Roku Developer Program

[tiddy]

I'm about to launch a handful of live channels and I don't want to pay for bandwidth when someone has turned off their TV and gone to bed without pressing the Home button.

WIll the device go to sleep on its own when a live stream is still streaming, and if so what setting and operations dictate the paramters for that, or do I need to manage my own timer to do this? Is there a best practice for this behavior?

[destruk]

No - not until the stream ends.

[tiddy]

Thanks for the speedy response!

So in addressing this, presumably its up to me to manage a timer and reset it when the user clicks a button and eventually expore that timer and tell the user to press a button to continue...

Anyone else dealt with this and have a more elegant solution?

[jbrave]

you could put a timer in your video module to exit the video player after a certain amount of time has passed, up to you.

for example:

timer=createobject("rotimespan")

    while true
    if timer.totalseconds() > 14400 then return -1 'exit video after four hours of play
        msg = wait(100, video.GetMessagePort())
        if type(msg) = "roVideoScreenEvent"
            if msg.isstreamstarted() then 
            timer.mark()
            
            else if msg.isScreenClosed() then 'ScreenClosed event
                print "Closing video screen"				        
                exit while

I just tested this using a 60 second time frame, seems to work just fine.

- Joel

[tiddy]

Thanks for the hand, folks! You two just saved me a potentially shocking EC2 bill.

[bandal]

Will work, but won't it stop the video stream for those who are watching TV normally after 4 hours? Or can the code be modified to place a message that "In 10 minutes the screen will automatically close to conserve bandwidth". Please, Press OK to Continue" If no response it will close.

[jbrave]

"bandal" wrote:
Will work, but won't it stop the video stream for those who are watching TV normally after 4 hours? Or can the code be modified to place a message that "In 10 minutes the screen will automatically close to conserve bandwidth". Please, Press OK to Continue" If no response it will close.

Yeah, but that would be admitting to the world that u iz po and broke, now why would you want to do that?

Never let em see ya sweat! 8-)

Just close it after 4 hours, and then if they fall asleep, cool, if it is in the middle of a VOD program, then they might be a little annoyed. If it is the middle of a live program, then they might be ***really*** annoyed if they can't get back to what they missed... might want to write something more complex like:

if the program has been running for 4 hours
AND
if it is not in the middle of a show then end
else wait till time=showEndTime then quit

Something like that, but you'll have to keep track of show start/end times on your server.

- Joel

[tiddy]

I broadcast live programming, currently with no DVR support. I've settled on a schema by which I shut down the video if:
> 2 hours pass
no buttons have been pressed
it is on the hour, so likely a commercial break or between programs

We'll see how the customers like it. The other option is to stream unchecked and raise everyones subscription cost - no bueno.

[jbrave]

It's a good solution, thanks for bringing the topic up.

-Joel