a Hisense Roku TV from Walmart because of the price, and I have had good service from my standard Hisense bedroom TV.  I had never experienced a Roku set before this purchase.  I absolutely 100% guarantee you that it will be my last ever purchase of a Roku TV.

I read all the excuses in this thread about why there aren’t any number buttons for instant channel selection instead of endless scrolling to get from one channel to another.  And to be brutally honest with you, they are all BS in my opinion.  I am going to put the POS Roku I just bought on my local digital classified ads website and get rid of it as soon as I can find a **bleep** willing to put up with the Roku nonsense.

As a retired electronic engineer, I am truly baffled by the incompetence of the Roku design staff that left the number buttons out of the functionality of the TV and its remote.  I will never recommend the purchase of a Roku to anyone and will do my best to discourage them from doing so.

[packetrat]

I'm an engineer too, and have a sneaking suspicion that Roku products were not exactly designed for people like us, frustrating as that is.

Wanting to minimize button-count on the bundled remote makes sense on some level, but they should have at least

1. offered an optional, larger remote that included direct digit entry
2. made this an option in the Roku smartphone app that can be used as a remote
3. Or, if nothing else, at least coded the tuner app (Local TV / Antenna) to respond to digit events sent via ECP protocol, so we could make our own apps to meet this need

On point 3, "typing" in a channel number via ECP, e.g. trying to reach local 30.1 with

for k in 3 0 . 1 ; do curl -d '' http://roku-ipaddr:8060/keypress/Lit_$k ; done

will show it on the screen, but the tuner app simply ignores that provided number. Maybe they're some trick I don't know about for getting it to work.

I remember finding one of my installed apps, a rare one using channel numbers, actually would respond to numbers provided this way, but it's been months now and I can't remember which - maybe Pluto TV?

[renojim]

@dubob, it's not just Roku TVs that come with remotes with no buttons.  The Samsung "smart" TV I recently obtained has a remote very similar to Roku's.  I never thought I'd have to ask about what kind of remote a TV came with before purchasing it.

[TDDN]

@ChippyTech Seems like BS.  The main reason to have numbers is to navigate to a channel without having to scroll 1-100 to go from channel 2 to channel 98 or similar.  It seems very user unfriendly & would not be rocket science to include.  Most every other remote has #'s 0-9 get it together Roku!  I'm new to streaming, starting with 1 Roku 4k stick & now looking for 3 alternatives to Roku because I'm continually scrolling since I can't imput a channel #.

[TDDN]

@dubob EXACTLY!

[packetrat]

In one bit of good news, following a recent update, the "Live TV" app now does respond to digits sent via ECP!  These can be sent using the Android app's (and presumably iOS too) keyboard entry mode, although having to peck at numbers on the top row, rather than having a proper numeric pad isn't ideal.

For times when I have a laptop next to me, I wrote this simple shell script to control the Roku TVs via ECP. Anyone using it will need to at least adapt the device names and IPs (static DHCP bindings on your router are a good idea), but this could be a good starting point.

Sample commands:

$ ktv 7        (will send 07.1, filling in .1 if no subchannel's given; leading 0 helps it tune faster)

$ ktv 47.1

$ ktv -        (recall / last-channel: swap current & previous channel tuned via this script)

$ ktv yt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSP2RWWATr8

$ ktv mute

(see script for more; all remote keys are recognized, and more channels can be added easily using IDs revealed by the "apps" argument)

#!/bin/bash

N=`basename $0`
LASTCH=/tmp/roku-lastch-$N
SETCH=/tmp/roku-setch-$N

case "$N" in
dentv|den|dtv)
 I=10.2.1.132
 ;;
kitchentv|kitchen|ktv)
 I=10.2.1.133
 ;;
bedroomtv|bedroom|brtv)
 I=10.2.1.129
 ;;
*)
 echo "invalid basename: $N"
 exit
 ;;
esac

if [[ "$1" = "" ]]; then
 runtime $N
 exit
fi

FIRST=1
for k in $*; do
 if [[ $FIRST != 1 ]]; then sleep 0.2; fi
 FIRST=0
 case "$k" in
 off|on|power)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Power
  ;;
 mute)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/VolumeMute
  ;;
 vol-|v-)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/VolumeDown
  ;;
 vol+|v+|+)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/VolumeUp
  ;;
 tuner|local|locals|tv|ota)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/InputTuner
  ;;
 hdmi1)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/InputHDMI1
  ;;
 hdmi2)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/InputHDMI2
  ;;
 hdmi3)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/InputHDMI3
  ;;
 ch-)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/ChannelDown
  ;;
 ch+)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/ChannelUp
  ;;
 home)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Home
  ;;
 back|b)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Back
  ;;
 select|ok|sel|s|e)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Select
  ;;
 enter)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Enter
  ;;
 left|l)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Left
  ;;
 right|r)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Right
  ;;
 up|u)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Up
  ;;
 down|d)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Down
  ;;
 replay)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/InstantReplay
  ;;
 play|pause)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Play
  ;;
 rev|rew|rewind|rr)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Rev
  ;;
 fwd|ff)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Fwd
  ;;
 info|menu|star|a|i)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Info
  ;;
 search)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Search
  ;;
 backspace|bs)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Backspace
  ;;
 findremote|find)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/FindRemote
  ;;
 launch)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/$2
  exit
  ;;
 netflix)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/12
  ;;
 amazon|prime)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/13
  ;;
 nasa|nasatv)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/244655
  ;;
 media|mediaplayer|mpl)
  curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/2213
  ;;
 sling|slingtv)
  if [[ $# = 2 ]]; then
   R="$2"
   curl -d '' "http://${I}:8060/launch/46041?contentId=${R}&mediaType=live"
   exit
  else
   curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/46041
  fi
  ;;
 yt|youtube)
  if [[ $# = 2 ]]; then
   R="$2"
   if [[ ${R:0:4} == "http" ]]; then
    V="`echo $R | sed 's/.*v=//; s/&.*//'`"
   else
    V="$R"
   fi
   curl -d '' "http://${I}:8060/launch/837?contentId=${V}&mediaType=live"
   exit
  else
   curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/launch/837
  fi
  ;;
 apps)
  lynx -dump http://${I}:8060/query/apps
  ;;
 tv-channels)
  lynx -dump http://${I}:8060/query/tv-channels
  ;;
 tv-active-channel)
  lynx -dump http://${I}:8060/query/tv-active-channel
  ;;
 *)
  if [[ $k =~ ^[0-9.-]+$ && $# = 1 ]]; then
   if [[ "$k" = "-" ]]; then
    if [[ -f $LASTCH && -f $SETCH ]]; then
     C=`cat $LASTCH`
     mv -f $SETCH $LASTCH 2>/dev/null
    else
     echo "No previous channel set."
     exit
    fi
   else
    mv -f $SETCH $LASTCH 2>/dev/null
    C="$k"
   fi
   echo $C >$SETCH
   if [[ "${C:1:1}" != "." && "${C:2:1}" != "." ]]; then C=${C}.1; fi
   echo "channel: $C"
   if [[ ${#C} -lt 4 ]]; then C=0$C; fi
   L=$[ ${#C} - 1 ]
   for d in `seq 0 $L`; do
    curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Lit_${C:$d:1}
    sleep 0.1
   done
  else
   echo "literal $k"
   curl -d '' http://${I}:8060/keypress/Lit_$k
  fi
  ;;
 esac
done