I know the old domain is deprecated, but would it really hurt to make api.giantbomb.com a reverse proxy pointing at the new URL for compatibility reasons?
I almost bought a new Roku. I am running a Roku XD and was sure it had finally broken. I only use it to watch giant bomb. Did a search before I went out to get a new one. Fingers crossed on a speedy recovery. Time to sloppily wire some old of bits together and rig it to my tv for now.
Yep, broke on my Roku LT, really bummed out because that was way I watched most videos. This same loading loop happened once before and it was eventually fixed, hopefully it get's fixed again.
Is there any chance y'all could improve the Roku channel a bit? Make categories easier to navigate, enable searching, beaming videos from browser to the app, etc? Like, if I want to rewatch the Persona endurance run, the Endurance Run category only shows videos as far back as the VJ-10 (or something in that area) episode of the Deadly Premonition run.
I don't know how much work this would take and I know the Roku channel is near the bottom of your priorities.
@bummey: Yes, we could probably make things better. I can send some pull requests, and hopefully Sam (whiskey developer) would accept them. Right now it's limiting categories to 100 items, explaining why they get cut off. As far as "beaming" and "navigation" what do you have in mind? Also, the repo is available to anyone who might want to submit pull requests.
@bummey: Yes, we could probably make things better. I can send some pull requests, and hopefully Sam (whiskey developer) would accept them. Right now it's limiting categories to 100 items, explaining why they get cut off. As far as "beaming" and "navigation" what do you have in mind? Also, the repo is available to anyone who might want to submit pull requests.
Using youtube as an example, I can load a video page on my browser and click a button to have it start playing on the TV. If there's a hard cap at 100 that might be a way to allow watching older videos. I don't know what it would involve to implement that, however.
As for making it easier to navigate, never mind. Sometimes I forget that the Roku is a cumbersome piece of shit on the best days.
While I'm here, is anyone else noticing that Giant Bomb East's videos tend to have more problems? They'll fail far more frequently than videos from West, either loading for a second and kicking back to the menu, cutting off mid-way, or not responding at all when you press play. I don't know if that's a problem with the roku channel, my connection, or faulty encoding from East.
YouTube has DIAL support (like Netflix) which would probably be hard for GB to implement since they don't appear to have anyone working on apps at the moment.
I figured as much. Jeff has spoken in the past about how small the roku user base is and how any more advanced developments are unlikely. Still, it couldn't hurt to throw it out there.
@bummey: Yes, we could probably make things better. I can send some pull requests, and hopefully Sam (whiskey developer) would accept them. Right now it's limiting categories to 100 items, explaining why they get cut off. As far as "beaming" and "navigation" what do you have in mind? Also, the repo is available to anyone who might want to submit pull requests.
Using youtube as an example, I can load a video page on my browser and click a button to have it start playing on the TV. If there's a hard cap at 100 that might be a way to allow watching older videos. I don't know what it would involve to implement that, however.
As for making it easier to navigate, never mind. Sometimes I forget that the Roku is a cumbersome piece of shit on the best days.
While I'm here, is anyone else noticing that Giant Bomb East's videos tend to have more problems? They'll fail far more frequently than videos from West, either loading for a second and kicking back to the menu, cutting off mid-way, or not responding at all when you press play. I don't know if that's a problem with the roku channel, my connection, or faulty encoding from East.
Once thing I see is that resuming videos often fails, I have to quit the app and start again to resume but that is for all videos I think. Is that 4 year old Whisky roku github the right repo or is there a new one?
@mosdl: It was a private repo, with a slightly modified codebase than what was on the whiskey github. We've added a couple things (mostly tracking), and It's dusty, but could use a fresh coat of paint.
The app is loading for me again which is great, but I've also noticed another bug that's been happening to me more recently; some videos (like MGS 12, Vinny Vania SC4 Part 3 and a few other assorted videos) will play up until a point, and then will boot me out of the video and give me a pop up that says "checking connection" and I will be unable to watch the videos past that point, even if I try to fast forward over the timestamp where I experienced the error. Some videos don't even open and allow me to view them in the first place.
@bummey: try using the Plex and its Giantbomb channel. It's laid out in a more friendly way and you can view all a videos from things like Endurance Runs in a vertical list format.
@bummey: I have noticed that GBE's videos do seem to fail more often for me, but I'm not sure if that's just coincidence because it does happen to me on GBW's videos too. I have noticed that on the main screen for the video, if it says the time as "0m" in the bottom left it seems like those videos might be more prone to not loading entirely, or cutting out halfway through, but that might just be me looking for something that isn't actually there. I assume this issue just stems from encoding errors, but I really have no idea.
