Roku Developer Program

[renojim]

"DeftOne" wrote:
Just to be clear, I am NOT a developer. I'm just basing my opinion on my limited knowledge of IP cameras and what the Roku DVP is capable of doing. I could be totally wrong. 😉 Actually, I hope I am wrong, because I would LOVE to be able to watch my IP cameras through the Roku!

Hopefully a real developer can step in and confirm or deny. 🙂

I don't know if I qualify as a real developer ;), but they (Roku) are working on adding HTTP Live Streaming support. I don't know if that helps you or not. I also wonder how MLB Live works right now since it would seem to me that it would be a live stream.

-JT

[buaboo]

Thx for the info. Do you know how I would do this in HTML or Pythond (earlier I said PHP but really meany python) coding? I want to execute a telnet command to press left then right when u press a particular button on an webpage. I will ask this in the dev forum too..

"renojim" wrote:

"buaboo" wrote:
On Slimserver there is a play button that I have to hit in order to play the song. Assuming that the code for the play button is in some CSS (I am talking way above my knowlege level), could I modify the action so when I hit the play button, it issues a telnet remote command to Roku to stop and play and then let the slimserver do its natural thing..(I think I saw something somewhere that tells you how to control the roku via telnet commands)

You can telnet to your roku's IP port 8080 and issue remote control commands preceded by "press" (e.g., press up). The full list is: up, down, left, right, select, home, fwd, back, pause. I've found that just the first letter works fine (e.g., press u).

-JT

[el_wubo]

"renojim" wrote:

"jca" wrote:
I manually changed some settings on the Roku box (I removed the "/feed"), which was obviously a mistake.

Yeah, don't do that. 😄 The "/feed" got removed from the example on the setup screen. I'll look into why that happened (el.wubo?).

-JT

Guilty as charged. I thought it was an error so I removed it. I'll put it back.

[Saqqara]

My wife's been wanting a video recorder, and playing with MyMedia really showed the shortcomings of our existing cameras with their video clip capability, given the new paradigm for photo display which is widescreen notebooks and HDTVs.

So I picked up a Kodak Playsport just prior to a family vacation (due to audio issues I haven't resolved yet, this is not a recommendation, despite the promise of this amazing device). Very cool that MyMedia/Roku can display my 720p videos without transcoding. I've had some rebuffering, but maybe that was at the higher framerate... I need to do some experimenting.

A couple things I've noted about MyMedia playing back media copied directly from this camera to an external hard disk.

1. Home movies are a series of very short clips. With videotape, these were all shown sequentially as laid down on the tape during playback. With these new cameras and playing back on MyMedia, each short clip needs to be selected and played individually, including the buffering time. What would be ideal is a "slideshow" of short videos which plays them one after another. In a perfect world the next video would buffer as the prior video is playing, but I'd settle for the next video playing without having to navigate to and click it. Note that some kinds of viewers might like this for viewing longer broadcast content; for that TV effect of one thing pushed right after the other (probably appealing more to passive, background viewing that characterizes how my wife uses TV).
2. With digital photos, there's no more rationing, and we snap more. That means putting captions on everything is more work than ever... so we hardly do it. I'd love to be able to turn captions off in MyMedia slideshows, under settings, so I can just enjoy the images without the metadata.

Anyhow, these small cheap video cameras are a great pairing with Roku and MyMedia. Even the stills being of the right aspect ratio is a a great advantage over our older cameras.

[umbighouse]

Has there been any more discussion and/or development for the MyStreams section to include song & length info for the currently playing stream? I thought at one point, there was the possibility that this info might be able to be passed to the Roku?

[el_wubo]

"umbighouse" wrote:
Has there been any more discussion and/or development for the MyStreams section to include song & length info for the currently playing stream? I thought at one point, there was the possibility that this info might be able to be passed to the Roku?

I have that feature almost working off on my branch but school has been so overwhelming lately I haven't been able to finish it up. Maybe after this semester is over I can finish tackling it. Or, if someone else feels inspired: all my work so far is in the "metadata" branch. It parses metadata just fine it just doesn't give the Roku the right headers to force it to stay connected to the stream.

[renojim]

"Saqqara" wrote:
So I picked up a Kodak Playsport just prior to a family vacation (due to audio issues I haven't resolved yet, this is not a recommendation, despite the promise of this amazing device). Very cool that MyMedia/Roku can display my 720p videos without transcoding. I've had some rebuffering, but maybe that was at the higher framerate... I need to do some experimenting

The Roku has known buffering issues with videos that aren't 29.97 fps, but it doesn't usually occur until an hour into the video, so that's probably not the problem. It may just be a bandwidth issue. I just noticed my box updated it's firmware, so I'll have to see if they fixed the buffering issue.

"Saqqara" wrote:
1. Home movies are a series of very short clips. With videotape, these were all shown sequentially as laid down on the tape during playback. With these new cameras and playing back on MyMedia, each short clip needs to be selected and played individually, including the buffering time. What would be ideal is a "slideshow" of short videos which plays them one after another. In a perfect world the next video would buffer as the prior video is playing, but I'd settle for the next video playing without having to navigate to and click it. Note that some kinds of viewers might like this for viewing longer broadcast content; for that TV effect of one thing pushed right after the other (probably appealing more to passive, background viewing that characterizes how my wife uses TV).

You're the second person to ask for a "Playall" feature for videos. I was already going to look into it, so this just reinforces it. I don't think the Roku can buffer a new video while it's still playing the old one, but I'll look into it.

"Saqqara" wrote:
2. With digital photos, there's no more rationing, and we snap more. That means putting captions on everything is more work than ever... so we hardly do it. I'd love to be able to turn captions off in MyMedia slideshows, under settings, so I can just enjoy the images without the metadata.

This is an easy one! 🙂 I'll add it to the list.

-JT

[renojim]

"umbighouse" wrote:
Has there been any more discussion and/or development for the MyStreams section to include song & length info for the currently playing stream? I thought at one point, there was the possibility that this info might be able to be passed to the Roku?

I've also been experimenting with getting the info for Radio Paradise from the client side. I have it almost working, but there's time synchronization issues that make it tough to synchronize the displayed information with the actual sound coming out of the Roku. The clock on the Roku doesn't seem to be that accurate and/or updated often enough. There's also the issue of pausing the current stream and throwing everything out of sync.

Like el.wubo, I've been distracted/overwhelmed with other projects and obligations. I have several new features almost ready to go, but I probably won't be able to release anything for a couple of weeks. Keep making suggestions though. I come back to it now and then when I have some free time.

-JT

[renojim]

"buaboo" wrote:
Thx for the info. Do you know how I would do this in HTML or Pythond (earlier I said PHP but really meany python) coding? I want to execute a telnet command to press left then right when u press a particular button on an webpage. I will ask this in the dev forum too..

Sorry, I can't help you there. My knowledge of HTML and Python coding is minimal to nonexistent.

-JT

[Saqqara]

"renojim" wrote:

"buaboo" wrote:
Thx for the info. Do you know how I would do this in HTML or Pythond (earlier I said PHP but really meany python) coding? I want to execute a telnet command to press left then right when u press a particular button on an webpage. I will ask this in the dev forum too..

Sorry, I can't help you there. My knowledge of HTML and Python coding is minimal to nonexistent.

-JT

There is a python based Roku Remote for the PC somewhere on this forum. Its source should point the way (if what you need can be achieved server side, not within the roku client).