Roku Overview
The Roku channel brings your Sovereign library to the TV. It mirrors the web interface’s look and feel, and everything on your account (watch progress, favorites, preferences) follows you between the two.
Administration stays on the web interface; the channel covers browsing, playback and your own account.
Connecting and Signing In
Section titled “Connecting and Signing In”On first launch the channel asks for your server’s address and probes it as soon as you confirm. A Secure connections only (https) toggle (on by default) restricts the channel to https:// with verified certificates; turn it off to allow a plain http:// address on a trusted network. If your server sits behind an authenticating proxy, the setup screen’s Custom headers row lets you add up to five name/value pairs it expects. They’re sent with sign-in, library and video requests, but the Roku can’t attach them when it loads artwork, so a proxy that demands them on every request will block posters and backdrops.
Once connected, the sign-in screen offers two ways in. You can enter the same username and password you use on the web, or choose Sign in with your phone: the channel shows a QR code, the address of the Device Pairing page and a short code, and signs itself in as soon as you approve that code from a phone or laptop, so nothing gets typed on the TV. A Change server button on the same screen takes you back to the address step. The channel remembers your session across launches, so this is a one-time step.
An account that an administrator hasn’t approved yet signs in to an Awaiting approval screen instead, with a Check again button and a Sign out button.
More Than One Person on a TV
Section titled “More Than One Person on a TV”Everyone in the house can stay signed in on the same Roku. Once two or more people are signed in to your server, the channel opens on Who’s watching?, a tile for each of them, and starts as whoever you pick. Each person’s tile shows their profile picture, or their initials if they haven’t set one.
Add user, the last tile on the picker and a button on the Profile tab of Account, opens the sign-in screen for someone new. Whoever is signed in stays signed in until the new sign-in succeeds, so pressing Back changes nothing. Switch user on the same tab brings the picker back, and Sign out there signs out only you.
Change server is on the sign-in screen, the picker and the Profile tab. Moving the channel to another server doesn’t sign anybody out: the people signed in to the old server stay on the Roku, and they’re back on the picker when you change back to it.
Up to Five People per Roku
Section titled “Up to Five People per Roku”A Roku holds five signed-in people at most. The limit comes from the device, not from Sovereign: Roku gives each channel 16 KB of storage on the device for everything it keeps, your server’s address and any custom headers included, and each signed-in person’s session takes a few kilobytes of it. Five is what fits, and with several custom headers saved it can be fewer. No server setting or Sovereign update can raise it.
The five counts everyone signed in on the Roku, on every server. At the limit Add user disappears, and when some of those people are signed in to another server, the picker and the Profile tab say so: “This device holds 5 users, and some are signed in to other servers. Change server to sign one out.” A sign-in that wouldn’t fit is refused with the same line, or with “This device can’t hold another user.” when everyone is on this server. Nobody already signed in is signed out to make room. To free a place, use Change server to go back to the other server, pick someone there and choose Sign out on their Profile tab, which also ends their session on that server.
Navigation
Section titled “Navigation”You drive everything with the remote’s directional pad: move focus with the arrows, confirm with OK, and step back with Back. To reach the slim rail on the left edge, press Left from the content (or Back from the top of a section):
| Icon | Destination |
|---|---|
| Sovereign logo | Home |
| Film strip | Movies |
| TV | TV Series |
| Two figures | People |
| Star | Favorites |
| Magnifier | Search |
| Your avatar | Account |
Your avatar sits on its own at the foot of the rail, below the other icons.
People is a grid of everyone in your library’s credits, with All, Actors and Directors tabs and a Search chip that narrows it by name. Opening a person shows their headshot, biography, birth and death dates and birthplace, with their Acting and Directing credits in rows below.
Search reaches the whole library from one term. Press OK on the search field to enter a term of two or more characters, and the results come back as rows of Movies, Collections, TV Series, Episodes and People, leaving out any category with no match. The filter pane on the Movies and TV Series libraries still narrows a single grid by title.
When your server has a licensing notice to show, it appears at the top of these screens, in the same words the web interface uses. It never appears over playback; see Licensing for what it says and why.
Titles, artwork, people and descriptions shown in screenshots are fictional and were created for illustration. Sovereign doesn't include or supply any media: it plays the library you bring.