SageTV Roku channel?

[tchapin]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'm pretty sure the point here with the roku channel was to get a makeshift sagetv extender, using currently available hardware.

Exactly. I suspect that the Roku would do pretty well at just being a video player. It has Hulu / Amazon / Netflix built in, so it doesn't need to use the SageTV / Playon integration. The strength that SageTV has is the ability to play so many different audio and video formats. The existing Roku solutions for this seem really limited.

[tchapin]

Originally Posted by hoep

Maybe, but the direction was great!

Without really knowing any details, it seems like a much more difficult direction. I'd be happy with either though!

The Roku is neat. Could be a lot better, but I'm reasonably happy with it.

[Fuzzy]

Honestly, for a secondary location (bedroom, for instance) any streamer would be good enough if sage's libraries were presented in a decently navigable way. Though with as many open api calls as sagetv has, I can't imagine it would be terribly difficult to bring in some level of sagetv functionality (metadata, guide, managing favorites, etc). Basically, the stuff you can do with the web interface.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Honestly, for a secondary location (bedroom, for instance) any streamer would be good enough if sage's libraries were presented in a decently navigable way. Though with as many open api calls as sagetv has, I can't imagine it would be terribly difficult to bring in some level of sagetv functionality (metadata, guide, managing favorites, etc). Basically, the stuff you can do with the web interface.

those were my thoughts exactly...i def. this this is doable.

[PiX64]

for anyone insterested woot has a gen 1 roku player for 39.99 today!

i know the roku2 is only 20 more, but for someone like me that is prolly only going to get it to develope a ui for it its nice to save $20.

Im involved as many of the readers of this post know with the Boxee box app, which is going phenominally, but im pretty sure i am still going to try and crank out a roku channel.

IMO the more alternatives we can get out there for sage clients the better!

anyone intersted in working on this?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by PiX64

Im involved as many of the readers of this post know with the Boxee box app, which is going phenominally, but im pretty sure i am still going to try and crank out a roku channel.

I didn't think the Roku boxes supported mpeg2.

[PiX64]

it may not....just trying to gauge interest at this point..

[PiX64]

One other option, all be it not as clean would be to check the format in the roku channel before playing back media content. If its in the wrong format, leverage the sage media conversion tools to get the video into the correct format, then play it back.

Granted speed of this greatly depends on the sagetv hardware, but could def be an option.

[Jason]

Originally Posted by PiX64

it may not....just trying to gauge interest at this point..

Nope... The Roku only supports 'streaming' formats... mpg is not included.

http://support.roku.com/entries/4239...hannel-support

[PiX64]

well that is a bit of a predicament. I suppose we could do on the fly conversion like the mobile web ui does...

I don't even have a roku but im pretty confident i can get a channel up and working...so if people really really want one i will think about making one.

Seems like it will be rather limited though. Being that boxee is free if you run on a computer, and i am already working on that project i think boxee is the way to go..

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I suppose we could do on the fly conversion like the mobile web ui does...

If they support Apple's HTTP live streaming, no need to reinvent the wheel, just use the iOS streaming plugin. If they don't, then welcome to the same mess that Android streaming is...

[macsupergeek]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

If they support Apple's HTTP live streaming, no need to reinvent the wheel, just use the iOS streaming plugin. If they don't, then welcome to the same mess that Android streaming is...

looks like they do support it:

http://forums.roku.com/viewtopic.php?p=175281

[Spot]

Not to flog a dead horse, but has anyone figured out if this is realistic as a substitute? I see that Woot has the ROKU HD for sale today for $49.99...

[PiX64]

It is possible, but the roku is extremely limited in the formats it can play back. I would suggest checking out the boxee box app that we started a while ago and tmiranda continues to make Awesome!

I've thought about. Building this ap for fun but everytime I look at the limited capabilities of the roku I get discouraged.

[wreuvers]

Something like this plays all the formats - it is Android (in essence Linux):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Android-2-2-...87251066168986

We could write an android client? Then it would work on this and other devices (like tablets).

[PiX64]

Fonceur already wrote a pretty sweet android client...its called TaSageTV

[phelme]

Originally Posted by wreuvers

Something like this plays all the formats - it is Android (in essence Linux):
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Android-2-2-...87251066168986

We could write an android client? Then it would work on this and other devices (like tablets).

There appears to be little info out there on the Nexus Stream A600 (gleaned from the pics on eBay). But someone should pick one of these up and see what it does.

Edit: More info on the box here.

[PiX64]

I'm tossing around ideas with a few friends about creating a universal (as possible) web based client optimized for tv viewing. The goal is to create a web client which will use a native player if available, if not then the video will be transcoded into flash or something of that nature. I'm starting to work on a proof of conecept tonight.

So if the device u mention above has a web browser on it, then if my idea works the device will be a usable client.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by PiX64

The goal is to create a web client which will use a native player if available, if not then the video will be transcoded into flash or something of that nature.

Might as well go for HTML5 as the Flash support is dying...

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by Fonceur

Might as well go for HTML5 as the Flash support is dying...

Never said i wasn't doing HTML5, but i can tell you this:

Flashplayer support for MOBILE devices is dead. JREICHEN and yourself have put a lot of time and effort into making workable mobile clients, so that isn't my primary focus.

I know little at this point about html5 as i have never used, but what i have read so far says that HTML5 isn't the be all and end all to problems like streaming video via webbrowser. There are still many issues to consider:
1) the video container/tags used to send video to the html5 page is really just a cleaner way to send the video and leverage the existing media player built into the browser IFF the browser has a built in video plugin/player and supports HTML5
2) I still need a default or fall back to play video in the webbrowse which again from my reading seems like flash in the best option here. Transcode on the sage server and pipe through the .flv or swf file (i think those are the correct extensions)
3) Many of the existing html5 "video players" that i have found thus far use jquery to actually setup and pipe the video through the browser. many default to flash as most browser do not fully support html5.

Ill start a new thread when i get closer to some more solid ideas on how i want to do this, but i am def. open to feedback and help. My first thought is to use jreichen's existing and might i add extensive framework he built using java and jquery, but simply make a "tv web" pageset. If i do this i can leverage the wrappers he put in place to call stuckless sagex apis. This shoudl allow me to send whatever commands i want to the sage server including encode this in such and such a format.

My first and formost goal is to test video playback. I am goign to use jquery to detect the browser agent, and make a decision based on the brwoser. theoretically as new browser agents get added such as "fonceur's new better STB streaming media tv device" which i am codenaming FCBSTBSMTD :-) it will have a browser on it and i will be able to detect that the request is coming from FCBSTBSMTD. based on that information we can build custom code for playing video back on FCBSTBSMTD's native media player. If a native media player isn't avaialbe, then we will try HTML5 video stream transport, else we will default to transcoding to flash and transport the flash.

Hopefully that makes sense. I don't want to hijack this thread on Roku, so over the next few days i will be creating some test and starting a new thread on this topic. If anyone has any input at all on this topic, ideas, likes, dislikes, maybe something im overlooking, anything related to the conceptual idea i have please feel free to pm me. Once I get the thread going, We can discuss in further details.