I'm still having this issue. Here's a little more information:
I've tested this on several videos now and it fails universally. The video will get to the "Retrieving" screen, will sometimes show the dots, othertimes it won't, and then it just sits there. If I press pause (or select) while it is waiting to load, I can see the images from the bif file and I can cycle through them (either left/right or FF/RW). If I select one of the bif images, it starts to rebuffer, then continues to sit there. If I take the bif file out of the XML, everything works correctly.
The code changes I made to the videoplayer example were minor. In showFeed.brs I added lines to find the URLs in the XML (around line 130):
'fetch all values from the xml for the current show
item.hdImg = validstr(curShow@hdImg)
item.sdImg = validstr(curShow@sdImg)
item.HDBifUrl = validstr(curShow@HDBifUrl)
item.SDBifUrl = validstr(curShow@SDBifUrl)
So I'm passing the path to the bif files as an attribute of the current <item> like so:
<item sdImg="http://192.168.1.98:8080/images/WEDDING.jpg" hdImg="http://192.168.1.98:8080/images/WEDDING.jpg" SDBifUrl="http://192.168.1.98:8080/encodes/bif/WEDDING_SD.bif" HDBifUrl="http://192.168.1.98:8080/encodes/bif/WEDDING_HD.bif">
<title>Our Wedding Video</title>
<contentId>10006</contentId>
<contentType>movie</contentType>
<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<media>
<streamFormat>mp4</streamFormat>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>1900</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://192.168.1.98:8080/encodes/WEDDING.mp4</streamUrl>
</media>
<synopsis>Our Wedding Video</synopsis>
<genres>Movie</genres>
<runtime>4500</runtime>
</item>
I created the bif files using the examples from
viewtopic.php?t=23520. I used the same commands as RokuAaron, but with 16:9 dimensions (240x135 and 320x180). The Roku obviously sees the bif files and can load them (since I can get into trick play while it's trying to buffer), but the video never plays.
I've been through the docs several times and I can't find anything I'm missing. Has anyone gotten the bif files to work with the videoplayer example? Did you do anything differently than I have? I am doing this on windows, if that matters. I'm not sure where else to go from here.