Roku Developer Program

[dbetts]

I've seen many Roku remote control applications for Android, iPhone, iPad, etc. and all of them work very well when the user is sitting in front of their television or monitor. I'd like to use Roku to stream radio stations primarily and in this use case, the user is rarely sitting in front of a monitor or television.

So far I have programmed the navigation controls (basically a copy of the original Roku remote), but that is as far as I've been able to get. What I'm hoping someone can tell me is:
1. How we can capture the screen image that Roku is streaming to the screen (the video out - even when the monitor is turned off or there is no monitor/TV connected)?
2. How to deliver that screen image to a mobile app? (I can probably figure that out if I can get a JPEG or MJPEG of the screen image.)
I realize it may require a local server of some sort or another to save the images for streaming to the remote application.

I'd like to use this functionality so that a remote can be used to navigate the Roku menus without turning on the television and moving into another room (where the TV or monitor is located).

My end goal is to purchase 1-4 additional Roku devices and dedicate each device to a source in the home's audio system. In this case, there would NOT be a video device (monitor/TV) connected to any of those devices, so a screen capture delivered to a remote would be required.

Thoughts?
Thanks,
Derrick

[RokuJoel]

You won't be able to deliver the image that the roku is outputting to the screen directly, however, if you created the channel, then you will probably have created the graphics as well, and you can deliver those, either from your webserver, or by adding some webserver functionality to your Roku channel. There is a webserver example in the SDK, so you could theoretically serve up images from your Roku directly to your mobile app, if the app is on the same network (or if you open a port in your firewall, you could serve it up anywhere).

I don't see any reason why you couldn't accomplish what you have discussed here - your remote could check if the channel is installed via the ECP, then launch the channel, then deliver your content lists as XML files to your device, and have your device retrieve the graphics based on links in your XML files, from the Roku.

- Joel

[dbetts]

Thank you Joel, that is a beautiful solution.
I hadn't even thought of building a new channel, but that makes far more sense than trying to navigate the existing Roku screen of channels.

- Derrick