Roku Developer Program

[jbrave]

is there a way for an app to pass a string to a requesting external app via ECP, for instance, "now playing: Ben Hur"? It doesn't look like it, but it seems like there should be.

If there was, for instance, you could hand off the currently playing video stream to an external app, stop playback on the roku and start playing on your ipad...

If not, can you please consider this a formal request to add a feature like this? The ability to directly send and recieve data with a running channel would be nice, you could do quite a bit of interesting stuff.

- Joel

[renojim]

Maybe I'm missing the point, but how is this different than doing a POST to an external app? I do this with one of my private channels. It POSTs the currently playing song to a specific port and then I use netcat to listen to that port, which will then display the current song info so I don't have to have the TV on.

I agree that interesting things could be accomplished with some bi-directional messaging via ECP.

-JT

Hey, #1000!

[gonzotek]

"renojim" wrote:
Maybe I'm missing the point, but how is this different than doing a POST to an external app? I do this with one of my private channels. It POSTs the currently playing song to a specific port and then I use netcat to listen to that port, which will then display the current song info so I don't have to have the TV on.

I agree that interesting things could be accomplished with some bi-directional messaging via ECP.

+1 to both points. jbrave, do you have anything in mind, specifically, that you'd like to share?

[jbrave]

There are so many cool things you could do, like having a whole informational slide show on an ipad about the movie that is running in sync with the movie, or passing the m3u8 segment index to the ipad and having it take over streaming and stop the roku, remote control of a channel's functions, using the roku as a remote information display terminal... roku push notifications. The idea that Gonzotek mentioned of posting the now playing info to a webserver has built in latency you wouldn't experience on your home network so I think that idea, while it would work, is kindof clunky.

Imagine this:

you are watching a netflix movie, and Helen Mirren walks onto the screen, on your ipad comes up information about the actress, the clothing designers of the clothes she is wearing, and the composer of the song you are hearing in that scene, along with links to buy the dress she is wearing, the Rolex that the male lead is wearing, and a like to the iTunes store for the music, along links to play alternative video angles from the movie, etc.

Lots of cool things you could do. You could even have the subtitles on he iPad instead of the Roku.

I don't think having the Roku make http requests to your ipad is really the best way to do this either, but that could work with the current system, if you had an ipad app with a webserver and rest api, you could do it that way.

- Joel

[TheEndless]

Sounds like what you're really interested in is the ability to query an app via ECP, so your iPad app can ask for data fom he channel instead of the other way around. This functionality has been requested/discussed before, but I don't recall if Roku ever commented.

[EnTerr]

It will be best if this can be incorporated in ECP and when received as particular http request passed as message in the event loop in the way isRemoteKeyPressed() is (new isEcpRequest()?) together will additional path and parameters. The only twist remains how to send back data for the http response. It's so simple to implement i would sort of expect it to show in the next SDK release 🙂

And one more thing remaining is figuring out what's the current channel on Roku (as to know what queries it can handle if any). That in analogy to "query/apps" and "query/icon" will be something like "query/channel" and simply return ID of the running channel (e.g. "12" for Netflix)

[jbrave]

@enterr yeah exactly how it should work.