Roku Developer Program

[tonydakicker]

Hello everyone,

I'm a new roku user and have a question. If I created a roku channel, who would be a good hosting provider out there? I have a bout 2000 movies and the estimated users are about 20000 in the next few years.

Thanks a lot...

[jbrave]

Ooyala, livestream or bypass the 3rd party vendors and go with Akamai, Limelight networks or level3

-Joel

[tonydakicker]

Hi Joel,

Thanks for the reply. I looked at ooyala and livestream. They seem to fit my requirement. The only thing is it'll be really expensive if I provide 24/7 services like a mini netflix. I guess netflix can afford it since they have millions of users.

[tensen]

I'm happy with Amazon S3. I like that the costs are associated with what is used. So as the number of users increases so does the cost, because they will be using more bandwidth. Which is great as you are building up to a sizable number. Works as long as you price your product to at least high average of usage. Some power users might end up costing you money if you don't price it right.

[dynamitemedia]

edgecast has even better pricing than amazon

[stephenhawk]

Has anyone successfully added videos to their custom channel using LimeLight hosting?
I'm having issues getting the source in the XML feed correctly. The XML wants a direct link to the .mp4 source file. But LimeLIght doesn't give the direct source, however it does give a link but it doesnt seem to work in Roku channel. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[RokuJoel]

Sometimes URLs redirect to other urls and you can use roURLTransfer to get the redirect URL from the URL they provide and see if you can use the resulting URL for streaming.

If you post an example of the XML, perhaps someone can help you further.

- Joel

[stephenhawk]

Hey Joel, Thanks for your response.
Below is the video item piece of the XML which includes the link to the LimeLight video. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

<contentQuality>SD</contentQuality>
<streamFormat>mp4</streamFormat>
<media>
<streamQuality>SD</streamQuality>
<streamBitrate>1500</streamBitrate>
<streamUrl>http://link.videoplatform.limelight.com/media/?mediaId=2c8b02e4e0cc4e1383ffc5610a56e130</streamUrl>
</media>

[RokuJoel]

That stream URL is the link to a web player, not a direct link to the media file or even a link to a redirect to a media file. You need them to tell you how to get a direct link because you are not using a web player.

One thing to try would be getting the original file name from the xml and appending it to your stream url, you can get the original file name with the media api:

http://www.limelightvideoplatform.com/support/docs/#2.3

The XML you posted doesn't look like it originated from Limelight, looks like you edited some of the included XML from one of our examples.

I'm taking a look at the Limelight API to see if there is an obvious way to get the url for media.

- Joel

[RokuJoel]

So I just signed up for a 30 day free account with Limelight, uploaded a video, created a "channel" in their LImelight Video Platform UI: http://videoplatform.limelight.com/ published that channel, and grabbed the RSS feed URL, which returns my video with a direct link:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" version="2.0">
  <channel>
    <title>music test channel</title>
    <link />
    <description />
    <pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:25:08 GMT</pubDate>
    <item>
      <title>IMG_0282</title>
      <link>http://s2.cpl.delvenetworks.com/media/a873e08b0a784edfb1f57c13f49f2aa1/bbbd0a22303b4709b4baf854cbaf1c00-5f37a27edf154eaabfa0b00f2402329f/img_0282.mp4</link>
      <description />
      <pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 17:22:45 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">bbbd0a22303b4709b4baf854cbaf1c00</guid>
      <media:content channels="2" bitrate="1199.0" duration="616" fileSize="92617819" framerate="15.33" height="480" type="video/mp4" width="640" isDefault="true" url="http://s2.cpl.delvenetworks.com/media/a873e08b0a784edfb1f57c13f49f2aa1/bbbd0a22303b4709b4baf854cbaf1c00-5f37a27edf154eaabfa0b00f2402329f/img_0282.mp4">
        <media:keywords>test</media:keywords>
        <media:thumbnail url="http://img.delvenetworks.com/qHPgiwp4Tt8sfV8E_SfKqE/u70KIjA7RwktLr4VMuvHAA/P_d.540x404.jpeg" />
        <media:title>IMG_0282</media:title>
      </media:content>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Looks like getting that URL from their API is a bit more complicated, but:

http://api.videoplatform.limelight.com/rest/organizations/{org_id}/channels/{channel_id}/encodings

Talk to your support person about the best way to get a full set of http urls for your video via the API if you don't want to use RSS (the above seems to return mostly RTMP and one mobile quality http url).

- Joel