Roku Developer Program

[Hydrophilic]

Hello everyone!

I'm a proud owner of several 2xs's which I got for family members and myself. But...to the point:

I'm working on a company called Spoilr.tv, which allows users to chat about TV content in a time sync'd manner. We're currently doing this manually, and we've not even packaged up the application into native app form. So, we're in beta right now, and only supporting a few shows.

What I was wondering: Does Roku allows for any kind of 2nd screen application syncing? We're currently lobbying for having DIAL modify it's protocol to allow for time and metadata to be broadcast via the wi-fi, but we're currently waiting for a final answer.

As such, we're looking for platforms like Roku, that we might be able to construct an application on, or tap into an existing API, which would allow for us to get the following info:

What the user is watching
Where they are in the show / movie
pause / play / etc data

Do you guys know if this currently exists with Roku, or perhaps who I should try to speak with to enable it somehow?

Thanks so much guys!

[RokuJoel]

Hi,

It doesn't exist per say, but you could implement this in a number of ways:

* using the position notification beacon in combination with roTimeSpan to give a reasonably accurate position in the content.

* modify the web_server example to deliver information based on the position in the content that is playin

* or use roStreamSockets to stream some kind of timecode to the 2nd Screen and have the 2nd screen do its own data lookup based on the position in the content.

* or, do the opposite: use the Roku as the 2nd screen for content playing on Tablet/Phone.

* or, run a web server on the tablet that accepts http POSTs from the Roku and displays the content on the screen via that method.

- Joel