Roku Developer Program

[newchannel]

If you are using amazon s3 to deliver roku content to the UK...

Are you using only s3 or s3 with cloudfront? I am wondering if perhaps using only s3 bucket without cloudfront will suffice to deliver content to roku Uk?

[destruk]

We had considered doing this - got the region and everything set up, and then noticed that only <2% of our total audience is even in the UK. It's not worth doubling our storage and distribution cost to give them a server cluster.
You might determine otherwise if you have content that the UK population truly desires. Keep in mind that by default cloudfront caches files to the edge servers for 24 hours - so unless a user of yours is requesting something that someone else has watched within 24 hours, cloudfront will not improve anything for that file. The object is to use cloudfront for your most popular content that will get more than the minimum requests and then it will pay off.

[newchannel]

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the input on the subject. Been thinking about offering some channels to the UK and been looking at using s3 with cloudfront versus using only s3. True the added expense will have to be worth it. From what I read the fees will pretty much double if use s3 with cloudfront.

[destruk]

Yeah, if you are between 1GB and 10TB of transfers pr month, cloudfront doubles that cost.

[newchannel]

I thought it would be doubled. Wonder if it will work using only s3 or if it would slow the loading?

[destruk]

It does work with S3, but then you don't get access to the edge servers (resulting in slower trans-continental downloads from requiring 1000+ miles to view content). So you'd end up paying for your USA-based S3 server storage, and then have to pay for anything stuck in the UK region of S3 server storage, which effectively doubles your cost too if you want a complete mirror of data files in both regions.

[newchannel]

I see, still double.

[scyber]

"destruk" wrote:
Yeah, if you are between 1GB and 10TB of transfers pr month, cloudfront doubles that cost.

While I know CF is more expensive, double seems a bit high unless I'm missing something? Looking at the pricing schedules for transfers, I see Cloudfront as costing $.14/GB (.12 CF to internet + .02 S3 to cloudfront) up to 10TB. S3 is free for the first GB, but then $.12/GB after that. Is there something I'm missing?

Note that my experience streaming from S3 (not for Roku in particular) has been that I can barely get consistent speeds over 4mbps. Not sure what your bitrate needs are, but that may not be high enough to individual users. Cloudfront speeds are much higher.

[destruk]

No, you are right. I was getting EC2 confused with S3. 14 cents would be correct as you said.

[destruk]

hmm...weird... the Amazon AWS S3 pages say S3 doesn't require region selection, but on this page http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/lat ... ction.html the buckets themselves can be set to specific regions.
You could probably increase your own speed from 4MB/sec to something faster if you set your content to the same region you are in, but then your access would slow down for other users, so I would conclude cloudfront is worth the extra 2 cents.