Theme: blue neon night

[speechles 1917]

Spent some time adjusting screens to report errors directly with dialogs, rather than sliently erroring. This should make the force play methods much more understandable to anyone. Now when a video fails to play depending on the play method you will see the dialogs below.

 

 

 

 

I've added verbose dialogs to every single condition which may fail. This includes livetv. Since I cannot test the error dialogs in livetv I will need testers. The error dialogs may appear in livetv when there is not an error possibly. It shouldnt but it might.

 

I am still testing my changes today, no update yet, just letting people know what changes to expect shortly. This will finally end the "why is emby acting weird on my roku?" questions. You will know why its acting weird now, it tells you why. Expect the update in a few hours.

 

@@DerekWilliamsUK

 

The issue in making the up/down wrap is those actions are default. There is no custom code to control that behavior. It is using the stock roku handler for those button presses. I would love to do it, but it will be difficult. It is far easier to wrap a row right/left than to wrap all the rows up/down. The code would need massive changes in several screens to add this feature.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited February 2, 2016 by speechles

[mikeraburn 60]

coolio

[speechles 1917]

As promised a new version is here. Yay!!

 

 

Here's one lots of people have requested. How do you play music in the background and keep browsing the library? I gave this tedious work-around text walk-thru to acheive it. Well, now this isnt required.

 

If you want to make music play in the background, not just theme music, any music you choose. When you exit the music screen the music normally stops. Now it doesnt have to. Toggle the option above, and now you can leave the music screen and music keeps on playing. It is omni present music now. This does slow the responses since it has to now juggle music playing while fetching/rendering but the roku is agile. I notice slight lag, very slight I can feel, but its understandable.

 

I've also fixed the way playing music and casting it to the roku from another client was causing issues. It now lets you seamlessly takeover the audio from any screen, even the music screen while it is playing other music.

 

Ive updated the zip, and pushed an update to the roku store, both are at version 3.20.

 

Since I lack livetv and made changes to this section there can be issues. So those with livetv please test this and report back. Are there excess dialogs? Does it crash using livetv now? Is it same as it ever was? The changes in that section were necessary to give better error report via dialogs.

 

 

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited February 3, 2016 by speechles

[DerekWilliamsUK 2]

The issue in making the up/down wrap is those actions are default. There is no custom code to control that behavior. It is using the stock roku handler for those button presses. I would love to do it, but it will be difficult. It is far easier to wrap a row right/left than to wrap all the rows up/down. The code would need massive changes in several screens to add this feature.

 

Hey, no problem. Compared to all the other great Roku/NowTV mods you have implemented for us, this was just a very minor niggle of mine.

 

Unfortunately i am not a LiveTV or Music user, so I cannot test mods in those areas for you, but please keep up the great work.

[speechles 1917]

New version: v3.21

 

Assuming by the lack of people with issues posting there were none in the last version. Cleaned the app up, and added some missing functionality. The update is on both the roku store link and zip in the first post

 

Music:

When playing music while browsing it would be nice to access the music player from any screen. This is possible now. You can access the now playing via * menu on almost every screen via the "Go to Now Playing" button. Screens which lack now playing via * will have now playing via the "more..." menu. The tv season screen will not offer "cast & crew" popup if music is playing. Instead it pops up "now playing". If music is off, it pops up "cast & crew". This is the only screen with this limitation.

 

Filmography:

This screen was under utilized. It merely listed movies or television rows. Now you have movies, shows, episodes, music videos, and videos. This makes it much better to see which exact episodes actors guest star in having an episodes row.

 

Connect/server:

Added error dialogs to these screens as well. This should make it far easier to tell what is wrong when the server is misbehave/suffer issues. This should help people who allow remotes users with rokus to use their server. The errors are visible on their roku with dialogs. The troubleshooting is practically zero now. This makes the roku now have one of the best, simplest, and trouble free emby clients to use and connect with.

 

Try playing music, browsing the library while music plays, searching while music plays, etc.. Try to find places where I need to work on to get this to flow better. Ive polished it up as much as I can at the moment. This makes it mirror most everything the web client can do, and then some, especially how search works now.