For the Kodi users out there, there is an unofficial giant bomb add on that works swell: https://github.com/jimporter/giantbomb-kodi
I've talked to the Giant Bomb devs, and hopefully this will become the official version once I release 5.0.0. My version of the add-on has a bunch of other features that people will hopefully like, such as support for the podcasts, the ability to play videos via Youtube (good when Giant Bomb's CDN is slow), and better metadata for all the videos.
@jporter: Yes, I'd be happy to fork your release and host it on CBSi and support it as official release, if you'd like. The stuff you have added is awesome, and is far superior than the old, out of date xbmc stuff. Just let me know when 5 is ready, and we'll test it out, and try to support this as the official release.
@heavymetalwaffle: Every time this has happened to me it's been because the HD version of the video was broken. I get around it by downloading the high quality version and playing it on plex but just being able to select video quality in the base roku app would probably fix it.
@someguyjohnson: I've never done any Roku development, but I know by the way Roku tries to handle all video quality automatically would make that a bit of an issue. I've seen some app force low quality so they can upcharge you for HD, but I've never actually seen an app that lets you preselect quality. You have to go into a secret Roku menu if you want to choose stream quality on a system level, which is sometimes the only way to override Roku's tendency to downgrade the stream quality for no reason. Which is really funny, because if the HD version of a video is broken on GiantBomb's end, the Roku responds by crashing back to the menu, when it could theoretically just downgrade the stream.
Okay, so after a little while of being okay again, starting yesterday no videos will play on the roku app anymore. After clicking play, it acts like it's going to load for half a second by flashing a black screen but boots back out to the play menu immediately.
I don't know if this would be related, but I also haven't been able to watch very many videos on my phone anymore because it's telling me I need an HTML5 compatible browser (iPhone 6, Safari). I thought safari was HTML5 compatible, but either way I never used to have any problems before yesterday.
Just chiming in to report I am experiencing the same issue as heavymetalwaffle. I am a premium member. Anytime I try to play a video, it flashes to a black screen and then goes back to the video list. Hope it gets resolved soon! Thank you, kind sirs.
There's a bug in the Roku app. We're going to have to fix that and put put a patch. I'm not entirely sure how long that will take but hopefully we can make something available by Monday. If you disassociate your credentials from the app (which will mean no premium unfortunately) you will be able to watch videos. This is a problem with HD video.
Thanks techsuck! I was able to get videos to start playing by deleting Giant Bomb from my Roku and installing it again. Even after linking my premium account again regular videos would work but premium content wouldn't.
Premium Giant Bomb content is the only reason I keep my Roku around these days. I can get the rest of the Giant Bomb content on YouTube to my TV from my TiVo and consoles.
It was distressing to see that I no longer had a way to watch Unprofessional Friday's on my TV but your suggestion of switching the Roku to 4:3 worked for me. A real fix would be ideal but this is better than nothing.
Roku app is now working for premium content and it's saving credentials correctly even on reboot. (I did an unistall/reinstallreinstall of the app, BTW.) I was originally having the flash to black screen and then right back to the menu problem like others were having.
On Twitter, Jeff G told me to check the boards, so just posting success.
The Last Unprofessional Friday won't load on my Roku just attempts to load then goes back to the page I was on before, anyone else having issues? Quick looks seem to work fine...
The Last Unprofessional Friday won't load on my Roku just attempts to load then goes back to the page I was on before, anyone else having issues? Quick looks seem to work fine...
This is occurring for me now, with both the public app and the private app. Will check again in the morning.
@givemesnacks: The UPF encode got borked. I'm redoing it now. When it shows up again it should be ok. Sorry. I'm aware of why it failed in the first place and we are going to fix that. But I blame Drew...
Would it be possible to give UPF it's own section in the app? It seems odd to not already have it since they're posted so much more frequently than other premium videos. And you guys added the Game Tapes and Best Of sections pretty quickly so I figured it didn't hurt to ask.
Also, I'm sure it's been asked before but is a search feature possible?
For the past two days been unable to resume my place in any previously watched videos or fast forward any videos in the roku app. I get the loading screen and then it just reverts back to the GB app front end. If I start videos from the beginning they play fine. I can pause and rewind videos, but trying to seek ahead always sends me back to the front-end.
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