Roku Developer Program

[jnicholas]

I've started developing for Roku and have a simple application working. The only way I've been able to get our own video content to play is from an Apache server. I also tried to get Wowza to stream to it since it supports HTTP Streaming but that didn't work. Do any media servers work yet for true streaming? I'm guessing from other threads that HTTP Streaming is coming soon?

[RokuMarkn]

HTTP Live Streaming is coming but is not yet supported. Is that what you mean by "true streaming"?

All of the currently supported media types should work with any standard HTTP server, as long as it supports byte range requests. The same is actually true for HTTP Live Streaming as well.

--Mark

[jnicholas]

I'm used to my videos coming from either Flash Media Server (or a work-alike like Wowza) or Quicktime Streaming Server so I'm not used to using Apache or IIS for media. I associated that with just doing progressive downloads. My experiments with even long videos seem to work fine though.

[jnicholas]

There are a couple of features that I expect from media servers that I'm not sure if they can be mimicked with apache. First is dynamic stream switching, if the users bandwidth gets tight can we seamlessly shift down to a lower bandwidth stream? Second would be the ability to start at an arbitrary point. For example out of a 2 hour show could we have a way to jump straight to the 55 minute mark so a user could skip to the segment they are interested in?

[bcl]

You can define a starting point in the metadata passed to roVideoScreen. I think Netflix uses this for remembering where you last played a stream instead of always starting over from the beginning.

[RokuMarkn]

"jnicholas" wrote:
There are a couple of features that I expect from media servers that I'm not sure if they can be mimicked with apache. First is dynamic stream switching, if the users bandwidth gets tight can we seamlessly shift down to a lower bandwidth stream? Second would be the ability to start at an arbitrary point. For example out of a 2 hour show could we have a way to jump straight to the 55 minute mark so a user could skip to the segment they are interested in?

You can start playing at an arbitrary point, assuming the video format provides the required indexing information (MPEG4 files always do, ASF/WMA files do if the file contains a Simple Index Object). Bookmarking and seeking use this feature.

If you provide multiple streams at different bandwidths, the Roku will switch between them when the user's bandwidth changes. For most currently supported formats, the switch involves a rebuffering event so it's not seamless. When HTTP Live Streaming is available it will provide seamless bandwidth switching.

--Mark

[dellsweig]

"RokuMarkn" wrote:

"jnicholas" wrote:
There are a couple of features that I expect from media servers that I'm not sure if they can be mimicked with apache. First is dynamic stream switching, if the users bandwidth gets tight can we seamlessly shift down to a lower bandwidth stream? Second would be the ability to start at an arbitrary point. For example out of a 2 hour show could we have a way to jump straight to the 55 minute mark so a user could skip to the segment they are interested in?

You can start playing at an arbitrary point, assuming the video format provides the required indexing information (MPEG4 files always do, ASF/WMA files do if the file contains a Simple Index Object). Bookmarking and seeking use this feature.

If you provide multiple streams at different bandwidths, the Roku will switch between them when the user's bandwidth changes. For most currently supported formats, the switch involves a rebuffering event so it's not seamless. When HTTP Live Streaming is available it will provide seamless bandwidth switching.

--Mark

Thanks for the tease - any ETA 🙂