Diaries from my Roku SoundBridge - Ah those documentation bugs
The only draw back of the Roku SoundBridge I've encountered to date is with large music libraries. The small screen makes searching across hundreds of albums somewhat tedious and the search capabilities with the remote can take time and does not always yield the best results.
I therefore decided I would create an add-in for my Windows Media Center such that while browsing through album in my Windows Media Center I could choose to play an album on my Roku SoundBridge. This provides a rich way to view album information and choose to play an album without ever having to use the remote. Recall from previous post that Roku Labs provides a
Control protocol that allows full control from any computer or device.
I won’t go into the details of creating an add-in in this post as there are already a number of articles on the subject. Some resources for Windows Media Center Add-in
My plan was very simple. All I needed to do was use the HostControl.MediaContext["AlbumName"] as documented in the Windows Media Center SDK. I would read the Album name currently being viewed, Queue all the songs from that album with the Roku control protocol and begin playback.
I could extract every other property, AlbumArtist, Genre, Label, ReleaseDate but AlbumName was always null. I played with this for some time when I finally decided the problem was not my code but something altogether different. Well a couple hours later and a good look through Microsoft.MediaCenter.dll I found that the SDK wrongly identifies the property as AlbumName when it should be AlbumTitle. Sometimes something simple takes just a little bit longer!
