Channels & viewing

[98gmarquee]

I was curious if anyone knew who makes the apps/channels for roku devices. I'm assuming it's the companies that the app is for, then they submit it to some roku "store" and it gets approved by someone at roku, then becomes available for us to use. I'd guess they may have to pay roku for that, since the fee we pay is for the service to the service provider directly.

I'm assuming if the company the app is for also made the app, they also have to host the data the app uses to function and videos to display.

This would explain why some apps stop working out of the blue, then continue to not work for days on end and miraculously fix themselves without an actual app or roku update being done.

All the anger and rage I see on the forum here at Roku whenever an app dies (NFL+ for me most recently), to me, likely isn't "roku's" fault.

The last time the NFL+ app flaked out on me, it was inoperable for around 12 days. I was viewing (and still am) older games that were 10+ years old as I just recently started watching football. So I've been working my way from the past to now. When it died for me before the most recent issue, it was games that were from 2018 (I think) or older. I went back and forth with NFL+ support and never really got an answer for the issue, it just started working again.

Anyway, I was just kind of curious how that work happens and who does what.

[renojim · Accepted solution]

Roku provides the platform much like any other computer maker.  The apps and content are provided/hosted for the most part by entities not affiliated with Roku in any way.  It's almost always those entities that are responsible for any issues with those apps and their content.  You might get a different impression from reading some of the posts/complaints/whining you see here, but it's probably because those other entities don't have a "community" like the one here where people can take out their frustration, so they blame Roku for every terribly developed app (and there's plenty of them).  Once you launch an app, Roku is pretty much out of the picture.  That doesn't mean that Roku's updates don't break things on a regular basis, but usually the app developer has to figure out what may not be compatible with the latest update.  Issues that affect multiple apps are more likely Roku's issue and will probably get rectified in a Roku update.

By the way, it's free to create a Roku app and get it into their "Streaming Store".  The larger companies almost certainly make a deal with Roku for some kind of revenue sharing and/or ad placement, but we'll never know the details.  Any app that monetizes via ads has to enter into an agreement with Roku, so Roku gets the opportunity to run its own ads during the ad breaks.

[Strega2]

Just wanted to add that if you go to: https://channelstore.roku.com, you can see who created an app. It's rarely Roku. And sometimes it's not who you think. For example, some apps throw something like "google" into their names, yet those apps are not written by google.