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jkeagle13
Visitor

Accessing Playback Functions for Existing Channels

Hello,

My name is Joseph Irvine. I am a senior, studying Management Information Systems at Utah State University and am working on a capstone project with a group of MIS professionals as well as professors and mentors from the field.

We want to create a way for anybody to watch filtered movies in a fashion similar to what you see "edited for TV", etc. We would do this with intelligent templates that we would create that knew at what timestamps to mute, skip, etc. The original video content would be left intact. Only the playback is altered at the client side, similar to an intelligent remote control based on filters/templates for each movie.

We would like to create a way to integrate this filtering service into Roku to give people the option to legally watch filtered versions of many of the titles offered through Netflix or Amazon VoD without breaking copyright or other laws. The courts have ruled that modifying playback is legal.

Is there any current way through the API or through other access that we could implement a plug-in that could control the respective players? It would simply need to send commands such as when to mute, where to drop frames, where to skip, etc. It would never alter the original content of the file.

Thanks,
Joseph Irvine
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5 REPLIES 5
bbefilms
Visitor

Re: Accessing Playback Functions for Existing Channels

Most definitely not; the apps run in a sandbox.
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jkeagle13
Visitor

Re: Accessing Playback Functions for Existing Channels

Hello,

Perhaps utilizing the current SDK would be useless. We have partnered with a large company who can provide the filtering technology and we feel that Roku would be a perfect opportunity to implement it.

Are there APIs or other functions calls that would be possible? How best could we go about implementing this project? Our goal is to provide filtering services for VoD.

Thanks,
Joseph Irvine
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bbefilms
Visitor

Re: Accessing Playback Functions for Existing Channels

"jkeagle13" wrote:
Are there APIs or other functions calls that would be possible? How best could we go about implementing this project? Our goal is to provide filtering services for VoD.


There are no exposed API's by Roku to do this, so the only mechanism is to filter at source (Netflix, Amazon or other content). You can't remote control someone elses application on the Roku. You are wasting your time trying to implement this on the Roku - suggest looking elsewhere or implementing some kind of control within your own Roku application as a proof of concept.
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jkeagle13
Visitor

Re: Accessing Playback Functions for Existing Channels

Hello,

Is there someone I could get in touch with at Roku who was visionary and might allow us the API access we need?

Obviously we would want to design it as a proof of concept first, but only if we knew that we could implement it later.

What are other companies that might be more amenable to allowing us in and how do we reach the right person who can make things happen if so?

Thanks,
Joseph Irvine
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bbefilms
Visitor

Re: Accessing Playback Functions for Existing Channels

I have no idea how you would integrate 3rd party filtering code (which they probably don't want to be accessible) into an application produced by scripted language.

However, suggest developing a Boxee plugin - it's a far more "open" environment than developing for the Roku, and possibly will enable you to program at a lower level.
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