 

I wish the /persons endpoint was faster. Would be nice to include a favorite people row in both the movies and tv rows. Which I've done, it works perfectly with filmography but it is too slow. This may be why the web client doesnt offer favorite actors yet either. Do we need favorite studios? Maybe? I was contemplate adding that too, heh. I would rather have favorite people work though, shame it is so slow to poll that endpoint for favorites using includeitemtypes movie and series,episode.

 

Also, remember when music is playing in the background and browsing, the UI may not be as responsive as it usually is. The button responses will seem delayed. Dont push the button again and again to make it go. The delay is normal, we are just pushing the roku on some screens to do alot and combined with music playing its causing the laggy responses. This is acceptable as the lag is so slight. All thats missing is a coverflow grid for things, which I will work on next. After that, will move into scene-graph and a new design ui.

 

Any bugs? Crashes? Issues? Please mention them in this thread. Lets fix them.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited February 5, 2016 by speechles

[mikeraburn 60]

My Roku4 did a firmware update tonight.

 

Where can I go to see what was improved or broken?

 

Google gave me nothing useful.

[speechles 1917]

@@mikeraburn

 

Its likely a firmware update to help a partners channel. Amazon, hulu, netflix, vudu, etc.. The roku4 was having issues with dolby digital plus passing through on vudu. There were some netflix issues reported too about same defect.

 

http://forums.roku.com/viewforum.php?f=28

 

You can peruse these threads to see issues pointed out. But roku will never officially state an issue, or one being resolved. They have their engineers and moderation team reply instead. So the most you will see is something on the forum link above. They dont want to upset their partners and spoil their relationship so they keep issues tight lipped for the most part.

 

You can also, sign up for their beta partnership for users and get insider information ( https://www.roku.com/betatesting ) but they keep you reigned in with their NDA. You will get early access to firmwares, clear information on what the new firmware fixes, resolves, or features added, etc but you cannot tell anybody. This is why you cant just google it. No set top manufacturer wants their defects known publically.

 

Other than that...How does the new app work for you? Any issues? Not sure whether to take the silence as a good thing, or bad. There are over 300 people using it, so it must be a good thing.

Edited February 6, 2016 by speechles

[mikeraburn 60]

The app

 

I don't do music through the emby so I am zero help there.

 

The filmography interests me but I haven't really got into it to look at yet.

 

I will let you know if anything seems odd to me.

[speechles 1917]

The filmography is what will appear when you click on any genre, studio, or people. If you search for an actors name, or use the "cast & crew" button and click on an actors name you can get there too. It will show everywhere in your library that actor can be found.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[econ 74]

Live tv seems to work perfectly. However, after playing music, browsing to play live tv, stopping the live tv stream, if you then go into the now playing screen it still thinks music is playing because you have pause playing and stop playing available.

Any thought to adding a "home" screen choice within the * menu? Sometimes you can get a few pages deep when playing music, browsing, then going to now playing. You have to hit the back button a few times to get back to the library.

[speechles 1917]

@@econ

 

Yeah, this is a bug in the now playing manager when multiple screen handlers exist at the same time. The audio player is attached to an invisible screen at the bottom of the screen stack. The official app has this issue too if you play theme songs, it flickers between the theme playing and the video being watched. You can see it on the "now playing" window of the web client. The box that shows your roku and what the logged in user is doing. I will see if I can deduce how to get them untangled when video plays, so the audio stops handling at the same time.

 

Nice to know livetv isnt affected. As far as adding "Go To Homescreen" to the dialog prompt on * I can do this and have it also collapse the screen stack back to home too. So it acts like you clicked all the way back to the homescreen. This is doable indeed.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited February 7, 2016 by speechles

[BAS 225]

Ok @@speechles here is the things I noticed.

1. In the special version of the app, could you remove the two auto selections from more and also the auto @ 30fps on the more button
2. Upcoming episodes row is visible in tv, but then disappears, no content fills in while its visible
3. On preferences tile with enhanced descriptions on, the device name is the default name not what has been set in the preferences area.
4. Possible to have a sound effect when * button is used
5. I have had no luck on searching for actors/studios as it generates no results, I'm currently on beta of the server but neitger of these work in the web client for me either.
6. Could you please add an option in the * menu for library views, for Customize Rows. Inside would be the option for the user to turn on/off certain rows in the library views such as studio, upcoming, favorite episodes etc. I have no problem with other users wanting these things, but I really dont need to see studio  on my music or movie side.
7. Music background playing works great with navigation, even on a Roku stick.

