Roku Developer Program

[greubel]

This is a total rewrite of Chaneru. There are still some features missing but this is still a good start.
If you would like to try it out or see screen shots and capabilities, go to - http://www.chaneru.com/DLNA
You can install it as a private channel and download the servers from this address

As problems come up and are resolved, the Chaneru Roku app can be automatically refreshed by going in and out of the Roku Channel Store
but the Chaneru server has to be manually downloaded from the site.

I have tried to optimize the discovery as much as possible considering the protocol and speed of the Roku boxes.
I would like to know what media servers you try and any problems encountered.

Good luck and let me know how it goes - support@chaneru.com

[greubel]

Chaneru 2.0 should work with any DLNA media server. I have tested it on the following servers.
It also plays from your USB drive.
Has a Pause/Resume feature across multiple Roku boxes. You can stop a movie in one room and resume it from another.

Go Flex ( Win and Mac )
Logitech ( WIn )
Media Connect ( iPhone )
MediaMonkey ( Win )
PS3 ( Win and Mac )
TVMOBiLi Mac
TVMOBiLi Windows
Windows Media server

Oh and it still works with the Chaneru server ( best ).

[greubel]

These guys now work !
Samsung All Share
Huawei
Serviio
Twonky

[trekkeriii]

Works with my Buffalo NAS Linkstation. Granted, all my media is in MKV and AVI containers, so can't play much of it natively on Roku without transcoding or re-encoding.

[greubel]

Did you try the Chaneru server and turn transcoding on there.

[greubel]

Oh, I forgot to ask ! What icon does it display ?

[trekkeriii]

"greubel" wrote:
Oh, I forgot to ask ! What icon does it display ?

It shows a picture of my NAS actually.

"greubel" wrote:
Did you try the Chaneru server and turn transcoding on there.

Yeah, I get not so good quality. The connection between my Roku and the PC with the transcoding on it is a Powerline, so the transfer speed is around 3-4 MB/s max rate. I have a 50 Mbps connection to the internet (so ironically my Internet speed is 1 MB/s faster than my PowerLine speed).

I seem to do better with Plex's transcoder over VLC (which is why I don't use a certain other unmentionable channel).

[greubel]

Updated Chaneru 2.0

Spent most of my time trying to optimize the channel. One big problem was scrolling. The only thing I could come up with, is to make everything on the screen an object and have it’s own layer. That makes the screen refreshes a lot quicker if you only have to modify two items. So every line of text, image and color change is an object.

When a channel is run in developer mode, any prints are shuffled out a TELNET port on the Roku for debugging. Well these are useless
for the released channel but they still consume time to format them. So I turned them off in the released channel, unless you turn on logging.

Another problem is the DLNA responses coming back from the servers. It is escaped XMl in an XML envelope. I have recoded my parser about 100 times to try and make it faster, with no real improvement. Asked for some Roku assistance and it was suggested that the built in parse() function would do the trick. So I spent a couple of days recoding it again to use the parse() function. I didn’t use it initially because of the experience of trying the parse large iTunes XML files, it was just too slow. Well any way, this pointed out a BIG problem with the parse() routine. Roku has opened a trouble ticket but no telling when it will get resolved. The delay in parsing the data grows exponentially by the amount of data to parse. Microsoft is the biggest culprit with the amount of data that they throw back for each item. An item is a folder or media file. I noticed one request that he replied with 171K of data for 27 items which took over 30 seconds to parse. In reality it should only take a couple 100ms. I don't think users will want to wait that long.

Some people have mentioned the background color, I changed it to “light steel blue”. ALSO, if you have a USB drive and create a folder “Chaneru” and insert a background.jpg image of your choosing, I will use that for the screens.

Going to try and add code to make all the internal icons and text colors user selectable.

I had problems loading the new version from the Roku channel Store. Finally had to power off to get it loaded.

Got my Roku3 ! Lots faster, not too sure of the interface over the Roku2’s.

[greubel]

Chaneru 2.0.2 is online. http://www.chaneru.com/DLNA/ You should also download the Chaneru server.
Updated a few things, optimized a big delay and added a new feature.
There is a transfer test that you can run to one of your Chaneru servers to check out your bandwidth.
You can select it through the options screen.

There are over 300 people testing Chaneru. I would like some sort of feed back.
You can also post comments, complaints and feature requests.

[greubel]

Chaneru 2.0.3 is online. http://www.chaneru.com/DLNA/ You should also download the Chaneru server.
Added a couple of fixes for the transfer test.
Now you can turn subtitles On/Off in the options.
Found a bad bug in the server for UPnP on windows XP.

There are over 350 people testing Chaneru. I would like some sort of feed back.
You can also post comments, complaints and feature requests to - support@chaneru.com