Roku Developer Program

[calicommando]

One thing I noticed:

If you listen to a song by an artist then up arrow back out, it starts you back at the beginning of the list of artists. It would be nice if it could remember where you are.

I hope I don't sound demanding. I just wouldn't be able to help much in figuring out how to fix it myself.

[el_wubo]

calicommando and deftone:

Just added support for remembering where you were on the previous screen. This feature is in the latest version. Make sure you update your client after you download.

[calicommando]

"el.wubo" wrote:
calicommando and deftone:

Just added support for remembering where you were on the previous screen. This feature is in the latest version. Make sure you update your client after you download.

Now that's service! Thanks! Works great!

[Bron]

WOW!

Sweet!

Awesome!

Cool!

Groovy!

Audacious!

Seriously, I love it! This is the kind of development that will make the Roku Rock!

Kudos!

[hammerpocket]

"el.wubo" wrote:
AAC: As I understand it the AAC format most often used by iTunes includes some very special DRM related encryption that the Roku is unlikely to support. Does anyone know if DRM free songs from iTunes are still in AAC? Also, the Roku only seems to support AAC audio when it's part of a video stream. It may be possible to rewrap the AAC audio into one of the video containers that the Roku can play but that will be somewhat difficult.

Yes, the iTunes Plus (non-DRM) songs are also AAC. In addition, AAC is the default encoder used in iTunes for ripped CDs, on Macs at least. A large percentage of the songs in my library (maybe 50%) are AAC, so that would be a bummer if it won't work. If it can't be done, would it be possible to check for playable file types and not display a folder that contains none? That would be useful in many cases.

[calicommando]

A couple more things:

What is an m4a file? I think that's an apple thing, but I could be wrong. At any rate, they won't show up? Any hope of support for them, or should I convert them all to mp3s?

Is there any chance of making the icons to the left and right of the highlighted icon show the artist as well? does that make sense?

Also, a few minutes ago, I was listening to a song. When I backed out I could scroll through the artists, but it would not let me dig into them. I had to back out of the channel and come back in. I reproduced it once, but it seems to be working fine now.

[buaboo]

I sent onecaribou a PM but I thought I would post the question here too.. I have the Maxtor Central Axis NAS. It is running apache and python. I am not overly technical, but I like to tinker, so can someone give me basic guidance on how to get this working on a NAS. Thank you

"onecaribou" wrote:
Excellent work!

Last night I got the server running on my D-Link DNS-323 NAS.

The initial retrieve is a bit slow, as is navigating back to my list of artists but that's probably due to the size of my library (65K songs). Playback seems to be working fine.

notes:

- I'm not seeing any album art at this point.

- Sorting - Not all my artists are displayed in alphabetical order. At least some seem to be sorted by the date I added/modified their folders on my NAS. Could this be a python/server issue on my system?

wish list:
- A high level menu that simplifies navigation - maybe something that sorts all the retrieved artists into 'folders' based on the first character of the artist name.

- Search for an artist/album/song etc.

- Support for non-english characters.


dream list:

- I have no expectation this will get done but I'd love to see this project integrated with the Firefly / mt-daap server (www.fireflymediaserver.org). Firefly is a robust cross-platform media server that happens to utilize a very similar feed/url GET mechanisms as your project here.

---

Thanks for all your hard work! I'm really looking forward to testing the latest revision tonight.

[el_wubo]

New update: Better navigation for large collections

Whenever a screen would normally display more than 10 artists or albums the screen is instead split into alphabetical ranges. This should make drilling down to specific artists much easier for those of you with large collections.

The split point of 10 is arbitrary (but works well for me) and is configurable in springboard. Just set "max_folders_before_split" to whatever value works for you. If you don't ever want splitting to occur, set the it to -1.

The software treats max_folders_before_split as a suggestion. It will do its best to honor your request but sometimes an even split isn't possible.

Those of you with large collections please let me know how this works in practice. Thanks!

[el_wubo]

"calicommando" wrote:
A couple more things:

What is an m4a file? I think that's an apple thing, but I could be wrong. At any rate, they won't show up? Any hope of support for them, or should I convert them all to mp3s?

I'm not familiar with that format but the only audio formats the Roku supports directly are MP3 and WMA. I'd like to be able to support more audio formats by doing run-time conversion at the server but it will be a while before I get to that. If any developers in the crowd would like to contribute code to do this for their OS I will gladly integrate it into the server.

"calicommando" wrote:

Is there any chance of making the icons to the left and right of the highlighted icon show the artist as well? does that make sense?

I'm pretty limited by what the SDK let's me do visually with that screen. What you suggested would be useful and I'll see if it's technically feasible.

"calicommando" wrote:

Also, a few minutes ago, I was listening to a song. When I backed out I could scroll through the artists, but it would not let me dig into them. I had to back out of the channel and come back in. I reproduced it once, but it seems to be working fine now.

If it happens again telnet to your roku ip port 8085 and post what you see there. There may be enough information to tell what went wrong.

[calicommando]

"el.wubo" wrote:
New update: Better navigation for large collections

Whenever a screen would normally display more than 10 artists or albums the screen is instead split into alphabetical ranges. This should make drilling down to specific artists much easier for those of you with large collections.

The split point of 10 is arbitrary (but works well for me) and is configurable in springboard. Just set "max_folders_before_split" to whatever value works for you. If you don't ever want splitting to occur, set the it to -1.

The software treats max_folders_before_split as a suggestion. It will do its best to honor your request but sometimes an even split isn't possible.

Those of you with large collections please let me know how this works in practice. Thanks!

I don't notice a difference. I installed and relaunched. But I'm not seeing the alphabetical ranges.