How to quickly/easily change video setup on PB

Interactive · Mon Dec 26, 2005 6:37 pm

I'd like to be able to use my PB for my HD setup in my media room but also run S-video out to a modulator for use in other rooms. My intentions are NOT to use both rooms at the same time. What this would require me to do is to use the VGA setting for my media room (the way it's connected today) and then change the video setting to S-vid out when I'm using it through the modulator on an SD TV. Is there a way I can control this video setting and switch back and forth via IR? ...or some other way?

It would be awesome to set up an IR command that would switch the outputs when I power on the other TV's... I can get the IR commands there with my current setup...just need to know if there are existing commands for this.

Thanks!

dj7675 · Thu Dec 29, 2005 10:34 am

Add me to this list. I would also love to be able to use the Svideo and then switch to an HD mode such as 720P/Component.--Darin

Interactive · Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:01 am

dj7675 wrote:
Add me to this list. I would also love to be able to use the Svideo and then switch to an HD mode such as 720P/Component.--Darin

Darin: Just curious, are you looking to accomplish the same thing as me using the S-vid out for a modulated signal to distribute? If you are, have you chosen a modulator yet?

dj7675 · Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:06 am

Yes. I can't recall if my modulator is svideo or composite. I use the Roku for hd ts video playback in our main theater where there is a modulator. I would use it for all video playback to all of our sd tv's if I could get this figured out to easily switch back and forth between HD/SD output.

Darin

TheEndless · Thu Dec 29, 2005 11:40 am

There are ECP commands to accomplish this. If you're not able to directly send them to the PB, you could setup a simple .roku file to do it, then launch them from the UI to make the change quickly.

TheEndless

Interactive · Thu Dec 29, 2005 1:10 pm

TheEndless wrote:
There are ECP commands to accomplish this. If you're not able to directly send them to the PB, you could setup a simple .roku file to do it, then launch them from the UI to make the change quickly.

TheEndless

I know someone would have an answer to this...and that it would probably be over my head.

If I understand correctly, this would require the user to interact with the UI in order to make the change, correct? The problem is that the user may only be viewing the system from an SD TV which wouldn't present the UI until the setting has been changed.

I'm sure I'm missing something....

soiaf · Thu Dec 29, 2005 1:43 pm

Interactive wrote:
If I understand correctly, this would require the user to interact with the UI in order to make the change, correct? The problem is that the user may only be viewing the system from an SD TV which wouldn't present the UI until the setting has been changed.

Not necessarily. The command that TheEndless is talking about is issued via the command line, see page 15 of this document for more information:

http://www.rokulabs.com/developers/RokuHD1000-ECP.pdf

However, you could use something that 'listens' for commands from a remote, say the user-defined keys, and calls this command on your behalf, something like this:

http://www.rokulabs.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2158

And you'd have this application configured to start at boot time, and have one key on the remote for one video mode, and a seperate key for your other video mode.

Interactive · Thu Dec 29, 2005 3:21 pm

soiaf: You may regret trying to help this noob :-)

but can I ask a dumb question? (I have NOOOoo programming experience at all but I think I can learn some of these basics to get this done).

How do I telnet into the Roku? I've attempted to hit that IP from MS HyperTerminal and I get a login/password request.

I told you I was a noob.

soiaf · Thu Dec 29, 2005 4:59 pm

Interactive wrote:
How do I telnet into the Roku? I've attempted to hit that IP from MS HyperTerminal and I get a login/password request.

Getting a login prompt is good!
What you need to enter is the username root, so at the login prompt just enter

root

and press enter. Theres no password required for this account, so it should let you straight in. You then should have a '#' prompt.

So, at this prompt, to change your video mode you would enter the following command

ecp system videomode svideo 480i

It should give you a message telling you that the video mode has been successfully change to s-video 480i (and hopefully it has in fact changed to s-video mode!

)

to change it to composite would be something like

ecp system videomode composite 480i

and to change it to vga would be like

ecp system videomode rgb 1080i

Hope this works ok for you...

Interactive · Thu Dec 29, 2005 7:59 pm

soiaf wrote:
Hope this works ok for you...

soiaf: This worked perfectly! This is actually very cool. I suspect I'll be able to get deeper into this thing now and really screw some stuff up!!

Ok, now that I understand the whole concept of telnet'ing, I'm going to go try and conquer the mini-application to automate this thing.

One thing that came to mind...is there a way to force a script to run from a PC? Seems like that may be easier. I can send a command to my PC from my remote to trigger that process... I dunno if that makes any better sense..I guess I'm just not real confident about making the app to listen for the user command, etc. etc. I am going to go look into it though.

Thanks again for your help!

leenuxg33k · Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:13 pm

Interactive wrote:
soiaf wrote:
Hope this works ok for you...

soiaf: This worked perfectly! This is actually very cool. I suspect I'll be able to get deeper into this thing now and really screw some stuff up!!

Ok, now that I understand the whole concept of telnet'ing, I'm going to go try and conquer the mini-application to automate this thing.

