Roku Developer Program

[EnTerr]

"mikempet" wrote:
I was not aware that Roku supports DLNA, but I'm new to this area. Most of the forums say it does not, but there are hints Roku was planning to in the future.

Rumor has it that recently the "Roku Media Player" channel grew ability to play from DLNA servers. Now that does not mean that the player box as such is DLNA-compliant, -certified etc. - just that for practical purposes that channel might be doing 80% of what people expect.

I have not looked into DLNA, i have not tried... all i know is it seems to be a morass of spec everyone is bitching about, with over a dozen of device classes/roles. The recent WiDi and Miracast seem to be heading in that direction in difficulty of interoperability.

[mikempet]

I did some research on Windows Media Player and came across some information about URLs on their Wiki stating,

"As of 2012 Microsoft still recommends[1] using "mms://" as a "protocol rollover[2] URL".

I tried substituting http:// with mms:// in my links without success.

I was wondering if RokuChris or someone else might know how the Roku Media Player Channel App specifies the URL and whether any special API calls are required to stream from WMP.

[TheEndless]

"mikempet" wrote:
I did some research on Windows Media Player and came across some information about URLs on their Wiki stating,

"As of 2012 Microsoft still recommends[1] using "mms://" as a "protocol rollover[2] URL".

I tried substituting http:// with mms:// in my links without success.

I was wondering if RokuChris or someone else might know how the Roku Media Player Channel App specifies the URL and whether any special API calls are required to stream from WMP.

mms is not supported on the Roku. The Roku Media Player channel gets the URL via DLNA, which is HTTP based. You could use a tool like UPnP-Inspector (http://coherence.beebits.net/wiki/UPnP-Inspector) to find the URLs yourself, but there's no guarantee they won't change when WMP updates its library. You could potentially get the main browse URL and parse the DLNA XML yourself.

[mikempet]

Thanks for the info on the Roku Media Player and link to the UPnP inspector. I'll run it on my network next chance I get. I am hopeful it'll help me understand my URL issue.

[mikempet]

I switched to basic Apache HTTP streaming, since it allowed me to get content displayed on screen. This may not be a viable long term solution, so I will revisit VLC and other server options in the near future. The Apache approach requires only placing a supported MP4 file (H264/AAC) in the /var/www folder. I changed the URL to my video in the video app, loaded the code, and pressed play. The URL error message in the debug console had no effect on loading. The Win7 VLC client plugin can play the file as well. I am very happy to get over this hurdle and on to the next.