Roku Developer Program

[sjb64]

Now I'm confused by the result being potentially vague to begin with, the result from GetModel being maybe suddenly vague, the answers using the two calls being different to the same question from the same box, and the fact that everybody seems unsure. A lot of confusion around such a simple function (or two).

[EnTerr]

"sjb64" wrote:
Now I'm confused ...

Imagine for a moment that all RokuTVs were functionally equivalent to you as a developer - same RAM/ROM/CPU speed/[no]GPU/connectors etc - then they are the same thing for all programmatical purposes, right? Why should you be bothered with such sales minutiae like the exact model# outside on the box or the brand name (be it TCL/Hisense/Sharp=Insignia/Haier)? Now when there are over a dozen "different" RokuTVs, it makes sense to return a common designator if they all behave the same - and so .getModel() does.

It's not completely new thing the model# returned to differ from the outside sticker - the API always returns "9999X" format, where on the package you may see things like 4200R, 4200RT for Target variety, 4200XB for refurbs and whatever-the-suffix-is for Costco bundle.

Now, they don't hide the "sub-model" details - you can have them in AA from .getModelDetails(). In rare cases that may be useful too, say the 32" screens come with 720p LCD.

[belltown]

I finally got around to loading my log data into an SQL database, so I can now run queries on it.

Here are some of my stats for the past 4 years. All quantities are in percentages. With 22 Roku models listed to date, some of them may have a very small representation percentage-wise; however, Roku has stated that over 10,000,000 Rokus have been sold in the US to date.

Note that this data is only from one channel (What's On Channel), a private channel not widely advertised, which has been used by 18,777 distinct Roku devices to date. Thus, I don't expect the data to be representative of all channels. I suspect my data for legacy devices may be skewed on the low side, as people who have discovered this channel by scouring internet forums are likely to be more tech-savvy (and hence using later model devices), than less-tech savvy users who only purchased a Roku to watch Netflix and have been using the same device for several years.

Model   Description                            2012    2013    2014    2015   past 3 mo
-----   -----------                            ----    ----    ----    ----   ---------
N1000   Roku DVP (1st gen)                     1.41    0.73    0.35    0.21        0.22
N1050   Roku SD (1st gen)                      0.35    0.09    0.08    0.04        0.06
N1100   Roku HD (1st gen)                      1.08    0.38    0.17    0.16        0.11
N1101   Roku HD-XR (1st gen)                   1.30    0.59    0.28    0.16        0.17
2000C   Roku HD (1st gen)                      0.93    0.33    0.19    0.14        0.11
2050N   Roku XD (1st gen)                      0.35    0.19    0.09    0.03        0.03
2050X   Roku XD (1st gen)                      3.47    1.57    0.56    0.34        0.25
2100X   Roku XDS (1st gen)                     5.67    2.26    1.07    0.73        0.72
2400X   Roku LT (2nd gen)                      6.07    2.97    1.80    1.43        1.41
2450X   Roku LT (2nd gen)                      1.35    2.67    1.35    1.14        1.16
2500X   Roku HD (2nd gen)                      7.26   10.08    5.52    4.35        4.38
2700X   Roku LT (3rd gen)                                      0.52    0.58        0.55
2710X   Roku 1 (3rd gen)                               0.29    4.17    4.19        4.30
2720X   Roku 2 (3rd gen)                               0.44    6.23    6.13        5.24
3000X   Roku 2 HD (2nd gen)                    3.58    1.93    1.07    0.80        0.80
3050X   Roku 2 XD (2nd gen)                   20.44   17.85    9.93    7.30        7.68
3100X   Roku 2 XS (2nd gen)                   46.74   38.00   18.66   14.11       14.36
3400X   Roku Streaming Stick MHL (2nd gen)             0.09    0.48    0.44        0.33
3420X   Roku Streaming Stick MHL (2nd gen)                     0.04    0.07        0.06
3500X   Roku Streaming Stick HDMI (3rd gen)                    6.12    9.75        8.51
4200X   Roku 3 (3rd gen)                              19.54   40.97   46.22       47.62
5000X   Roku TV (3rd gen)                                      0.35    1.68        1.91

Generation    2012    2013    2014    2015   past 3 mo
----------    ----    ----    ----    ----   ---------
1 (Legacy)   14.56    6.14    2.79    1.81        1.68
2            85.44   73.59   38.85   29.64       30.19
3                    20.27   58.36   68.55       68.13

[Komag]

Awesome, thanks for the data, especially the nice summary of generations at the bottom. Interesting to see the Roku 2's where the HD has almost nothing while the XD and XS are still pretty numerous. I would have guess the HDMI stick would have more, but maybe it does in the general Roku population. Something around HALF Roku 3 is what I've come to expect, seems like a good rule of thumb to keep in mind for the time being.

