I'm proud to announce the release of SlimRoku v1.6beta. This version is built against SlimServer 6.5 and relies heavily on many of the new features in 6.5, so it is unlikely it will work properly with earlier versions.

Updates in this version include:
NOTE: If you've been using a previous version of SlimRoku and have customized your favorites, then be sure not to overwrite your Favorites.xml file with the one in the zip file.

You can download the new version here: http://www.permanence.com/slimroku/file ... .6beta.zip
The SlimRoku.roku File Builder has been updated with the new command-line options.

Please refer to the SlimRoku website for more information.

As always, I look forward to your questions, comments, and suggestions!

TheEndless

TheEndless wrote:

As always, I look forward to your questions, comments, and suggestions!

TheEndless

Wow! I'm thrilled to see that you're still working on this (even though you said you would); I use this app every day.

This version seems much more responsive on my system, and I haven't had any crashes when using the web interface to control SlimServer (as I did with the 1.5 version and 6.2.2). Downloading album art is also a LOT faster.

I'll let you know if any issues pop up, but right now everything looks great!

I did notice one oddity (I don't think it did this the first time I booted it up). In the Artists display box in the top center of the Music Library browser, the display is messed up. There's one line of text off the bottom of the display area, and it does not get erased before the next item is written when I'm scrolling through the library, so it eventually gets all jumbled up.

Thanks for releasing this. In particular the xm radio. That works very well. One questions I have is transcoding required for xm? I want to use slimserver on the infrant, but if it requires the audio to be transcoded it can't do it. Right now I have Slimserver on a pc and all is working great.

Thanks again.

Darin

chackett wrote:

I did notice one oddity (I don't think it did this the first time I booted it up). In the Artists display box in the top center of the Music Library browser, the display is messed up. There's one line of text off the bottom of the display area, and it does not get erased before the next item is written when I'm scrolling through the library, so it eventually gets all jumbled up.

Hrmm.. the display code in the library didn't change. Are you using the default font size or the large font? Does it happen on every page, or is there one artist that seems to cause it?

dj7675 wrote:

Thanks for releasing this. In particular the xm radio. That works very well. One questions I have is transcoding required for xm? I want to use slimserver on the infrant, but if it requires the audio to be transcoded it can't do it. Right now I have Slimserver on a pc and all is working great.

Unfortunately, yes. XM broadcasts in WMA. Softsqueeze (which SlimRoku impersonates) doesn't support WMA, so it has to be transcoded first. If the infrant has enough power to decode, you might be able to get away with steaming in WAV. That would remove the extra step of having to re-encode in a different format...

TheEndless

I suspected that was the case. The infrant slimserver doesn't transcode. Put 6.5 on a PC and it works great. I hadn't played with internet radio much because I have been stuck with dial up. Just got dsl and there are some great stations out there...Thanks again for your work on this.

Darin

TheEndless wrote:

Hrmm.. the display code in the library didn't change. Are you using the default font size or the large font? Does it happen on every page, or is there one artist that seems to cause it?

TheEndless

I'm using the default font setting, as far as I recall; this would be a flag in the startup batch file, yes? I'll check when I get home tonight.

As for what's happening with the graphics glitch, I probably didn't express myself very well; let me try again.

The "Browse Music Library" screen looks normal, except that the middle window on the top (the "Artists" window) contains an extra line of text at the bottom, that's actually below where the text should normally be displayed. When scrolling through the artists, this line of text is updated without clearing the old data first, so one ends up with a jumbled display on this one line. I haven't actually tried selecting that line to see what happens; I'll do that when I get home tonight.

note: you can use /usr/local/bin/screengrab fileName and it will create fileName.bmp so you can capture what your roku looks like to the developer or interested prospective buyers.

I know lots of people wandering around bestbuy would like the PB if it was easier to use and their houses were pre-wired with 100Mb ethernet.

when i was there yesterday the sales guy was trying to sell a $1,500 Bose MP3 system+speakers to play MP3s on his TV (I think).

chackett wrote:

I'm using the default font setting, as far as I recall; this would be a flag in the startup batch file, yes? I'll check when I get home tonight.

Yeah, -UseLargeFont, I believe...

chackett wrote:

As for what's happening with the graphics glitch, I probably didn't express myself very well; let me try again.

