Roku Developer Program

[lmsilva]

Dear all,

I'm brand new to Roku but I'm really excited about it as a development platform.
I want to develop an application but I cannot find any documentation on how can I do certain things, namely:
- bypass the default remote key mappings during video / image playback:
- what I want to do is to be able to use the up and down keys WHILE a video or image is being displayed;
- create another thread that continues execution while a video or image is being played (so that I can provide interaction while the video is being played);

Does anybody know how I can do these things?

I'm VERY excited about Roku but got a little disappointed last night as I was reading through the docs and couldn't find any references to this...

Also, one last question, where can I find some .brs code samples?

Thank you,
Luis

[RokuChris]

"lmsilva" wrote:
I'm brand new to Roku but I'm really excited about it as a development platform.
I want to develop an application but I cannot find any documentation on how can I do certain things, namely:
- bypass the default remote key mappings during video / image playback:
- what I want to do is to be able to use the up and down keys WHILE a video or image is being displayed;
- create another thread that continues execution while a video or image is being played (so that I can provide interaction while the video is being played);

Does anybody know how I can do these things?

Those buttons have dedicated functions during video playback which cannot be overridden using roVideoScreen.

While we encourage you to stick to an interface consistent with other channels on the platform for usability reasons, you can build your own video player and do other things with those buttons using a combination of roVideoPlayer and roScreen. Even if you take that approach, I would still strongly suggest that you maintain the UP button's functionality of stopping playback and closing the screen. Especially if your channel will be deployed to older boxes whose remotes may not have the dedicated BACK button.

"lmsilva" wrote:
Also, one last question, where can I find some .brs code samples?

In the SDK

[lmsilva]

Excellent!

I do appreciate your concerns and I understand WHY you would want to maintain the experience but I specifically chose Roku over another platform because of how versatile it seemed to be!
I'm aiming for a unique user experience and so it is not acceptable for me to follow the same paradigm as other channels.

Thanks,
Luis

[RokuJoel]

Hi Luis,

I understand your wish to do something different, however, at the very least there will be a lot of push back if not outright rejection of your channel if you don't make the UP button and the Back button exit video playback. For users with older devices who don't have a back button, the up button is the *only* way out of anything other than exiting the channel completely with the Home button, so hijacking that button for something else is going to be a problem, unless you make it very clear with onscreen directions exactly how the user can end playback. You may need to exercise some creativity to make it work in a way that is acceptable.

I believe Boboc.TV implemented a UI similar to what you are describing, and that UI has both a way to pop up an overlay-control strip with the up button and still allows the user to exit playback with the up button.

One approach to this might be to use the down-button to engage an interactive mode in which the up and other buttons have a different functionality from "exit", which closes after a timeout if there is no user input for a number of seconds.

- Joel

[lmsilva]

That is quite annoying, but thanks for the heads up!