Roku Developer Program

[mhardwick-verti]

Hi,

I have a few questions in regards to supporting older hardware, and was hoping some, if not all of them can be answered.

Is the breakdown of both classic and current device firmware revisions public knowledge?
Is the market share information available to compare between both classic and current devices?
What is the best way to check for older device limitations in the documentation?

Thanks,
Matt

[RokuJoel]

"mhardwick-vertigo" wrote:

Is the breakdown of both classic and current device firmware revisions public knowledge?

Yes, there is firmware 3.1 b1198: "Classic" or "Legacy"

Everything else other than beta firmware should be pretty much feature equivalent, although we do sometimes do a phased release by platform family of new firmware over the course of several weeks.

Is the market share information available to compare between both classic and current devices?

Roughly 10% of devices in use are legacy. 10% of devices connected and functioning but not in use are legacy. We would encourage you not to target the legacy platform at this time. There are about 10 million devices sold in the USA.

What is the best way to check for older device limitations in the documentation?

Our SDKDocs site will show you, most of the time :oops: what functions work on legacy vs newer devices.

- Joel

[EnTerr]

Thank you for the market % update, Joel!
And veneration for the direct/honest answer on the docs. [not a jab]

"RokuJoel" wrote:
Our SDKDocs site will show you, most of the time :oops: what functions work on legacy vs newer devices.

[Komag]

"RokuJoel" wrote:
Roughly 10% of devices in use are legacy. 10% of devices connected and functioning but not in use are legacy. We would encourage you not to target the legacy platform at this time. There are about 10 million devices sold in the USA.

Wow, this is important. So, just to be clear, you're suggesting that of the 10 million devices in the USA, some portion are in use, and some portion are not in use. Let's say it's 30% not in use and 70% in use. You're saying of the 30% not in use, 10% of those are legacy, and of the 70% in use, 10% of those are legacy as well. Is that right?

[destruk]

"Roughly 10% of devices in use are legacy." = 1 in 10 used/showing activity are legacy.
"10% of devices connected and functioning but not in use are legacy." = 10% of roku devices on the internet, but haven't been used are legacy.

It would either be 80% or 90% - most likely 90% - are running newest firmware. So you shouldn't be targeting new applications for legacy devices as they are a very small section of the user base.
It could either be 10% legacy across the board, if both statements are used in tandem, or a maximum of 20% - I'm not sure how you got 30/70 out of that - it's still a small number compared to the whole.

[BradC]

"RokuJoel" wrote:

Roughly 10% of devices in use are legacy. 10% of devices connected and functioning but not in use are legacy.

There are about 10 million devices sold in the USA.

so... the 10 million sold include those which are connected and in use, those connected and not in use, and those that are not connected.

if all 10 million devices were connected, we could say that 2 million connected roku players were legacy devices.

But we really can't tell from this information how many devices are in use, so there is insufficient information to say how many legacy devices are in use (10% of what?)

...Though we know that 1 out of every 10 viewers is using a roku that is "legacy"

[mhardwick-verti]

RokuJoel,

Thanks for the great response. This is indeed very helpful.

Matt