The "Browse Music Library" screen looks normal, except that the middle window on the top (the "Artists" window) contains an extra line of text at the bottom, that's actually below where the text should normally be displayed. When scrolling through the artists, this line of text is updated without clearing the old data first, so one ends up with a jumbled display on this one line. I haven't actually tried selecting that line to see what happens; I'll do that when I get home tonight.

Nope, you explained it right. At least, that's how I read it. I don't see the problem on my end, which is why I asked for clarification. What I was specifically wondering was if it happens on the first page down/up through the artists list, or if it starts happening after you've already scrolled down/up a few pages? I'm thinking maybe an odd character in one of the artists' names might be causing the problem (there have been reports in the SlimServer developer forum of unicode characters causing issues with the CLI)...

TheEndless

mjt5282 wrote:

I know lots of people wandering around bestbuy would like the PB if it was easier to use

Except you can't buy one any more (other than used).

mjt5282 wrote:

when i was there yesterday the sales guy was trying to sell a $1,500 Bose MP3 system+speakers to play MP3s on his TV (I think).

/me shakes head.... *SIGH* Bose sure has done a good job of marketing their psuedo-science as "better sound"....

TheEndless wrote:

chackett wrote:

I'm using the default font setting, as far as I recall; this would be a flag in the startup batch file, yes? I'll check when I get home tonight.

Yeah, -UseLargeFont, I believe...

chackett wrote:

As for what's happening with the graphics glitch, I probably didn't express myself very well; let me try again.

The "Browse Music Library" screen looks normal, except that the middle window on the top (the "Artists" window) contains an extra line of text at the bottom, that's actually below where the text should normally be displayed. When scrolling through the artists, this line of text is updated without clearing the old data first, so one ends up with a jumbled display on this one line. I haven't actually tried selecting that line to see what happens; I'll do that when I get home tonight.

Nope, you explained it right. At least, that's how I read it. I don't see the problem on my end, which is why I asked for clarification. What I was specifically wondering was if it happens on the first page down/up through the artists list, or if it starts happening after you've already scrolled down/up a few pages? I'm thinking maybe an odd character in one of the artists' names might be causing the problem (there have been reports in the SlimServer developer forum of unicode characters causing issues with the CLI)...

TheEndless

It's already there when the browser first loads up. I figured out what was causing it, though; I had changed the compilations setting in SlimServer so that compilations were grouped together rather than being listed under all of the individual artists. Apparently what this does is cause a new "Various Artists" entry to appear as the first entry in the artists browser field, and this bumps the list down by one (and off of the window at the bottom). Strange thing was, everything but the Various Artists listing changes when scrolling. Some bug that slipped by because you don't use that feature, perhaps?

chackett wrote:

It's already there when the browser first loads up. I figured out what was causing it, though; I had changed the compilations setting in SlimServer so that compilations were grouped together rather than being listed under all of the individual artists. Apparently what this does is cause a new "Various Artists" entry to appear as the first entry in the artists browser field, and this bumps the list down by one (and off of the window at the bottom). Strange thing was, everything but the Various Artists listing changes when scrolling. Some bug that slipped by because you don't use that feature, perhaps?

Actually, that sounds like a bug in the SlimServer CLI. It must be returning an extra "Various Artist" entry on every request instead of just in the V's as you'd expect. I'll look into it.

TheEndless

TheEndless wrote:

chackett wrote:

It's already there when the browser first loads up. I figured out what was causing it, though; I had changed the compilations setting in SlimServer so that compilations were grouped together rather than being listed under all of the individual artists. Apparently what this does is cause a new "Various Artists" entry to appear as the first entry in the artists browser field, and this bumps the list down by one (and off of the window at the bottom). Strange thing was, everything but the Various Artists listing changes when scrolling. Some bug that slipped by because you don't use that feature, perhaps?

Actually, that sounds like a bug in the SlimServer CLI. It must be returning an extra "Various Artist" entry on every request instead of just in the V's as you'd expect. I'll look into it.

TheEndless

Thanks. I'm using 6.5.1, BTW, but I'm pretty sure this was happening with the 6.5 release as well.

chackett wrote:

I'm using 6.5.1

Sheesh...there's a 6.5.1 now? I just got 6.5.0 working! Grrr....what a PITA it is too on a Mandriva box.

dgburns wrote:

chackett wrote:

I'm using 6.5.1

Sheesh...there's a 6.5.1 now? I just got 6.5.0 working! Grrr....what a PITA it is too on a Mandriva box.

6.5.1 is the current maintenance beta release. Not official yet.

TheEndless