Roku Developer Program

[destruk]

ok, so we have a public channel for roku in the channel store, and it says we have 20,000 installations of the channel. However, we require registration and linking for the channel to work.
On our server we show 4,000 registered users - and we have handed out 9000 link codes.

Would this mean -
A) user installs channel, sees a link code, and uninstalls it without ever going to the website to type the code in - which would increase the install count but leave our server untouched
B) user installs a channel, has 6 rokus, and links them all to the same account - which would not increase the server count as it's all on the same account, but would increase the roku installations by 6?
C) user installs, uninstalls, installs, uninstalls, installs, uninstalls, etc etc etc to increase the install count but never or once the server count?
D) I notice if I uninstall the channel, then re-add it later, I don't have to re-link - which means the channel registry data is persistent when it should be removed (IMO) when the channel is removed.

[TheEndless]

"destruk" wrote:
D) I notice if I uninstall the channel, then re-add it later, I don't have to re-link - which means the channel registry data is persistent when it should be removed (IMO) when the channel is removed.

Are you signing each application with a unique key? The registry information is tied to the devid/key, so if you have multiple channels installed using the same key, then the registry won't get cleared until you remove all of them.

[YungBlood]

On one of my beta channels, I saw the installed user count go down. So I sent this question to Patrick:

And last, one small question. When I look at "Accounts Installed" for
my channel. Is that a true reflection of how many people currently have
my channel installed on their box? I ask because I noticed on my private
channel that the number went down. So I was wondering if when people
remove my channel if it decreases the count.

And he replied:

And yes, accounts installed is net, so removals will decrease the number.

On my channel, the count was around 40, with only 8 people linking. So that leads me to believe that many people will install a channel, but not try it out.

Just my 2 cents...

[destruk]

Thanks... I forgot I have a bunch of channels installed with the same dev key - and on 3 rokus. Only one requires linking, and that's the one with the user count tracking. So is the number of installations the total current count of rokus with the channel, or total count of roku accounts with the channel? ie since I have three rokus on the same account at roku.com - does that count for 1 user installation or 3?

[TheEndless]

"destruk" wrote:
Thanks... I forgot I have a bunch of channels installed with the same dev key - and on 3 rokus. Only one requires linking, and that's the one with the user count tracking. So is the number of installations the total current count of rokus with the channel, or total count of roku accounts with the channel? ie since I have three rokus on the same account at roku.com - does that count for 1 user installation or 3?

Definitely per account, not per Roku. I have a couple private channels only installed on my account, but available on all of my Rokus, and they show as 1 install on the website.

[destruk]

Thankyou guys. I don't understand why someone would add a channel and not use it - however popular it may be to do so. 🙂 Charging 99 cents through the channel store for install would probably fix that 'problem'.

[bandal]

Usually I add a channel and I think it is free. I add from the url link and later see it is a paid channel after linking and I remove it if I decide to. I think that is what is going on out there too.
If the Link screen can tell a person up front the cost ie: $4.99 or whatever $$ before Linking, the user will just exit if he does not want to pay and remove the channel.

[kc8pql]

...or, what I've done myself, is add interesting looking channels while browsing the channel store, never get around to looking at them, and then remove them sometime later.

[destruk]

But if the channel is removed - the user installed count is decremented (according to the posts above) - so the installed count from roku shouldn't be 10X greater than the actual 'installs' in use, is it? For now we'll just have to use the actual file stream count with token id's per day to see how many people are active, rather than relying on some automated number.

[RokuJoel]

"destruk" wrote:
so the installed count from roku shouldn't be 10X greater than the actual 'installs' in use, is it?

I would interpret this to mean that yes, 10x as many people have installed the channel than are actually using it. Assuming you are talking about the channel I think you are talking about, I installed it myself at home, used it a couple of times quite a while ago, and will probably use it again, but, it is a "reference" type of channel, like having an encyclopedia, so I'll probably only use it once every few weeks.

In my experience, from my own server logs, 10% is pretty accurate.

- Joel