I'll keep testing away and enjoying your changes, thanks for all your work.

Edited February 7, 2016 by BAS

[speechles 1917]

Ok @@speechles here is the things I noticed.

• In the special version of the app, could you remove the two auto selections from more and also the auto @ 30fps on the more button
• Upcoming episodes row is visible in tv, but then disappears, no content fills in while its visible
• On preferences tile with enhanced descriptions on, the device name is the default name not what has been set in the preferences area.
• Possible to have a sound effect when * button is used
• I have had no luck on searching for actors/studios as it generates no results, I'm currently on beta of the server but neitger of these work in the web client for me either.
• Could you please add an option in the * menu for library views, for Customize Rows. Inside would be the option for the user to turn on/off certain rows in the library views such as studio, upcoming, favorite episodes etc. I have no problem with other users wanting these things, but I really dont need to see studio on my music or movie side.
• Music background playing works great with navigation, even on a Roku stick.

I'll keep testing away and enjoying your changes, thanks for all your work.

1. Certainly.. I can reduce down those bits and get back to you. The reason auto has private is for private listening mode. If the audio is direct played in surround the headphone jack on the roku remote wont have sound. Hence auto has 2 modes, normal and private. There is no way to detect the headphones are used. The app must have a setting users check to disable surround while they use headphones.

 

2. This isnt my fault. The server wont generate all of these via the API any longer. Not sure why its limited to ~400 episodes now. I noticed this too. This is an api limit. The exact number I get is 481. Any after have the spiraling blue dots showing the images are loading, but they never do. The roku actively keeps trying to get the remaining. The server returns an empty list. So this is some restriction on the servers side.

 

3. The device model is there purposely. It wasnt supposed to be device name. The name of the device is used by other devices to refer to it.

 

4. Not the way the audioplayer() works there isnt. Sorry. Once the audioplayer is attached to a screen no sounds can be made. This is how I did the coin pickup sound from nintendo before. It was played just before the base springboard attaches the audioplayer so was possible. It loads so fast you couldnt hear it anymore so I removed that.

 

5. The server changes broke these. Luke is working on adding them back I believe. This is beyond my control. Again, sorry..

 

6. Customize rows is possible, but having those rows doesnt slow the UI. I get your point though. They are cruft to you, so have no value. So it ruins it for you. I get it.

 

7. Nice.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited February 7, 2016 by speechles

[BAS 225]

Thanks for the reply, all your points are understood. One problem I have with your app compared to official. I have all my external users marked as hidden, so they manual login. In the official app, as long as remember user was on after they manual logged in one time, it would remember them. In this version the user has to manual login everytime. Let me know if you need any additional info.

[speechles 1917]

I cant reproduce that issue at all no matter what I try.

 

Have them change the remember me option to yes, even if it is already. This forces the app to remember and rewrite the registry. Then have them sign out after logging in, and then choose their user. This should force it to remember. Its just the initial user has to do this. Ever after it should remember whichever user was last to use the app. Let me know how that works.

 

Make sure they arent using sign out after it welcomes them back and remembers them. Have them just back out of the app until it pops up the "goodbye?" prompt, or use the home button to escape the app.

 

If you sign out, and then leave the app from the sign out screen it will not remember the user, even if you have "remember last user" set to yes. This is a feature, well, supposed to be. To allow temporary transient logins, say a parent logging in to a childs roku but you dont want it to remember you. You dont have to change the "remember" option in preferences to no, just sign out and press home from the login screen. It has forgot you. The next user will be prompted to choose a user to log in as.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[BAS 225]

It was the remember me toggle, turned it to no, turned it to yes app force signs out, manual login, exit app through prompt, reopen app, working. Now i can roll to a few other external family members, thanks.

[speechles 1917]

Live tv seems to work perfectly. However, after playing music, browsing to play live tv, stopping the live tv stream, if you then go into the now playing screen it still thinks music is playing because you have pause playing and stop playing available.

Okay, this wont happen anymore. When video is played now, the audio will stop and go into hibernation. The moment you stop the video and go to now playing the music will start playing at the song you left off on. The server "now playing" dialog wont flicker back and forth between the two timelines for music and video.

