Roku Developer Program

[SerenityNow]

Hello:

i know that an Internet Search prompt can be made available. I’ve had access through TV before years ago using XBox, I believe & an external keyboard. Of course accessing the Internet is slow & bulky by design but certainly possible. I searched a few months ago for a ROKU search engine app and found nothing. In the last few days I discovered “Search Google with the Web”. 

It is a paid app to my dismay offering two options:  70 searches @ .99 or 300 searches for $2.99.

Having experienced how tedious pulling up a direct url can be using the onscreen keyboard or even an external KB if you can figure that out - I already knew that even 70 urls is a ridiculously large amount as most will opt to use their phone & cast. However, some do have a need for Internet access through the Router/Modem & independent from their phone &/or PC &/or Wi-Fi. I know this because it’s something that I personally need. And, if you offered it as well as could advertise its existence, I think there exists a chance to create an app that’s worthwhile. In fact, since I was willing to pay for it even, there is a chance that it could be more lucrative than say the online games & hoping ppl will purchase useless tokens. The problem of this medium being tedious & cumbersome crosses all of those apps.  Using either the remote or the onscreen keyboard makes things pretty difficult. 

If developers were to utilize a search engine such as Bing or DuckDuckGo (whatever), there is actually the possibility of monetization through searches & advertising also. Browsers can have built in ways to generate revenue for the developer. Yet even if you only offered an address line where only an exact url could be typed in to visit a specific page - it would be an app that people want and would want if they knew about its existence. It could be monetized like the theory behind the Google search by charging for the number of urls that could be visited. I’m just pointing out that there is incentive for someone to create this particular app  

The Google Search app wasn’t Google as it a was rife with typos. Also it doesn’t work at all so I just got a refund on my .99  Tech Support searched for any other possibility for me to access the web but there isn’t anything created at this time. I understand that there was recently some falling out between Google & ROKU but I’m not sure that has anything to do with why the app doesn’t work. However, it could. 

Would someone please create a way to access a url through the router/modem -ROKU interface? They asked me on the phone if I could access the web otherwise with my service. Of course - that’s how I watch YouTube.com or really anything else with Roku. So the web works fine & I can run my phone through the Wi-Fi. I’m looking for a solution that doesn’t require my phone, though. 

Thanks & I really hope someone will run with this. I’d like to know about it for sure. I’ll definitely use the service & I’d be glad to even spread the word of its existence if that would help. 

Teri

[philanderson777 · Accepted solution]

Hello @SerenityNow the roku operating system is a closed source linux operating system so is not open to modifications by developers beyond what is allowed or permitted by Roku themselves.

Currently browser activity is not allowed on Roku at all in any way so it's not possible to build web pages of any description let alone search engines.

I hope that helps?

Thanks

https://community.roku.com/t5/Channels-viewing/Paid-Google-Search-Engine-Application/m-p/904581/high...

PS We are allowed to build search feeds which display search results from a given API containing video content, so that users can search for and find video content on our channels.  However these searches are going through our own or Roku APIs and not through a general search engine.  Then we obtain consistent results and are able to display the content of video searches easily for the end user to see and select items.  Doing this via a random search engine like Google would obtain results but not in the format that we can present video options to the user.  

Hope that helps 🙂

[SerenityNow]

It does. I’m still skeptical. Lol. We used to have like an X-Box - I don’t recall all the details but you could attach a keyboard & type in web addresses (I think). So is it possible in any way to simply type in an url?

[philanderson777 · Accepted solution]

Hello @SerenityNow and yes this I must admit is a very valid and fair assumption to make.  However if we look at most of the TV and TV software manufacturers eg XBOX,  Playstation, Netflix, Amazon etc nearly all of these do indeed as you suggest have a very valid web browser interface and can interact with HTTP natively.

