Roku Developer Program

[Sebby]

Hi All,

I am starting (just starting tonight) developping on Roku and first thing I remarked, there is very few articles/how to about the basics of Roku developement.

I am intserested in writing an application to stream French TV (yes I am french and miss my tv shows some days 🙂 ). I would like to take that opportunity to write an "how to" on live streaming after my dev.
I might need you help to start understanding how all of that works. First step I am trying to redo the Nasa TV (nicely done by Chris) as an excercise and I thought it would have been pretty straight forward. I was wrong.

So here where I am (I started with the simplevideoplayer project):

Function displayVideo()
    print "Displaying video: "
    p = CreateObject("roMessagePort")
    video = CreateObject("roVideoScreen")
    video.setMessagePort(p)

    'bitrates  = [0]          ' 0 = no dots, adaptive bitrate
    bitrates  = [150]
    
    'Swap the commented values below to play different video clips...
    urls = ["http://www.nasa.gov/55644main_NASATV_Windows.asx"]
    qualities = ["HD"]
    StreamFormat = "wmv"
    title = "Nasa TV"
    
    videoclip = CreateObject("roAssociativeArray")
    videoclip.StreamBitrates = bitrates
    videoclip.StreamUrls = urls
    videoclip.minBandwidth = 20
    videoclip.StreamQualities = qualities
    videoclip.StreamFormat = streamformat
    videoclip.Title = title
    'videoclip.Live = true
        
    video.SetContent(videoclip)
    video.show()

    lastSavedPos   = 0
    statusInterval = 10 'position must change by more than this number of seconds before saving

but I got this error message:

------ Running ------
showSpringboardScreen
Button pressed: 1 0
Displaying video:
play failed: An unexpected problem (but not server timeout or HTTP error) has been detected.
Closing video screen
Screen closed

Is anyone can help me to understand what is wrong ?

I've tried HLS and SD of course as well as bitrate = 0.
I know the format of the streaming is wmv in 150kb (found the info on internet).

Thanks for your help

[RokuChris]

The stream referenced in the code snippet you posted is hosted on an MMS server. Roku cannot play MMS content. The only live streaming technology supported on Roku is HTTP Live Streaming (http://developer.apple.com/resources/http-streaming/).

[Sebby]

Thanks Chris,

Do you know couple of links using HTTP Live Stream protocol I can try to set up my application ?
I tried to google it but no luck so far (or maybe a wrong configuration from me).

As well, do you know a good tool to analyze the streams ? for instance, how do you know the link I provide was host on an mms server ?

Thanks

[timber03]

"Sebby" wrote:
Thanks Chris,

Do you know couple of links using HTTP Live Stream protocol I can try to set up my application ?
I tried to google it but no luck so far (or maybe a wrong configuration from me).

the custom video example has a few, here's one:
http://ec2-184-72-239-149.compute-1.ama ... ylist.m3u8

[Sebby]

Thanks, that works great. I just did not had the right link. I managed as well to find the nasa link and bunch of others as well.
So now I can start working on my app and write a small article gathering all the knowledge on that specific topic.