TVs & players

[Grammy67]

I thought I had it figured out. Not so much. My TVs just mirror each other.

I would like to run 1 Photo Stream on one TV and a different Photo Stream on a second TV. I want them to be the screensaver and auto run.

I want family photos on the living room TV and home projects on the garage TV.

I guess I would like to know...How can I make the TVs not mirror each other? 

Both are TCL TVs. The models are about 3 years apart. I don't think that matters however. It's a ROKU thing.

[krkaufman · Accepted solution]

I was thinking I'd like the same thing., but ... With the current capabilities of the Roku Photo Streams app, I'm thinking that you'd need to have the devices on different Roku accounts. The current Photo Streams functionality is that all TVs get the same Photo Streams configuration per the Roku account to which they're tied.

Having device-specific Roku accounts is problematic, of course, if subscribing to content directly via a Roku account.

This needs to be a feature request if it isn't already. (Potentially tied to becoming viewer-aware, adjusting app thumbnail display and app access per the user using the device, rather than a blanket configuration for all devices on an account.)

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p.s. A separate recommendation related to Photo Streams content management... 

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... if not using Google Photo albums, create an alternate Roku ID for creating Roku Photo Streams and uploading content, then share these streams to your main “device” Roku account.

• Flexibility: The main benefit is that shared streams can be easily disabled and reenabled, shifting their position in the critical “20 most recently created/linked streams” list; something possible for a stream created within the main “device” account only by deleting and recreating the stream.
  
  
• Content Protection:  But another benefit is stream content protection: Any photo uploaded to a Roku Photo Stream by the main “device” account can be deleted by anyone using the Roku streaming device. Effectively, the main “device” account needs to have View-only access to the streams. (That the default access mode when sharing a Roku Photo Stream is “Member” with write access, and it can only be modified to “View-only” *after* the invite has been accepted, is a separate insanity.)

This additional "Photo Streams content management" account would facilitate sharing Roku-hosted Photo Streams streams across multiple Roku accounts (similar to the benefit of using Google Photos), but the content subscription obstacle would remain.

[krkaufman]

p.s. Another alternative that I hadn't yet looked into (hoping that the native app would suffice) is whether some third-party photo viewing app offered a more customizable (and reliable) photo viewing, slideshow and screensaver experience.  

I was reminded of this by a comment from @Rokasm in a parallel thread, where they suggested looking into an app called PhotoView. (Not sure what the PhotoView app status currently is, but this unknown is one reason I was hoping to be able to utilize a native feature.)

[krkaufman]

Oh, also ... Not only can you not have a distinct Photo Streams screensaver configuration per Roku device within a Roku account, Photo Streams doesn't play well with others and makes enabling any other screensaver a temporary change:  

Enabling any stream for use with Photo Streams' screensaver -- whether enabling an existing stream, linking a Google Photos album or just clicking on the "(+) Create a new Photo Stream" (even before adding any pics) -- will automatically enable Photo Streams as the active screensaver on all Roku devices within the account.

You can reconfigure the other devices to an alternative screensaver, but they'll be reverted to using Photo Streams the next time a new stream is tagged as "Included in Roku screensaver" within Photo Streams. (Disabling a stream from use in the Photo Streams screensaver doesn't similarly affect current per-device screensaver settings.)

[Grammy67]

Thanks for the help folks.

I was impatient yesterday and actually called ROKU. They told me the same thing. To show different photo streams on different TV's I would need to have them on different email accounts. I don't currently pay for ANYTHING directly through ROKU. So separate accounts for the TV's isn't necessarily that big of a deal. 

My issue is that I'm too lazy. The majority of my subscription apps are all on the same email account as the ROKU account. It's too easy to click on use email account. Then I only have to type in my password. I had one app yesterday that is on a different email. (Got logged out for some reason.) I had to manually type in the email. What a pain. We all know how much fun it is to type in anything via a remote! Doing that for ALL my subscription apps?

I ended up just combining both streams into one and they show on both TV's. Not exactly what I was going for but it works.

Again. Thanks for all the input. It was very helpful.

[krkaufman]

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@Grammy67 wrote:

Thanks for the help folks.

My issue is that I'm too lazy. The majority of my subscription apps are all on the same email account as the ROKU account.

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Yeah, login to streaming services is another hassle you'd have with using multiple Roku accounts. I'm grateful to those streaming services that share authorization across devices within a Roku account, and wouldn't love going back to all the extra credentials entry that would be needed to run multiple accounts.

p.s. The PhotoView 3rd party app doesn't seem viable as an alternative, at present, I tried it out and the slideshow regularly glitches out, disrupting playback.