ready to publish, link doesn't work!!

Hello mitchstein,
The nature of these posts is causing me great concern. There are many intelligent postings of well documented errors which appear to be the result of this conversion to Direct Publisher. After months of work, we were ready to launch this week - and I ran into an impossible piece of information to provide to move forward - The Roku API Billing Service Account from my Developer Account - this does not appear to exist, so I to my dismay, I found myself Here, combing through screens of stranded operators without any answers or replies to their questions. I have a degree in comp sci and a handful of real world earned Microsoft MCSE, MSCA certifications and I took one look at Direct Publisher and its slack security and I was appalled that in the face of Cyber Command calling on all us Sys Folks to lock down their resources that Roku would forward such a solution that besides denying the ability to accept subscribers, only seems to work when the solutions are share asset folders to Access All.  My project, which I was preparing with all the proper AWS S3 security bucket permissions and entering my secret keys and perfectly sized pixel artwork into Instant TV Channe, has ground to a halt. I am very discouraged by what appears to be many people more talented than me at programming who have had their channels potential gutted. This post which I have added a non technical post to is written by a channel operator with much more experience than me, and if so many capable techies are being side lined by this bizarre Direct Publisher forced migration, my project, for posterity, for our Republic, is gravely threatened, which honestly puts a heck of a lot more at risk than if I was just posting an ego channel. the schulz

I'll come to Roku's defense on the DP.  It worked out ok for me. Some glitches, sure. I agree Mitch seems to have some doozy's. I have very little/no server knowledge. Mostly just web design with light coding. I view it like this, DP is like what Wordpress is to web design. It's basic, limited, cookie cutting. Support for PPV, Logins, Livestreams etc isn't too great. Same with any alterations or customization.  Sure it shouldn't have many glitches ( I really didn't have many), as its a cookie cutter template. I read yours & Mitch's posts and can tell you guys know more about this than me. Better to be lucky than good, or maybe you guys know just enough to be dangerous.  Granted, I didn't migrate my site, it was just built from scratch.

Anyway Mitch I really don't know what to say on that one. If you never get any response from Tech I'd suggest deleting the channel & resubmitting it. Just be sure to save all your info.  Double check things each step of the way.

Well as far as a "cookie cutter approach". absolutely it is, and so is the sample player in the SDK, which with the exception of having ad server ability is just as easy to setup and has many less limitations. As I said before, I do not have Brightscript experience, nor do I really wanna learn it just for one platform, unless this Direct Publisher deal makes some real money, then if it proves to be beneficial I'd have no problem spending a few days mastering Brightscript, it appears to be very much like a cross between c# and java.. But closer to java just enough to become confusing as hell, unfortunately Brightscript has less then 5% of the support that java has..

This Direct Publisher is simply an experiment for me to see if the content I own can generate revenue without charging the end users, through advertising, and for me to see how an advertising server operates upfront and close in order to see if it is something I wish to develop and finance on my own or seek investors to finance or just let it be handled third party.
My channel went public today, we have yet to advertise it and I am going to see now if the channel will pick up users on just Roku's advertising, I will start advertising in one month amd see the difference in the demographics then. That tells me how much Roku is worth investing time, money and effort on. So far I am very happy and may go Roku exclusive, but we will know in a month. My private channels on the plain jane, box cutter, sample coded player does extremly well, what I am looking for is more users on the public channel within a few months then I have on my private channel, if that happens then I stay with the direct publisher, if that does not happen then I know being public doesn't make a difference of being private and will just develope a brightscript player with advertising for my private channel if the dollars coming in warrant it.

As for support of even the direct publisher here in the forums, there is not much that I see, and I have noticed many questions go weeks unanswered and there is more spam in the last few weeks then questions, and alot more questions then answers. Those are ththings a developer mostly looks at when deciding to commit to a proprietary platform, or even a standard but slightly customized platform, "Will I hit a snag and noone help me?" from what I see here that is possible. BUT, as I said, I will check daily and do my best to help the people going forward, I however am not an expert on Brightscript or direct publisher but will share all that I know.

Congrats Mitch!  Good luck with it all. Funny you mentioned "Well as far as a "cookie cutter approach". absolutely it is, and so is the sample player in the SDK," I just could never figure the SDK out. In theory, I felt it was just gonna be a sample code where all I do is replace the image and video urls to convert it to my custom specs, but I just couldn't follow along?!  The website Help section seemed all over the place, and I followed along to a video tutorial but it was a couple years out of date, so alot of the step by step instructions were bad. I could only keep up for so long before it just didn't work or I couldn't follow. I just couldn't get it. So when I checked back in the new year I was pretty amped over this DP thing.

