Roku Developer Program

[bathejasumeet]

Is there any cross platform streaming app development program or software that supports roku?
With reference to https://github.com/fmtvp/tal , TAL supports lots of streaming apps on Smart TV devices, there is marmalade but using marmalade to develop non-gaming apps is agony, even Amazon Fire TV has started supporting html5 apps, so it can be integrated to TAL since TAL is based on web-apps that run inside the smart devices..
Is there a write once - run anywhere kind of framework which includes roku in it, one like react-native(though that is for mobile apps), is there any community that is working on it and needs help getting it done? This area needs serious attention and standardization, for it is redundant to develop the same app over multiple platforms with their own concepts.
Thanks,
Batheja Sumeet

[Veeta]

I'm not aware of anything like this existing as free software. I agree it would be a great thing to have, but it might not exist for the same reasons that I'm not building this for my own purposes.

- Roku doesn't have a native HTML5 renderer on its home devices. I suspect a low power CPU is the limiting factor there.
- Attempting to build an HTML5 renderer and javascript interpreter using the Brightscript language, or even marmalade, would require a large effort.
- A new Roku generation is expected soon, and these may have HTML5 support just because of the pressure from competing devices (speculation).

Currently, the UI seems to be "good enough". I've heard many sensible statements like "it's not the navigation that matters, it's the content". Bottom line is that an effort like this would be a) useful for a possibly short timespan, b) have a very limited audience (2000 channels, so less than <2000 total Roku developers?), and c) is just a gateway to launching an HD video stream where the real focus in production should be.

An alternative is to find one of the Roku publishers who already builds multi-platform UIs and just do a licensing/partnership agreement with them. It should be a standard build vs. buy decision.

I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts as well, since there are some more experienced channel developers here.