 

The server was sending both audio(music) and video streams at the same time. The roku was only playing the video stream, but when the video stops, the audio wasnt picked up. The server was still sending the audio stream though. In effect, the roku cant do two things at once, play video and music, so was wasting cpu cycles on the server. This caused delayed response from the server and was causing lag on the roku. With this now fixed it makes it much much better and responsive. More people will use music on the roku now. This feature makes it stand out.

 

I will update the roku store link after my testing, and after the super bowl. Will also try to squeeze in the "Go To Homescreen" option in the * popup context menu to ease navigation.

 

Expect a new release soon. :)

Edited February 7, 2016 by speechles

[mikeraburn 60]

Go Panthers!!!!

 

Many long time veteran players on that team need a Superbowl ring.

[speechles 1917]

BTW, the CBS Sports app on roku, free streaming superbowl on your roku. Panthers deserve the win, but things dont always go to those who deserve it. Hopefully they do this time

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[speechles 1917]

New version..v3.22

 

This corrects the overlap of the music and video in now playing. As explained a few posts above. The music once "loaded" will be remembered. This means playing a song from an album, and backing out of the album will keep that list of songs in memory now. Same with favorite songs, or shuffle an entire artist in the player, etc. Once these are there the now playing will appear on the homescreen at the bottom. So this fixes the biggest shortcoming with music.

 

Now the additions, as @@econ suggested with all these new rows and views and screens you can wind up pretty deep in the screen stack. Going back home is maybe 90 presses back. So to make this easier, there are two menus. One appears on *, the other appers on the "more..." menu.

 

The -> on front means these menu items will go to a different screen. You can go to home screen, preferences, or search screen from anywhere. If you have music "loaded" in the audio player you can also go to "now playing" directly. There is also a "go to ..." button in the "more..." menu. This will open a seperate dialog with the same 4 options.

 

If you choose go to home screen, this will collapse the screen stack. So the prior screens you were on are gone. As if you pressed back all the way to the homescreen. The others, search, preferences, and now playing add that item to the top of the stack. So you can get to preferences quickky, make a change, go right back to screen you were on.

 

This now makes navigation less of a chore, and browsing is enjoyable. Music and "go to" menus.. The joy

 

Let me know of course if anything is broken or just not how it should be. It should be very easy to use, so anything you cant figure out means I didnt do things correctly. So please be critical, be brutal, be honest, dont sugar coat anything. I am not afraid of criticism. Enjoy the app, and get in the usual ways in first post, both zip and roku links updated.

 

@@BAS The simple version of the app we talked about is next. This will be a version with "force" options gone, and the playmethod and framerate not appearing next to "more...". Once I have this done I will release that link publically too in the first post. This will be the version remote users of others servers should use.

Edited February 8, 2016 by speechles

[speechles 1917]

@@BAS as promised see below:

 

For some people who are kind enough to be offering access to remote users, the thought of users who may not understand the option and being able to "force" play methods, such as "force transcode" and never realize they leave that on through-out a session. This can be problematic. So there is now a simple version, this verson will only offer auto-detection, and auto-detection private which allows private listening. This was requested, others may have a use for it too. Use the link below.

 

roku private channel (simple version "no force"): https://my.roku.com/...el=EmbyBlueAuto

 

(this info is also in the first post of this thread for clarity)

Edited February 8, 2016 by speechles

[speechles 1917]

 

New version, same version number, trying to sneak this in real quick. Now the "send text" feature of the server can send messages to the roku. This creates a dialog that pops up over any activity, even videos playing. As above, this can work to alert children you are aware they are still awake without getting out of bed. The other emby clients support system wide messages now so does roku. This also lets you send messages to remote users with rokus who happen to be using your server. This is a nice feature. Try it out.

 

Get new version same place as always, updated zip and both roku store links.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Edited February 8, 2016 by speechles

[KidNamedCudi 5]

Is there any way to have the watched count only count if it meets the Server criteria for watched(default 95%)? Without that the watched count goes up 1 every time you click to start watching a show/movie but the watched indicator does not get added. Ideally those 2 things would be tied together and the watched count only goes up when its truly been completely "watched".

[BAS 225]

The music stuff with the flashing on server is fixed like you said. Love the goto feature, thanks for @@econ on requesting that. 

