Roku Developer Program

[LossAngeles]

Wow, what an easy setup compared to Roksbox and the biggest plus is that I can easily symlink my NAS shares to the Windows machine running the server! IIS doesn't like traversing symlinks outside it's own little world. Thanks a bunch 😃

Quick question .. what is up with MKV file support on the Roku XDS? Both MyMedia and Roksbox won't handle them where as the USB app that Roku released a few months ago does. That only tells me that the Roku device at least handles MKVs (I've got a lot of them). If no one has an answer I'll look at the git-hub source and Roku dev. site when time permits.
-Greg

[rilex]

IIS doesn't like traversing symlinks outside it's own little world.

This is actually easy. You just have to give permission to the machine account or user account running the application pool to the network device you're doing a link against.

[renojim]

"LossAngeles" wrote:
Quick question .. what is up with MKV file support on the Roku XDS?

For now, the box only supports MKV via USB devices. They have announced that streaming MKV support will be added, but they haven't given any time frame on it.

-JT

[renojim]

"dgrace" wrote:
What I get on the Wii browser screen is just like what I get from my laptop, except the PLAY button doesn't seem to depress and change to the PAUSE button. What I got in the activity window on the serving machine is this:

http://0.0.0.0:8001/
192.168.1.26:52427 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:45] "HTTP/1.1 GET /" - 200 OK
192.168.1.26:52427 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:45] "HTTP/1.1 GET /main.css" - 200 OK
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:49] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/player.html" - 200
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:49] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/js/jquery.js" - 200
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:50] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/js/parseuri.js" - 200
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:50] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/js/jplayer.js" - 200
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:50] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/img/play.png" - 200
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:50] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/img/stop.png" - 200
192.168.1.26:52429 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:50] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/img/pause.png" - 200
192.168.1.26:52429 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:50] "HTTP/1.1 GET /static/js/Jplayer.swf" - 200
192.168.1.26:52428 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:12:51] "HTTP/1.1 GET /feed" - 200 OK
192.168.1.26:52431 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:13:00] "HTTP/1.1 GET /feed" - 200 OK
192.168.1.26:52431 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:13:03] "HTTP/1.1 GET /feed" - 200 OK
192.168.1.26:52432 - - [16/Apr/2011 07:13:08] "HTTP/1.1 GET /feed" - 200 OK

It doesn't look like the song is ever being requested, which I guess makes sense if you can't press the PLAY button. It may be a javascript or flash issue with the Wii. When I play a song from my PC, I don't get all the javascript requests. It starts a Quicktime player, which is odd because I didn't even think I had Quicktime on the computer.

This is probably a better question for el.wubo. Try posting in the Google developer's group and you may be able to get his attention.

-JT

[LossAngeles]

"renojim" wrote:

"LossAngeles" wrote:
Quick question .. what is up with MKV file support on the Roku XDS?

For now, the box only supports MKV via USB devices. They have announced that streaming MKV support will be added, but they haven't given any time frame on it.

-JT

Doesn't matter, I don't need it now that I found this nifty app in the dev forums http://www.chaneru.com/

It does everything I don't have to wait for Roku to finally get to through firmware updates (like streaming MKVs, which USB can do but 2.9 firmware doesn't allow). I threw AVI's, MKV's and VLC handled the transcoding perfectly for the most part. Anyone looking to stream to the Roku who has at least a dual core PC (I have a 9300 quad) should give this a try. I'm VERY impressed simply because it does what I want, simply on Win 7 and without IIS. Heck it even imported my iTunes XML file without a prompt or any pre setup.
-Greg

[raghu1111]

Thanks for the channel.. especially for open sourcing it.

I wanted to sort 'MyVideos' based on modification time rather than alphabetically (sort of like Tivo listings). I could implement it since it is handled on the server side. (let me know if anyone wants a patch).

When I installed (ubuntu 10.10), it used 127.0.0.1 for server address and that is what was advertised to Roku. Whats worse is that on Roku, it said something like 'can't connect to server.. don't know whats going on, you are on your own' 🙂 pretty terrifying error message for any 'normal' user. I don't think 127.0.0.1 for server would ever be correct.

I am going to double verify but, UI seemed a little slow.. especially shifting next time felt pretty slow. If I keep right pressed, it seems to shifft through the items a bit slow compared to same thing in other channels. Is there some server interaction for each 'right arrow' press?

