Roku Developer Program

[Gilgamesh]

"renojim" wrote:
The Python code does more than just serve the files. When el.wubo started this project I believe he had bigger plans for the server than just using it with the myMedia channel. I've never used Roksbox, but I believe to get the most out of it you have to generate XML files for your music/movie collection and we didn't want go that route. I believe setting up the myMedia server is easier than setting up an Apache or Mongoose server, but if you already have one of those set up then I can see why you might wonder why it's necessary to have another server.

-JT

Actually I have set up both and I find Roksbox the easier of the two along with being more flexible.
Roxsbox does not require XML files but it can use them. Roksbox can also use nfo files and movie sheets that can be created by ThumbGen. but it also works fine with none of those. All it needs is a reasonable directory structure and it "can" use playlists for music if you have a need.

But I also have nothing really negative to say about MyMedia and would use it over the others if Roksbox did not exist.

To me the choice of media player is quite personal and they all have strengths and weaknesses and power requirements for the computer acting as server and ease of setup.

I believe that all of the ones that are paid have a fairly good free test period so I would recommend testing each and making the decision based on personal wants and needs.

Also I find Apache quite easy to setup, although I did have to actually read a bit for some of the advanced things I wanted to do. Nut I come from a background that used many setups a lot like Apache so I am probably not a "representative" user.

If one media channel worked for all there would not be a need for many. At least for whatever is chosen the developers and users are here to help with problems, and they ALL have problems at times.

[stioc]

I really wish Roku itself had a basic video streaming channel for personal use that would require a simple http server on the backend. Speaking of which I've been in the IT business since the mid 90s and have used Apache and IIS for many years in fairly large load balanced env. However, recently discovering Mongoose I'm blown away with how the whole executible is 128KB and supports, SSL, CGI, SSI etc. It took me less than a min to download, another min to issue a couple of options on the command line and the bugger was serving files and videos across my home network. If I built an embedded software device that's what I'd use.

Anyway, understood MyMedia can't use other http servers. I guess I'll try and see if I can create my own channel provided I find the time to devote to learning a whole new SDK which I downloaded yesterday. I briefly looked at the included simplevideoplayer example, it's not too bad but I don't understand the whole process yet. Wish there was a how-to to get you started or maybe it's there in the SDK documentation somewhere.

[jambalaya]

I would like to give a vote of confidence to the MyMedia Python setup - Python is not a standalone web server, but rather a scripting language with libraries that include an embedded web server. I have 47,000 photos, 7,000 music tracks and 1,000's of home videos. I was specifically looking for a media server that does NOT index the media, but instead relies on the folder structure and does not try to load the whole structure into memory. MyMedia might not be the only server that works that way, but it is remarkably light-weight and snappy on my relatively low-end PC. I was unfamiliar with Python until I installed MyMedia and was pleasantly surprised at the ease of install. The PC runs for months at a time without rebooting, and the Python server runs happily hidden away with no memory leaks. As far as I am concerned it is mainstream ready - Roku should be happy to move it from private to a public channel!

JB

[roboutet]

I am running a Mac X with snow leppard, I installed the server on the computer and the channel on the Roku but I get a configuration Error "Failed to autoconfigure server. You are on your own.

The IP address for the server is the same in the setting of the Roku and the computer and I still cannnot connect, any ideas or solutions?

[renojim]

Make sure you can browse to your server, preferably from another machine. Browse to http://localip:8001/feed and then click on "My Music" to make sure your server is operating properly. Of course, replace "localip" with the local IP address of your server. You may also want to check to see if the Python server is spitting out any useful messages and/or if there's anything in my_media_log.txt in the server directory.

-JT

[tdurrant420]

How can i de regeister my server. I have tried digging through the code to find the config file but no luck.
I have to reregister because i switched from ubuntu to lxde

[tdurrant420]

yeah, forgot to restart after deleting the config.ini

Also to who ever revives registrations errors, sorry eh.

[frazelle09]

First off, Thanks! for making something that actually works with my Roku. Today i returned the DVD player that my son-in-law had loaned me to play my video files.

We are running PCLinuxOS and this is where we are streaming our files from, using the MyMedia server. We have to convert our DivX files to m4p in order for Roku to "see" them. Once we have them converted, they look just great! Our son is running Windows 7 i think and installed Plex as soon as we got the Roku. What is very strange is that he doesn't have to convert his DivX files to m4p format. He, too, is pretty weired out, since supposedly Roku only "sees" m4p although all of his files, with the exception of a couple, end in .avi.

Anybody know what's going on? Again, thanks a million for putting together such a great program which is really not all that hard to set up.

Have a great evening! 🙂

[renojim]

Plex does on-the-fly transcoding and requires a fairly powerful computer. I run MyMedia on a Pogoplug clone with 128MB of RAM. I never found a need for transcoding and have no problem converting videos to MP4 using HandBrake, but if you have a lot of videos in a format that the box doesn't support natively then you may be more happy with Plex.

-JT

[hozedhead]

"frazelle09" wrote:
Our son is running Windows 7 i think and installed Plex as soon as we got the Roku. What is very strange is that he doesn't have to convert his DivX files to m4p format.
Anybody know what's going on? Again, thanks a million for putting together such a great program which is really not all that hard to set up.

If the files aren't Roku-compliant, the Plex server converts them while your son watches them. It's a waste of cpu if he's going to watch the files more than once, because Plex leaves the original file on the server and deletes the transcoded material whenever the playback is stopped. It's a matter of converting each video once vs. doing it each and every time it's viewed. The newest Plex Beta channel will play most compliant files without conversion. It's a new feature under development.