Roku Developer Program

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Trevor
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
The only way to install a channel without a Roku account is through sideloading a channel as you do during development.


That also takes care of your hotel guests not being able to delete the channel, but it still doesn't stop them from being able to add channels, but maybe that doesn't matter.
*** Trevor Anderson - bloggingwordpress.com - moviemavericks.com ***
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destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

Roku2 can delete dev channels. You click the delete button on the roku's developer IP, so, it's also not authenticated to get to that page as it's in your trusted LAN. Hotel guests with a laptop or cell phone using your internet could log into that site and wipe out your dev channel for each connected roku device on the network, one by one, so that's not a good solution either.
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RokuJoel
Binge Watcher

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

You could just put the players on their own subnet, authenticated by their mac address and block the mac address from the wireless subnet that the guests are on. Won't stop people with their own hotspot from tampering, but you could always teach the housekeepers how to reset the box back the way you want it.

- Joel
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Rontec
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

"Trevor" wrote:
"Rontec" wrote:
- We only intend to install our channel (besides the built-in channels), which we obviously have the rights to use in any environment we wish


I believe the issue with that is there's no way to lock down the Rokus, such that anyone can delete your channel or add any other from the Channel Store. This would affect all boxes under that ID, so if one guest of your hotel deletes your channel it's now gone from all the boxes linked to that box's account. Basically the Roku guys are already telling you on here that this is not the environment the Roku was developed for and it really isn't the best fit by far.


We can reset the Rokus to their "original" state when a guest checks out. It might be even easier than changing the sheets and restocking the mini-bar because it can be done remotely and perhaps automatically.
The Roku was originally designed to only play Netflix. Look how much more first generation Rokus do now with just some software changes.
If this is not what the Roku was originally intended for, it does not mean that it isn't an excellent solution for this "problem."
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Rontec
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

"RokuPatrick" wrote:
The microSD card is only for use in storing channels. It is not accessible through the SDK.


Can game channels write to the micoSD card? If not, where are saved games stored?
The hardware and software are clearly capable of writing to the microSD card. It's just a question of adding a few commands to the API if they are not already there.
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Rontec
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

"Trevor" wrote:
"RokuPatrick" wrote:
The only way to install a channel without a Roku account is through sideloading a channel as you do during development.

That also takes care of your hotel guests not being able to delete the channel, but it still doesn't stop them from being able to add channels, but maybe that doesn't matter.


I don't have any problems with guests adding their own channels. They want to watch their own Netflix or Hulu or Amazon account during their stay? Fine by me.
We'll reset the Roku when they check out.

Maybe even sell Rokus in the gift shop for those who liked the experience 🙂
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Rontec
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

"destruk" wrote:
Roku2 can delete dev channels. You click the delete button on the roku's developer IP, so, it's also not authenticated to get to that page as it's in your trusted LAN. Hotel guests with a laptop or cell phone using your internet could log into that site and wipe out your dev channel for each connected roku device on the network, one by one, so that's not a good solution either.


"RokuJoel" wrote:
You could just put the players on their own subnet, authenticated by their mac address and block the mac address from the wireless subnet that the guests are on. Won't stop people with their own hotspot from tampering, but you could always teach the housekeepers how to reset the box back the way you want it.


Joel is on the right track. There is a very simple way to make it bullet proof.

* For a hotel under construction, we can put the Rokus on their own physical LAN, separate from guest Internet access. To prevent somebody very creative from plugging their computer into the dedicated Roku LAN, we can limit access on that switch port to only the Roku's MAC address (takes under 1 minute of work on a modern commercial network switch). To prevent the 0.1% of people who know how to change their LAN MAC address from doing anything funny, we can enable port isolation on the switch (again, less than a minute of work).

* For an existing hotel, or where running two Ethernet cables per room is undesirable, we can simply use a different subnet and VLAN for the guest network.

In the worst case scenario, the guest will be able to, at most, temper with one Roku that they have physical access to, and which we'll reset when they check out anyway.

Besides, we are talking about a hotel here, not a prison. People checking into hotels have much better things to do than try to damage the hotels property.
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RokuMarkn
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

There is no way to use the SD for other storage. The SD card is specially formatted to store channels only, and the software which does space management assumes there is nothing else on the card. Besides this, SDK apps have no access to the video stream so DVR functionality would not be possible even if you could write to the card.

--Mark
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destruk
Binge Watcher

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

You have it all figured out Rontec, so good luck with this.
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Rontec
Visitor

Re: Hiring Developer for Hotel IPTV System

Ok, so no local PVR then, too bad.
We can just use the Wowza nDVR AddOn then.

Still looking to hire somebody to build the channel ...
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