[renojim]

I'm glad you were able to modify the server to do what you wanted. Good job!

I can't comment on the Ubuntu thing. The whole rendezvous server thing was supposed to make it easier on users to setup, but it's made my life harder since I seem to be answering all the questions but I wasn't the one who implemented it.

I'm thinking the UI thing may be your imagination. Once the "posters" are populated with images, there's no client/server interaction until you select something. The client doesn't even do anything at all while you're just moving left/right. It's all handled by the firmware. There are few different types of poster screens, so I don't know if one type may be faster than another. The grid screen, like what's used in the Channel Store, is of course much faster than the poster screen.

-JT

[raghu1111]

"renojim" wrote:
I can't comment on the Ubuntu thing. The whole rendezvous server thing was supposed to make it easier on users to setup, but it's made my life harder since I seem to be answering all the questions but I wasn't the one who implemented it.

It is mostly not related to rendezvous. On my system 'socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())' returns 127.0.0.1 and seems to be the root cause. Hopefully that is not the case for most of the systems.

"renojim" wrote:
I'm thinking the UI thing may be your imagination. Once the "posters" are populated with images, there's no client/server interaction until you select something. The client doesn't even do anything at all while you're just moving left/right. It's all handled by the firmware. There are few different types of poster screens, so I don't know if one type may be faster than another. The grid screen, like what's used in the Channel Store, is of course much faster than the poster screen.

You are right. careful comparison shows it not any slower.
Ahh... the grid screen on Channel Store is fast and really smooth. That would be a bliss to have for MyMovies. Is it available for apps?

Another one of my imaginations might be I find 'refreshing...' screen takes quite long. My directories are are not big at all.. Once my taxes are done, will check if the delay is on server response or on client side.

[elio2001]

"raghu1111" wrote:
Thanks for the channel.. especially for open sourcing it.

I wanted to sort 'MyVideos' based on modification time rather than alphabetically (sort of like Tivo listings). I could implement it since it is handled on the server side. (let me know if anyone wants a patch).

When I installed (ubuntu 10.10), it used 127.0.0.1 for server address and that is what was advertised to Roku. Whats worse is that on Roku, it said something like 'can't connect to server.. don't know whats going on, you are on your own' 🙂 pretty terrifying error message for any 'normal' user. I don't think 127.0.0.1 for server would ever be correct.

I am going to double verify but, UI seemed a little slow.. especially shifting next time felt pretty slow. If I keep right pressed, it seems to shifft through the items a bit slow compared to same thing in other channels. Is there some server interaction for each 'right arrow' press?

I wish try the patch because i need directory order based on new files or randomized sequence.
I'll post a client modification path for shuffling the XML directory listing. Some little test.
Thanks.

[renojim]

"raghu1111" wrote:
It is mostly not related to rendezvous. On my system 'socket.gethostbyname(socket.gethostname())' returns 127.0.0.1 and seems to be the root cause. Hopefully that is not the case for most of the systems.

I didn't mean to imply that it was a rendezvous problem, just that the whole rendezvous thing was supposed to make it easier and I don't think it has. The old way was for the user to enter the IP address of the server in the settings of the channel. That was pretty much foolproof, but you had to know enough to know how to get the IP address of your server in the first place. I guess not everyone does.

"raghu1111" wrote:
You are right. careful comparison shows it not any slower.
Ahh... the grid screen on Channel Store is fast and really smooth. That would be a bliss to have for MyMovies. Is it available for apps?

It is available for apps, but a lot of the client side code is closely coupled to "posters", so it would be a major rewrite. I'd like to rewrite the client side from scratch someday, but who know if/when I'll get to it.

"raghu1111" wrote:
Another one of my imaginations might be I find 'refreshing...' screen takes quite long. My directories are are not big at all.. Once my taxes are done, will check if the delay is on server response or on client side.

I've thought that putting up the "refreshing..." may actually be slowing things down. It was originally there because there's an inherent delay in all Roku apps between when a button is pressed and something happens, so it was an indication to the user that something really is happening.

As an aside, there's several changes or improvements that I'd like to make to the client side, but the channel was created by el.wubo and he sort of shows up every few months and then goes away. I still feel it's his channel. I may try to contact him to see if he still has any interest in it.

-JT