Roku Developer Program

[sunny77]

Any updates on the current International channels on Roku with the whole dishworld deal?

We are having hard time contacting dish to strike any deal. We are a VOD movies channel.

[TheEndless]

This probably belongs in the developer forum, but... are you contacting them via one of the methods detailed here? viewtopic.php?f=34&t=50512

[sunny77]

Yes that is right. Was anyone successful in contacting dishworld ?

[Anonymous]

Sunny,

I you haven't heard back, please drop us a line at partners@roku.com and we'll look into it for you.

[SkipFire]

I also tried contacting them, but since I did not get a timely response (2 weeks), the application I was going to be developing for work is instead going to be built on Boxee. 😞 I prefer Roku, but my boss said because of the problem with Dishworld not responding in a timely fashion we can't use Roku, too bad, it would have been over 10,000 units just for the first location we were going to deploy to. We have our own content, only available in our facility, but we provide it in many languages. They were a bit concerned about possibly using Roku to begin with as soon as they saw the requirement of needing DishWorld's approval to host our own multi-lingual content, I still don't understand how it benefits anyone to have someone else give me approval to publish my own content.

Before anyone even suggest just side-loading the channels, that is just not an option with as many units as we would have (10,000 is just the first of currently 14 rollouts we would be looking at), plus we wouldn't know if the channel is in use at the time. We would update the channel in the store and just know that it would go out to all the Roku's within a day.

[TheEndless]

"SkipFire" wrote:
I also tried contacting them, but since I did not get a timely response (2 weeks), the application I was going to be developing for work is instead going to be built on Boxee. 😞 I prefer Roku, but my boss said because of the problem with Dishworld not responding in a timely fashion we can't use Roku, too bad, it would have been over 10,000 units just for the first location we were going to deploy to. We have our own content, only available in our facility, but we provide it in many languages. They were a bit concerned about possibly using Roku to begin with as soon as they saw the requirement of needing DishWorld's approval to host our own multi-lingual content, I still don't understand how it benefits anyone to have someone else give me approval to publish my own content.

Before anyone even suggest just side-loading the channels, that is just not an option with as many units as we would have (10,000 is just the first of currently 14 rollouts we would be looking at), plus we wouldn't know if the channel is in use at the time. We would update the channel in the store and just know that it would go out to all the Roku's within a day.

At over three times the price, the number of units you're talking about would cost an additional $1,000,000 to switch to Boxee (at a discount), in just the first rollout. Seems like an awfully dramatic financial decision to make after only two weeks... I think I'd be making a few more phone calls and sending a few more emails first.. 😛

[SkipFire]

Only 2 units were purchased for a PoC, we are just working on finalizing the development plan, purchase for deployment would have been sometime next month once we had the channel developed.

[Nick255]

"SkipFire" wrote:
Only 2 units were purchased for a PoC, we are just working on finalizing the development plan, purchase for deployment would have been sometime next month once we had the channel developed.

Unfortunately it will take a few months of constant emails and phone calls for them to even take a look at it.

[TheEndless]

"Nick255" wrote:

"SkipFire" wrote:
Only 2 units were purchased for a PoC, we are just working on finalizing the development plan, purchase for deployment would have been sometime next month once we had the channel developed.

Unfortunately it will take a few months of constant emails and phone calls for them to even take a look at it.

I'm curious as to how you can make statements like that...? The deal has only been in place for a month, and I know of at least two channels that have already been greenlighted, one of which was over two weeks ago. If you want to be bitter about the deal, then fair enough, but making unfounded statements in an effort to discourage other developers isn't really fair.

[Anonymous]

If you don't hear back from DISHWorld (ottpartner@dish.com) in a timely fashion (ie a couple of days), please drop us a note at partners@roku.com and provide at least a few details so that we can inquire on your behalf. This should be a fairly smooth process at this point, but ti's clear there are still a few wrinkles to be ironed out.

Patrick