Roku Developer Program

[brockoli]

I have a roPosterScreen (arced-landscape) with 30 posters.

I'm storing the posters on a server with links to them in an xml file. I read in the xml and set the SDPosterURL and HDPosterURL to the respective URLs. The images download and display, but when I'm navigating, it takes about 1-2 seconds to move from 1 selection to the next.

I thought maybe it was taking so long because it was downloading the image each time I selected a new one, so I packaged the images into the channel and referenced them local, but it's still very slow.

Here is my screen code

Function showTeamPosterScreen(screen As Object) As Integer

    if validateParam(screen, "roPosterScreen", "showPosterScreen") = false return -1

    m.curShow     = 0
    
    teams = getTeams()
    screen.SetContentList(teams)
    screen.Show()

    while true
        msg = wait(0, screen.GetMessagePort())
        if type(msg) = "roPosterScreenEvent" then
            print "showTeamPosterScreen | msg = "; msg.GetMessage() " | index = "; msg.GetIndex()
            if msg.isListFocused() then
                m.curShow = 0
                screen.SetFocusedListItem(m.curShow)
                print "msg.GetIndex = "; msg.GetIndex()
                if msg.GetIndex() = 0 then
                  screen.SetContentList(getShowsForLive())
                else if msg.GetIndex() = 1 then
                  screen.SetContentList(getVodCategories())
                end if
                print "list focused | current category = "; m.curCategory
            else if msg.isListItemSelected() then
                m.curShow = msg.GetIndex()
                print "list item selected | current show = "; m.curShow
                if teams[m.curShow].SubCat = 3 then
                    print "preShowTeamGamesScreen"
                    subScreen = preShowTeamGamesScreen("On-Demand by Team", teams[m.curShow].Title)
                    if subScreen=invalid then
                        print "unexpected error in preShowTeamGamesScreen"
                        return -1
                    end if
                    showTeamGamesScreen(subScreen, teams[m.curShow].TeamId)
                end if
                screen.SetFocusedListItem(m.curShow)
                print "list item updated  | new show = "; m.curShow
            else if msg.isScreenClosed() then
                return -1
            end if
        end If
    end while
End Function

brockoli

[brockoli]

I should point out that if I just don't show images at all, navigation is fast. My image sizes are ~20kb each

brockoli

[RokuChris]

This can happen when the images are dimensionally larger than the poster screen needs and are being scaled down to be displayed.

[renojim]

It would be nice if the box cached the scaled images.

-JT

[destruk]

You can have the server resize the images before sending them to the roku, or have the server resize them and upload the changed sizes to the content server with their names before generating the xml.
That's what one of our channels does and it works great.

http://www.white-hat-web-design.co.uk/b ... -with-php/

[renojim]

The problem is when you use images from a server you have no control over. The Pentagon Channel I did is an example. There's no reason for the box to scale the posters every time you move through the screen. Do it once, cache the images and be done with it.

-JT

[destruk]

I understand what you're saying, however, with images at 30-40KB each you can just as easily copy/upload them to a server you do have control over. Just with some bugs existing for multiple years on Roku, I wouldn't count on having any fixes appear for this for a long time.

[agmark]

"renojim" wrote:
The problem is when you use images from a server you have no control over. The Pentagon Channel I did is an example. There's no reason for the box to scale the posters every time you move through the screen. Do it once, cache the images and be done with it.

-JT

I'm having this same posterscreen delay on my channels that grab the posterurl images from rss files that I have no control of. What would be the correct method of caching the images? I assume you're saving them to tmp:/ but I'm unclear of the actual mechanics of doing that.

I'm using the generic parsing code like this this:

				tmp = group.GetNamedElements("media:thumbnail")								
				newItem.sdPosterURL = ValidStr(tmp[0]@url)
				newItem.hdPosterURL = ValidStr(tmp[0]@url)

With a couple dozen or more of images, my posterscreen is painfully slow. Can anyone help speed things up?
TIA
Mark

[bandal]

Strange, I have 40+ images and mine is very fast. Using videoplayer. Could be that I spread them over a few servers.

[renojim]

"agmark" wrote:
With a couple dozen or more of images, my posterscreen is painfully slow. Can anyone help speed things up?
TIA
Mark

It's not the fetching of the images that's the problem; it's the box scaling the images that's so slow. What size are the images you're using for your posters? If their size is significantly different than the artwork sizes given in the Component Reference then the poster screen becomes painfully slow. Unless the firmware is changed to cache the scaled image rather than scaling it every time something on the screen changes, there isn't much you can do unless you can send the image somewhere to be scaled and then you use that scaled image.

-JT