Saturday, May 25, 2013

Roku new interface review

I received Roku interface update about a week ago. Before the update I was looking for reviews of the new interface but aside from paid "technology writers" I could not find any unbiased reviews. There are voices of criticism on Roku forums but they are quickly drowned out by the "you have no rights to criticize" crowd.

Here is my review in a few words - the new interface SUCKS! It has a few differences from the old one, mainly that is is now grid of icons versus strip of icons in the old one. The icons are much smaller and the text is smaller and harder to read. The ad on the other hand is much bigger. Ad takes up more than a third of the screen and so annoying that it prompted me to find a blocking solution.

This new interface was designed by a marketing person who has no idea about usability of interfaces on TV. Previous interface was not a usability example but it was tolerable. The font was readable, the icons were large. The new one goes against all good design guidelines, except if your guidelines are to show giant ads and piss off all users of the device.
Navigation to a given icon is now faster since one can navigate in two directions instead of one but the interface startup is slower. It also takes more memory or maybe the new software is slower over all. It affects other apps and they are slower to start and have to fetch images more often. Home button now brings you in to the menu instead of the application icon as it used to do. To navigate back to the app screen you need an extra press.
Roku tried to better integrate the app store but I think they failed. Roku store is still as ugly as ever and loads very slowly. The settings now a menu item on the left instead of an icon and has greater chance to be selected by mistake. Search is also a menu item which is an improvement as it can be reached faster.

The video, when streamed from the local server, starts faster. Positioning within the video is also seems faster. New software fixed crashes when navigating within MKV files. I only tried with one file so this conclusion may be a bit premature. When position is changed within MKV file that is streamed over HTTP, most of the time first few seconds of video is broken but audio is OK. After few seconds video recovers. Previous version locked up the box, which rebooted after watchdog is expired. The new version seems to hold up.

The new Roku interface is definitely worse than the old one. It is slower to start, icons are smaller and ad is much larger and obtrusive. The software over all seems to slow down old apps. On the other hand video navigation is faster and MKV files  play better when streamed. I am disappointed with this update and will try to figure out how to prevent Roku from auto updating in the future.

Blocking ads in Roku launcher

New Roku interface sucks! I will talk about it in my later post in details. The size of ad is increased probably 8x. Before I did not think  it would be worth blocking Roku ad servers because ads were not in your face and not intrusive. Now ad occupies almost half of the screen and is very annoying.

After some research online I found the servers that Roku uses to host its ads. Below is the list of servers that should be blocked to stop Roku from serving ads:
  • api.roku.com
  • cloudservices.roku.com
  • channles.roku.com/images
Most modern routers have some sort of URL filtering abilities. Adding these URLs to the filtering list solves ad problem nicely. So far the only downside that I found is that Hulu Plus starts a bit slower. It maybe trying to hit the server for updates. Another side effect of blocking these links is that the Roku channel store is no longer works. Your loaded channels work OK but you can not get the new channels. This works for me, in fact it is an additional benefit as you child will not be able to browse the channel store and to download any unwanted apps. If you start the app store when these URLs are blocked, upon returning in to the main menu you will not be able to see your apps for a few minutes. This most likely caused by the network timeout and check for application updates.

If you have older Roku software you can block zedo.com domain and that would block all ads in the older Roku software.

I can not take credit for discovering these URLs, I just looked them up on the Internet. I hope this post will save you some time.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Watching America's Test Kitchen on Roku

Recently PBS and PBS KIDS channels were made available on Roku. Unfortunately America's Test Kitchen is not a part of PBS shows offered on Roku and it is one of our favorite shows. I this post I will explain how you can watch this show on Roku.

More than one year of episodes is available to watch in your browser for free on the show website. If you subscribe, you can watch all seasons of the show. The trick is to use Roku to do this. I have to warn you that the process is somewhat time consuming and not everyone would want to do this.

You will need software listed below and you can use google to find it. All software is free.
  • rtmpdump - this is the tool used to download the episodes
  • RTMPDumpHelper - this tool is used to make downloading process very simple
  • ffmpeg - this tool is used to convert downloaded video to the format understood by Roku
  • MyMedia - this software is used to play videos on Roku. This can be substituted by any software capable of doing the same thing or by playing videos from the USB media if your Roku is capable of doing so.
First you need to download episodes that you want to watch. Unfortunately downloading must happen in real time  so you have to be patient here. You also can not download multiple shows at the same time. Install rtmpdump and RTMPDumpHelper you your computer. Open RTMPDumpHelper and navigate to America's Test Kitchen website. Select episode that you want to download. You will see that rtmpsuck.exe will save advertisement first and then will start saving the episode. You can ether watch the episode or can go and do something else for 20 odd minutes. After episode is finished playing in your browser you will have a copy on your hard drive. You can repeat this process for any episode that you want.

Next step is to convert the video in to format that Roku will recognize. The original video is encoded correctly but it is multiplexed in to flash video format. All you need to do is re-multiplex this video in to the mp4 container. Use following ffmpeg command line to it:

ffmpeg -i input-file.mp4 -acodec copy -vcodec copy output-directory/output-file.mp4

Replace your input and output file names with correct episode names.This command will very quickly re-multiplex video. It only takes few seconds per episode on any modern computer.

Now you can play your downloaded videos on Roku using MyMedia (my favorite), Plex or any one of many local playback apps. You can also put episodes on USB drive and play them directly on your Roku if your device supports it. As a bonus after you downloaded the show you can store it on DVD and watch it any time you want to in the future. The show is streamed in 640x352 resolution and looks very good on our CRT TV.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Logitech G400s mouse

In my previous post I complimented Logitech customer service and now I wanted to give my opinion on the new mouse they sent me.

My old mouse is G400 as far as I can tell. It is dark grey with black bottom and has a Logitech logo on top. The new mouse is G400s and has a large G in place of Logitech logo. It is also different color - dark blue with the black stripes and silver markings. The buttons are same size and in the same positions. The weight of the new mouse is the same as the old one although I did not measure it precisely.
One thing that did change is the mouse cable. Old mouse had thin and very hard cable. There was no issues with it, it just was different from the older mice that I had. The new mouse has same thin cable but it is not as hard. It is more pliable and softer on touch. They also added grommet on the mouse end of the cable which should help this cable to last longer.

Sensitivity and button presses feel exactly the same. Wheel rotation feels "clicker" on the new mouse. In use this mouse feels identical to my original G400 and performs identically.

I still like G400 a lot and would recommend it for gaming and everyday use. I really like sensitivity adjustment buttons which do not require any special drivers. The mouse performs flawlessly on my cheap mouse pad and does not jerk or skip. No matter how fast I move it, it tracks really well.

Excellent customer service from Logitech

My older Logitech MX300 mouse finally gave up to ghost and after some research I purchased Logitech G400 to replace it. I like G400 a lot. It has a nice weight and comfortable to use. The only downside of this mouse in my case that it is right handed and I prefer ambidextrous mice. This mouse served me for over a year really well but developed very annoying squeak when pressing the wheel down.  Ordinary mouse can be opened and cleaned but G400 is sealed. The screws are located under the gliding pads, which are glued shut to the body. In theory the pads can be pried away to access the screws but I did not want to ruin the mouse.

I contacted Logitech tech support in hopes of getting some tips on cleaning this mouse. Few emails later they send me a brand new G400. I was pleasantly surprised to say the least. It is unusual to see a company being so forthcoming in replacing their products. I used Logitech products before as their mice are very good and reliable. Now they got a devoted customer. Knowing that they stand behind their products makes me confident that they are interested in maintaining quality. I can not imaging that their business model would be selling a bad product and then replacing it for free.