Roku is very different in this regard, and is much more closed off and does not expose any APIs in its operating system which permit browser based behaviour.  I guess with both Roku and Apple they are closed source operating systems so it's not possible to dive into the source code and see what's happening so easily and build 3rd party components off that ....  Microsoft have open sourced a lot of their code eg .NET / .NET core are open source languages now, which allows a lot better input from the developer community.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_system_software

Hope that helps again 🙂 

[SerenityNow]

What do developers do? I know there are some pretty bulky games many of which do not work by the way. I began wondering if some of these channels which some are pretty obscure, is that a function that a developer can create a channel to play certain shows? I guess this whole discussion has led me to question what a developer can actually do. If a developer can create a channel that plays certain videos, where do they access those videos? 

Thanks,

Theresa

I FOUND FORMATTING!

at least the 3 shown… I still wonder about any possibility of adding images, a hyperlink title, editing after posting, previewing before posting…

[philanderson777]

Hey Theresa

Yes of course the Roku ecosystem allows for API calls, the four critical ones eg HTTP GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE etc as any regular HTTP system.  

But an API call is a background call ie the user does not see anything.

The data received then has to be rendered on the screen.

So we can display TV content eg home page, links to other types of video content, rows and grids of TV content, all of this content receives the data via internet API calls over HTTP, that is not a problem.

And I suppose you could show comments if you really wanted to but I don't think it would work very well, but yes you could do that ... as for editing content I guess you could do that as well but would not allow for uploading images to the Roku TV by the user.  

And yes people do build games but that's outside of my knowledge sphere - these games are normally not approved on the Roku published channel though.

I'm sure a lot of people on the Roku #general slack channel above would help with a wider discussion

Hope that helps even more!

Phil

You know I have never seen a user text editor on Roku - all text boxes are just pure and simple entry systems for the most crude of data eg username and password, they do not have other complexity!  I guess as a user the TV remote is not the best way to interact with a device and be entering data ... 🙂 

[SerenityNow]

This mostly completely above my head, but I had a question which was if you could select shows as a developer, and that’s what your channel would be, but if you did, so, where would those videos come from? I think I saw a channel the other day, which Had a very specific genre, but the videos were all accessed from YouTube. So while some one may create videos for their channel, I suppose, I’m gathering they can also like I saw, select a topic and then fetch those videos?

So I’m not really clear on if you answered my question, which is what does the developer do? Apparently they select shows and create channels that do that, although I am still not clear on from where they pull the shows… and we verified that of course there are some games available from the menu which I suppose developers create… Is there anything else that developers do? Oh, I would guess that developers create screen savers and backgrounds

My comment on formatting is about here in the forum. I couldn’t find any way to format my text & I haven’t yet seen if anyone has answered as I posed that question elsewhere. Above I excitedly stated that I found formatting because I happened to see that I have that option as usual in most text boxes just anywhere on the web. There are the three basic formatting options if I right click - bold, italics, and underline. However, in another post, which I’m hoping there’s an answer, I was asking if here in the forum, there are other formatting options that I can’t see due to some security features that I have, such as changing, font size, font type, color, adding a hyperlink title, indenting, bulleting, adding images & the like. I understand if you hadn’t read my other messages as in that case it would seem that I was talking about finding formatting on the Roku interface on the television.🤔

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[zainbutt]

They download videos from youtube and plays these videos from their servers. Like this https://channelstore.roku.com/en-gb/details/9bc3a3661b68702baa7451ca4d717f2b/blippi 
There are different 3rd party services which we can use to do that. We can download videos to our S3 bucket and make APIs to list down the videos details in this way we can create these videos channels pulled from youtube.

[SerenityNow]

Guess what?!  I clicked on that app again - the one that’s supposed to have been refunded as it didn’t work.  It works now.  It searches with Google. I haven’t messed with it much - I clicked on feed search & image search for some random term & it did pull them up. It’s very basic & there’s not like a re: line to enter an address which is kind of what I was imagining. Yet surprise!  You can search the web with roku. 

[westner]

My news channel that I accessed on my Roku TV recently moved to an internet "only" accessible app. I can watch it on my 24" computer screen but not on my 60" Roku TV. I thought that I could access the internet on my old TV, but I guess there is no chance to do that on my Roku TV.