[EnTerr]

"belltown" wrote:
I finally got around to loading my log data into an SQL database, so I can now run queries on it.
[spoiler=stats per model:8sh4txry]Here are some of my stats for the past 4 years. All quantities are in percentages. With 22 Roku models listed to date, some of them may have a very small representation percentage-wise; however, Roku has stated that over 10,000,000 Rokus have been sold in the US to date.

Note that this data is only from one channel (What's On Channel), a private channel not widely advertised, which has been used by 18,777 distinct Roku devices to date. Thus, I don't expect the data to be representative of all channels. I suspect my data for legacy devices may be skewed on the low side, as people who have discovered this channel by scouring internet forums are likely to be more tech-savvy (and hence using later model devices), than less-tech savvy users who only purchased a Roku to watch Netflix and have been using the same device for several years.

Model   Description                            2012    2013    2014    2015   past 3 mo
-----   -----------                            ----    ----    ----    ----   ---------
N1000   Roku DVP (1st gen)                     1.41    0.73    0.35    0.21        0.22
N1050   Roku SD (1st gen)                      0.35    0.09    0.08    0.04        0.06
N1100   Roku HD (1st gen)                      1.08    0.38    0.17    0.16        0.11
N1101   Roku HD-XR (1st gen)                   1.30    0.59    0.28    0.16        0.17
2000C   Roku HD (1st gen)                      0.93    0.33    0.19    0.14        0.11
2050N   Roku XD (1st gen)                      0.35    0.19    0.09    0.03        0.03
2050X   Roku XD (1st gen)                      3.47    1.57    0.56    0.34        0.25
2100X   Roku XDS (1st gen)                     5.67    2.26    1.07    0.73        0.72
2400X   Roku LT (2nd gen)                      6.07    2.97    1.80    1.43        1.41
2450X   Roku LT (2nd gen)                      1.35    2.67    1.35    1.14        1.16
2500X   Roku HD (2nd gen)                      7.26   10.08    5.52    4.35        4.38
2700X   Roku LT (3rd gen)                                      0.52    0.58        0.55
2710X   Roku 1 (3rd gen)                               0.29    4.17    4.19        4.30
2720X   Roku 2 (3rd gen)                               0.44    6.23    6.13        5.24
3000X   Roku 2 HD (2nd gen)                    3.58    1.93    1.07    0.80        0.80
3050X   Roku 2 XD (2nd gen)                   20.44   17.85    9.93    7.30        7.68
3100X   Roku 2 XS (2nd gen)                   46.74   38.00   18.66   14.11       14.36
3400X   Roku Streaming Stick MHL (2nd gen)             0.09    0.48    0.44        0.33
3420X   Roku Streaming Stick MHL (2nd gen)                     0.04    0.07        0.06
3500X   Roku Streaming Stick HDMI (3rd gen)                    6.12    9.75        8.51
4200X   Roku 3 (3rd gen)                              19.54   40.97   46.22       47.62
5000X   Roku TV (3rd gen)                                      0.35    1.68        1.91

[/spoiler:8sh4txry]

Much thank you, belltown - for doing this!
(Something that RokuCo should be doing in the first place)

It has been of help to me - and i bet the others too. Do you have recent data to post an update, say the last quarter or two?

[belltown]

"EnTerr" wrote:

It has been of help to me - and i bet the others too. Do you have recent data to post an update, say the last quarter or two?

Alas, no. I had been using free Apache-based hosts for my server code, but I switched over to using Google AppEngine for reliability and performance reasons. With the old setup, my server used a text log file, which I downloaded and loaded into an MS-SQL database for the queries. Unfortunately, the free features of AppEngine don't include writing to local text files, and I didn't want to pay to use their database for that. Now I just manually peruse their log own entries to see what's going on, but I haven't set up any way of extracting that log data to put into my own database. Google's log data only goes back about a month, and I haven't downloaded and saved any of the earlier entries.

[EnTerr]

"belltown" wrote:
... the free features of AppEngine don't include writing to local text files, and I didn't want to pay to use their database for that. Now I just manually peruse their log own entries to see what's going on, but I haven't set up any way of extracting that log data to put into my own database. Google's log data only goes back about a month, and I haven't downloaded and saved any of the earlier entries.

Aha! Been in your shoes, glad if i could help at least a little bit. GAE keeps last 3 months (default; possibly more if billing is set up):

appcfg.py request_logs --num_days=0 --application=myApp --version=v123  my-local-log-20160731.log 

On a side note, the NoSQL datastore has some decent free quotas, https://cloud.google.com/datastore/#pricing - not that there is reason to use it here.