1. Still looking for a customize row on/off option in libraries when and if possible. Mainly because I don't want to see how badly my music and movie studios metadata is, especially music lol.
2. When entering library of any kind, if the first move is to the left on accident when entering library of any kind,you must wait for that last item in the row to load in before entering of any other item is allowed. I know this might be a limitation of the hardware here, but the time it takes for my movies to load that last item in seems extremely excessive so not sure any optimization can be done here between the server/roku, I'm talking minutes for 4000+ movies to load in. If I don't go left or my users don't go left we're good.   
3. If you enter a tv series episode via next up either via the home screen or under library was wondering if under the more, goto menu option could be a choice to actually goto the series so like goto The Flash, this would be great when you remember oh I fell asleep to the previous episode.
4. When sitting inside the seasons pages you can hit * to see the series cast and crew, any way to just combine the entry on episode cast and crew option to show a row for the series cast and a row for that specific episode. If not the * menu for the season page could use the goto choices as well please.
5. Was wondering if you could add favorites, genre, recently played as home screen options for music.
6. Also recently played and frequently played could be good additions for rows inside of music library, I know I want to customize rows and now I'm asking for you to add more rows.

Thanks again working really nice here. I also tested out the messaging locally and it works, need to try on a remote user.

Edited February 9, 2016 by BAS

[speechles 1917]

The music stuff with the flashing on server is fixed like you said. Love the goto feature, thanks for @@econ on requesting that.

• Still looking for a customize row on/off option in libraries when and if possible. Mainly because I don't want to see how badly my music and movie studios metadata is, especially music lol.

• When entering library of any kind, if the first move is to the left on accident when entering library of any kind,you must wait for that last item in the row to load in before entering of any other item is allowed. I know this might be a limitation of the hardware here, but the time it takes for my movies to load that last item in seems extremely excessive so not sure any optimization can be done here between the server/roku, I'm talking minutes for 4000+ movies to load in. If I don't go left or my users don't go left we're good.

• If you enter a tv series episode via next up either via the home screen or under library was wondering if under the more, goto menu option could be a choice to actually goto the series so like goto The Flash, this would be great when you remember oh I fell asleep to the previous episode.

• When sitting inside the seasons pages you can hit * to see the series cast and crew, any way to just combine the entry on episode cast and crew option to show a row for the series cast and a row for that specific episode. If not the * menu for the season page could use the goto choices as well please.

• Was wondering if you could add favorites, genre, recently played as home screen options for music.

• Also recently played and frequently played could be good additions for rows inside of music library, I know I want to customize rows and now I'm asking for you to add more rows.

Thanks again working really nice here. I also tested out the messaging locally and it works, need to try on a remote user.

1. Agree this would be nice to limit the rows and customize them. You cant really eliminate rows, the way the handlers work this isnt possible. All you can do is make the row not populate and turn invisible and get skipped. if it has no data in a row this happens. So this would have to be done within the url fetches for each row. If disabled return an empty roassociatedarray which signals to the handler the row is empty. This will need some experimenting to find the best way.

 

2. This is the paginated data loader working. It attempts to get all the contents. The problem is we cannot use "imagetypelimit=1" here. It will disable the paginated data loader and it will think it is a static size and wait to attain every item. This will lock the screen with no navigation possible until all rows are done. This is not acceptable. So the best way we can do this we are at the moment. @@Luke will have to answer why this happens it is something with the server payload when at the root of a library item.

 

3. This is possible. I tried to figure out how to make this happen because it is tied to your number 4. Since you are at the series level the item you are on is a season. Season has all the data, it is easy to do. With episode based another fetch is required to get the series and its seasons. This then has to be "translated" so the roku can understand it. This part I am working on, when 3 is added so will be 4.

 

4. Yeah, this is tied to 3, see above. These two are closely related.

 

5. Adding to the music toggle means making new images. This one will come later because its the most involved. My photoshop skills are lacking. I am a pixel artist, mspaint style. Not these layered vectorized images. If anyone wants to volunteer to make sweet looking images for this let me know.

 

6. What are the endpoints for recently played and most played? Alot of finding out how to add things involves digginf thru server source finding how it does it. Also I'm use firebug with firefox to see the queries its usinh. So yes, this is also doable pretty easily moreso than any other. I just dont know the endpoints yet to do it.

 

To everyone, all your feedback is appreciated. Anyone is welcome to paricipate in the feature requests and criticism. If anyone knows brightscript, or wants to learn, this is also great. Reply within this thread.

 

 

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