Playlists

Archived
1

Is it possible to create a playlist in Roku where you can order a list of clips and have them play sequentially without further user intervention?

2

It’s currently possible to script a list of videos to play one after another… However, the roVideoScreen will be restarted between videos with a rebuffer on each transition.

Our support for true playlists and automatic pre-buffering of each transition will be in the form of HLS going forward.

–Kevin

3

“RokuKevin” wrote:

Our support for true playlists and automatic pre-buffering of each transition will be in the form of HLS going forward.

–Kevin

Hi Kevin. What exactly is HLS? Does that deal directly with the prebuffer issue?

Thanks

4

Sorry for the acronym…

HLS stands for Http Live Streaming. It is a streaming protocol submitted by Apple to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and is gaining a lot of traction.

Roku will be sharing more information about our implementation very soon.

HLS deals with the prebuffer issue in the sense that an m3u8 file can list other m3u8 files that list ~10sec intervals of transport streams.

A playlist could be implemented in HLS as a master m3u8 file that lists other m3u8 files for each video in the playlist. Because the video m3u8 files list transport streams that are segmented on I-frame boundries, our HLS player can prebuffer them and seamlessly transition to the next transport stream when the player is ready.

So yes, HLS will enable playlist support and address the prebuffer issue.

If you want to start learning more about HLS and m3u8 files, the following resources may be of interest:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/libra … ction.html

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos … reaming-02

–Kevin.

5

Kevin - This seems to me as a breakthrough for streaming to the home and adds leverage to the Roku box. I see that the proposed standard expires this April, is there any indication that there will be a standard by then? And if the standard is delayed, does that mean Roku will delay implementing HLS?

Thanks

6

“RokuKevin” wrote:
Sorry for the acronym…

HLS stands for Http Live Streaming. It is a streaming protocol submitted by Apple to the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) and is gaining a lot of traction.
.

We’re very interested in this Kevin. Any timeline?

7

Roku has been implementing HLS… we are not waiting for standards to be ratified.

We will be sharing more information on HLS very soon.

–Kevin

8

Thanks Kevin for sharing this.