One thing that came to mind...is there a way to force a script to run from a PC? Seems like that may be easier. I can send a command to my PC from my remote to trigger that process... I dunno if that makes any better sense..I guess I'm just not real confident about making the app to listen for the user command, etc. etc. I am going to go look into it though.

Thanks again for your help!

You could look into using the program called expect. I'm pretty sure you should be able to get that for windows as well. It will allow you to script the telnet session from your pc to the roku. It would be a bit hackish but should work.

soiaf · Fri Dec 30, 2005 6:05 am

Interactive wrote:
One thing that came to mind...is there a way to force a script to run from a PC? Seems like that may be easier. I can send a command to my PC from my remote to trigger that process.

Theres a few different ways this could be done, for example you could connect your computer to the PhotoBridge via the serial port and send commands that way.

I do know a fairly simple way to send commands, that might work ok for you.
If you use the command netcat its fairly simple to send commands to a unix system
http://www.vulnwatch.org/netcat/
One word of warning is (according to this web page) is that netcat is deemed a 'hackers tool' and so Norton Anti-Virus tries to remove it :roll:

Anyway, if you download Netcat for NT 1.11, you can use it as follows

First make a text file on your PC, lets call it vga.txt. In this file you have the following lines

root
ecp system videomode rgb 1080i

sleep 1

You can call netcat as follows:

type vga.txt | nc -t -w 10 X.X.X.X 23

where X.X.X.X is the IP address of your PhotoBridge.

The -t option tells it that this is a telnet session, the "-w 10" makes the netcat command quit after 10 seconds (to tidy up), and 23 is the port used by telnet.
So you could put this in a .BAT file or whatever on your PC.

As I said though, there are plenty of ways to do this, but this is pretty straightforward.

Interactive · Fri Dec 30, 2005 8:42 am

soiaf: This makes a lot of sense, thanks for taking so much time to explain. You're very generous with your detailed explanations.

This looks like it could be a good solution. Once configured, I could use an app like IRAssistant (I'm sure there are others) to capture an IR command from the remote system which would force a macro on the PC. In this case the macro would consist of just executing a file.

But based on the other thread you commented on about filtering media content (you suggested SDesk), now I'm wondering if this isn't something that could be called directly from within SDesk. I was thinking of using my PC for the purpose of simplifying things, but I'm not sure that's really going to be the case. While you've shown a way to handle this programatically, there's still some stuff that needs to be set up and supported (IR reciever, IR Assistant app, etc) that adds to the overall complexity. If I were to get SDesk up and running and stable, that app has the ability to trigger other apps on the Roku and actually, it could just use the ECP commands internally, couldn't it?

I wonder is sven is still doing any work on that app...I haven't seen him around lately.

PS: One more thing, thanks again for all of your support soiaf. I really appreciate you taking the time. I've said this before elsewhere but it's worth mentioning again... I believe the Roku PB would be extinct by now if it weren't for folks like you who make this forum a great community to help this somewhat cripled product. I hope Roku understands the importance of you guys!!

soiaf · Fri Dec 30, 2005 11:30 am

Interactive wrote:
If I were to get SDesk up and running and stable, that app has the ability to trigger other apps on the Roku and actually, it could just use the ECP commands internally, couldn't it?

Yes, you could make a small application that would call the ECP commands (you just put the ECP command in a file and give that file a .roku extension). I guess the issue though is how do you see/get SDesk to trigger the ECP command, you'd need to see the screen?

Interactive wrote:
One more thing, thanks again for all of your support soiaf. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Glad to help. I appreciate how frustrating it can be when you have a system that doesn't do what its fully capable of doing. The PhotoBridge is capable of a lot of functionality, but it sometimes feels you need arcane knowledge (and secret handshakes) to make it work.
Its always nice when you can just use a device the way its meant to work...

Interactive · Fri Dec 30, 2005 2:32 pm

soiaf wrote:
I guess the issue though is how do you see/get SDesk to trigger the ECP command, you'd need to see the screen?

That's why I was asking about sven and his whereabouts. Didn't know if possibly there was enough demand to justify him including this as a built in feature. It would be reasonably easy, I assume, for a guy who could write an application like SDesk, to add a function that is called by one of the User remote codes....right? Assuming that SDesk was running all of the time (which, if you do use SDesk, that would most likely be your intention anyway), then it could actually just work from within the app.

From the user side, I would make this work by running a different "Power On" macro in my media room than in my remote rooms.

Media Room:
Discrete power ON (all components)
Select AUX IN on receiver
Select USER DEFINED KEY 1 for Roku (=VGA 720p ecp command)

Other rooms:
Discrete power ON (all components)
Select AUX IN on receiver, Zone 2
Select USER DEFINED KEY 2 for Roku (=S-Vid 480p ecp command)

I sure wish I actually knew something about programming so I would know if my suggestion even makes sense.

How to quickly/easily change video setup on PB

How to quickly/easily change video setup on PB

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