[belltown]

"EnTerr" wrote:

Aha! Been in your shoes, glad if i could help at least a little bit. GAE keeps last 3 months (default; possibly more if billing is set up):

appcfg.py request_logs --num_days=0 --application=myApp --version=v123  my-local-log-20160731.log 

On a side note, the NoSQL datastore has some decent free quotas, https://cloud.google.com/datastore/#pricing - not that there is reason to use it here.

Thanks. I just checked, and I only have logs going back 29 days. Maybe it has something to do with how much space I'm using, or that I don't have billing set up. In any case, I could just download them every day/week, but it's been at the bottom of my to-do list and I just haven't got around to it.

[EnTerr]

"belltown" wrote:
Thanks. I just checked, and I only have logs going back 29 days.

Were you checking by using https://console.cloud.google.com/logs/viewer ?
Don't trust it on that. It's crippled, intentionally so i would think - e.g. it will decline exporting logs and only shows past month. Try via appcfg.py .

There is also a configurable setting how long to keep logs but... After they "stackdrived" up my console, i can't find a thing.

PS. I found a place that can be checked online. https://appengine.google.com/logs?app_id=MY-APP-ID-HERE
But need to tread lightly, since it's the old viewer that redirects to the new "stick drivel" if parameter is missing. Here is for references what it should look like:
[spoiler=snapshot:1y15mezp][/spoiler:1y15mezp]

[EnTerr]

I scraped my logs and here are some usage stats from the last three months:

Model ID	  Share
----------   -----
1000-2100	 3%
2400	      2%
2450, 2500	5%
2700, 2710	7%
2720	      5%
3000, 3050	8%
3100	      9%
3400, 3420	0.5%
3500	     12%
3600	      2%
4200	     36%
4400	      2.5%
5000	      8%

Regarding reliability, this sample size is small (~1k) and history shows my data being biased towards less internet-savvy users - amusingly complementing @belltown's more tech-savvy users who install private channels. His data likely is skewed "early adopters", where mine is towards "laggards" (hence more "legacy" players and less Roku 4k). I feel certain my sample statistics are right by magnitude (log2) though and even expect them to be within +/-50% of the total population parameter. E.g. say i see 8% RokuTV - so the real value is somewhere between 4 and 12%. I admit i like certain uncertainty in the numbers - i wouldn't want to make RokuCo competitors' market researchers life too easy, would i now 🙂

Discussion:

• 1st generation ("legacy" 1000-2100) is a goner by now at 3%


• 2nd generation (2400, 3000-3500) holds surprisingly well at 32%.
  
  • Alas, the MHL stick 34xx is dead. I loved the idea of HDMI-CEC control, hated the lack of external power (MHL-port requirement) that made it a stillborn. Somehow "I told you so - 4 years ago" does not cut it. There is no joy in being right if opportunity to dominate the market got squandered (why, to save a few cents on a micro-USB connector?). When Chromecast arrived a full year later, consumer reaction would have been "too late, Me-too! Go GoogleTV yourself". The irony now: Roku stick plays catch-up to Google and FireTV stick.


• 3rd generation (2450-27xx) at 17% is shrinking. Within a year it will be negligible. The sooner it's gone, the better - its graphic inabilities made nightmarish the life of many a developer. I never understood what the point of it was - besides being a stepping-stone towards creating a RokuTV platform.


• RokuTV 5xxx - "3rd generation 2.0" - has got some traction. RokuCo has created a low-cost reference design for smart TV that proved irresistible to some 1st (TCL, Hisense, Haier), 2nd (Sharp) and 3rd (Insignia) tier^ brands. Given that
  
  
  1. TV manufacturers nowadays have the attention span of a goldfish - ship&forget
  
  
  2. Roku can give consistent user experience and update/maintenance
  
  
  3. Nobody else but AndroidTV has presented unifying platform - yet Android can't run on a low-spec hardware (needs 2x the resources/cost)
  - i think it's a fantastic opportunity for the Co to be to low-end TVs what Nokia was to feature-phones. All (non-4k) HDTVs sold in the future may as well convert to using Roku platform for practically no increase in cost and smartify for the benefit of the viewers


• 4th generation (4xxx, 3600) is "where it's at". Multi-core ARM with GPU, it has potential. Almost half of the Rokus in use. The 4k RokuTVs and the new model lineup coming this fall will also use it, i believe.

(^) yes, TCL and Hisense are top TV manufacturers (worldwide the rank goes: 21% Samsung, 12% LG, 6% TCL, 6% Sony, 6% Hisense). Hisense now owns "Sharp" for Americas. "Insignia" is a Best Buy house brand of undisclosed-officially origin (but otherwise known as Hisense for TVs).