Roku Developer Program

[EnTerr]

"kbenson" wrote:
While I support the call for a way to better navigate the Netflix queue in a deterministic manner, I'll state again that I am AGAINST using the instant replay button to skip to the beginning of the queue. I would much rather it be used for some more intuitive and useful (for the average user) task, such as automatically loading the details screen the last movie watched, or since that's fairly easy with the Recently watched queue, maybe the last detail screen looked at. I understand that doesn't help people making apps to interface with Netflix, but that's the reason I specified an alternative solution.

Now first a correction, earlier you said InstantReplay (the circle arrow that is "@" look-alike ) is the only unused button in the Netflix grid screen - not the case, Info ("*") is also unused there.

I am surprised that the suggestion does not seem intuitive to you (I do appreciate hearing different opinion though). To me the meaning of the @ button is "instant navigation", "instant" jump or replay and using it for something other than navigation will be confusing. Wherever the meaning of "*" is "extra info", additional things on current item - other than what you get when you press the main OK/select button (that does the main drill-down in the screens). So using "@" to get detail screen of any kind feels wrong to me as well as using "*" to navigate to new position.

You are right that first choice for @ would be jump to last played (or drilled-down to) movie in the grid but then you are also right there is no point of that since there is "recently watched" row already! So the "instant" navigation IMHO makes sense to jump to the first item in current row.

Out of curiosity, am i the only one that thinks "@" meaning should be kept around "instant navigation" and "*" around "additional options on current item"?

[kbenson]

"EnTerr" wrote:

Now first a correction, earlier you said InstantReplay (the circle arrow that is "@" look-alike ) is the only unused button in the Netflix grid screen - not the case, Info ("*") is also unused there.

I am surprised that the suggestion does not seem intuitive to you (I do appreciate hearing different opinion though). To me the meaning of the @ button is "instant navigation", "instant" jump or replay and using it for something other than navigation will be confusing. Wherever the meaning of "*" is "extra info", additional things on current item - other than what you get when you press the main OK/select button (that does the main drill-down in the screens). So using "@" to get detail screen of any kind feels wrong to me as well as using "*" to navigate to new position.

You are right that first choice for @ would be jump to last played (or drilled-down to) movie in the grid but then you are also right there is no point of that since there is "recently watched" row already! So the "instant" navigation IMHO makes sense to jump to the first item in current row.

Out of curiosity, am i the only one that thinks "@" meaning should be kept around "instant navigation" and "*" around "additional options on current item"?

Less "non-intuitive" and more "less intuitive than other possibilities". I view it as "instant replay", not "instant navigation". Unfortunately I don't get to play with it very often, because the dev box at my location has the older remote. I'm thinking about ordering a new one though.

I would rather see the button take you back to the last details screen visited (whether the move was watched or not) than reset the instant queue position because one is genuinely harder to accomplish than the other for end users. Getting to the beginning of the queue takes a little while on larger queues, but not long and it's not hard. Finding the last detail screen you looked at 130 movies back in your instant queue when nothing else looks better can be genuinely hard (IMO)

This is sort of off topic at this point though, as a proposal has been put forth from Roku that would solve the problem presented in the original post.

[TheEndless]

"kbenson" wrote:
I would rather see the button take you back to the last details screen visited (whether the move was watched or not) than reset the instant queue position because one is genuinely harder to accomplish than the other for end users. Getting to the beginning of the queue takes a little while on larger queues, but not long and it's not hard. Finding the last detail screen you looked at 130 movies back in your instant queue when nothing else looks better can be genuinely hard (IMO)

I don't see how that could be handled automatically, since the details screen at that point would most likely already be removed from the stack. The developer is also responsible for providing the details to the screen, so if there's any special processing that happens before display, that would have to happen again, so you're getting caught up in a complex spiderweb of events to get the information back in a meaningful way. If you're going to add that level of complexity, I think it'd be easier for the developer to implement it themselves (which technically could be done today) by recording the last row/column that was "selected" and re-"selecting" it when the "instant replay" button is pressed.

[kbenson]

"TheEndless" wrote:

I don't see how that could be handled automatically, since the details screen at that point would most likely already be removed from the stack. The developer is also responsible for providing the details to the screen, so if there's any special processing that happens before display, that would have to happen again, so you're getting caught up in a complex spiderweb of events to get the information back in a meaningful way. If you're going to add that level of complexity, I think it'd be easier for the developer to implement it themselves (which technically could be done today) by recording the last row/column that was "selected" and re-"selecting" it when the "instant replay" button is pressed.

Yeah, I was really just referring to the default behavior of the Netflix channel. I agree that I wouldn't want that behavior to automatically be applied by roGridScreen. There's actually two conversations (default Netflix channel behavior vs roGridScreen capabilities) going on in this thread, which makes it confusing... Although I guess I am the one that moved it away from being strictly about default Netflix channel behavior, so I have only myself to blame. 🙂

[EnTerr]

"EnTerr" wrote:
In regards to Netflix channel, if going the ECP way, to follow the spirit on the new "input" command i suppose it should be something like

POST /input?cmd=goto&row=Y&column=X

so that direct positioning can be done instantly.

Almost a year since requested - any progress on this, Roku*?

All that Netflix channel will have to do is invoke roGridScreen.SetFocusedListItem(row, column) on that. As a reminder the idea is to give reliable way to navigate within instant queue with a "smart remote".