You'll find you may get quite a few adds thru their new & notable section. I wasn't really prepared for it. I wanted to ask my parents to be my first add. I check back a couple days later and find 100 people already installed it?! I wasn't ready for that but hey it was exciting.  Their site snalytics thru the Dashboard is pretty informative to check in on periodically.

well that is all you do except in addition there are two spots (maybe 3 going back over 4 years since I looked at the code) I believe in main.brs where you update the path to your video feed xml files and I believe a site icon. It is clearly marked in the remarks. Then the hardest part is setting up the roku in developers mode, pkzipping (or whatever utility you like that can zip, i think win10 has it built in, maybe win 7 also been a while) and upload it to your roku device, then once your happy with the way it works you click package and it sends the player to the channel store (private)..

Those are the parts most people have trouble with, I found if you followed the directions to a tee it was really easy, and since you hosted the xml files you never had to look at brisght script or the roku again in developer mode. The bad part I encountered, if you want to clone the channel or update any of the code you have to remember the developers key and password you setup when creating the developers mode on your roku, and then you also need the original code cause it doesn't let you download it from the roku even on the one you developed on..

"mitchstein" wrote:
My channel went public today

Congratulations on getting your channel published! I noticed that you still have quite a bunch of html tags in your descriptions though, but at least you have the content in there.

"mitchstein" wrote:
well that is all you do except in addition there are two spots (maybe 3 going back over 4 years since I looked at the code) I believe in main.brs where you update the path to your video feed xml files and I believe a site icon. It is clearly marked in the remarks. Then the hardest part is setting up the roku in developers mode, pkzipping (or whatever utility you like that can zip, i think win10 has it built in, maybe win 7 also been a while) and upload it to your roku device, then once your happy with the way it works you click package and it sends the player to the channel store (private)..

Those are the parts most people have trouble with, I found if you followed the directions to a tee it was really easy, and since you hosted the xml files you never had to look at brisght script or the roku again in developer mode. The bad part I encountered, if you want to clone the channel or update any of the code you have to remember the developers key and password you setup when creating the developers mode on your roku, and then you also need the original code cause it doesn't let you download it from the roku even on the one you developed on..

That actually reminds me how far I got. I did get it into developer mode and the script imported. I got the default 'splash image' or something up, which was an achievement in itself. Pretty cool that I got to turn on my Roku and see my own graphics. But it was shortly after I just couldn't keep up.
Again congrats on the channel!

"mitchstein" wrote:
So far I am very happy and may go Roku exclusive, but we will know in a month. My private channels on the plain jane, box cutter, sample coded player does extremly well, what I am looking for is more users on the public channel within a few months then I have on my private channel, if that happens then I stay with the direct publisher, if that does not happen then I know being public doesn't make a difference of being private and will just develope a brightscript player with advertising for my private channel if the dollars coming in warrant it.
sible.

Mitch (or anybody), can you clarify something for me?  When you build a channel using SDK/coding does it automatically become only a "Private" channel??  What steps need to be made to make it a Public channel?  I'm sure the Netflix's and Pandora's, CBS News etc get certain priorities, but I have some small-mid size channels I found thru the regular Streaming Channels section.

"Pasnow" wrote:

"mitchstein" wrote:
So far I am very happy and may go Roku exclusive, but we will know in a month. My private channels on the plain jane, box cutter, sample coded player does extremly well, what I am looking for is more users on the public channel within a few months then I have on my private channel, if that happens then I stay with the direct publisher, if that does not happen then I know being public doesn't make a difference of being private and will just develope a brightscript player with advertising for my private channel if the dollars coming in warrant it.
sible.

Mitch (or anybody), can you clarify something for me?  When you build a channel using SDK/coding does it automatically become only a "Private" channel??  What steps need to be made to make it a Public channel?  I'm sure the Netflix's and Pandora's, CBS News etc get certain priorities, but I have some small-mid size channels I found thru the regular Streaming Channels section.

Pasnow, SDK channels are not private by default. The developer sets whether the channel should be public or private at the onset of the channel submission process.
There are two ways to convert a channel from private to public:
1) Create an entirely new channel, and upload the same package used for your private channel. This will, of course, mean that you lose all existing channel installs, but you benefit from being featured in the New & Notable section for the first 30 days after being published. 
2) Email partnersuccess@roku.com from the email account that owns the channel, provide your channel ID, and request that the channel is made public. The channel will keep its existing installs, but it will not be featured in the New & Notable section.

You can public channel when you create the channel, but you have to wait for Roku to approve the channel. In my experience, the approval process is more concerned with graphics then function. I have alot of users on my private channel here on roku, and it's been running for I'd say at least a couple to three years maybe. But getting answers to how to fix or what needs to be fixed to get approved proved hopeless. so the public channel has sat for a long time as "in review" and never got published. meanwhile the private channel is doing great as always and not one end user complains about the appearance of it. Matter of fact, I've recieved comments about the direct publisher public channels looking "plain jane", "archaic"and "boring" in comparison to the private channel and public that is not approved.. My private channel and still waiting to be approved public channel are identical, use the same graphics and same xml files...

I have to say though going public is worth it, the DP channels have gotten more subscribers in 2 weeks then the private channel has in two years (or so)..