Roku Developer Program

[jvphobic]

I recently got a Roku player, and now I see some of the potential that it carries with it. I am looking for some people's opinions on creating a channel. I am involved in a small niche sport and would like to create a channel to host some DVDs and interviews on. My plan is to start out small but possibly start charging for the channel in the future if I am successful.

I feel confident in creating the channel myself, but have some questions about the video and hosting.
1. At what point do I look at a CDN to host my files? Can I host them myself somehow reliably? What are the drawbacks to hosting them myself (bandwidth??)?
2. Obviously this is pretty small, and I don't have a lot of upfront cash, does anyone have a suggestion about a cheap CDN if I need to go that way?
3. What options do I have for a PPV channel. Can I charge for the channel annually, or can I charge per video (DVD) like a rental service?

I know that this is a lot to digest for my first post on this forum, but I have about 1000 ideas swimming around my head at the moment.

Thanks in advance for all your help and future suggestions.

[kbenson]

"jvphobic" wrote:

1. At what point do I look at a CDN to host my files? Can I host them myself somehow reliably? What are the drawbacks to hosting them myself (bandwidth??)?

The problem is that without a good idea of how much you'll actually serve, it's hard to tell how much hardware you'll use and the costs it will entail if you do it yourself. CDN's scale much better and have a relatively simple pricing structure.

2. Obviously this is pretty small, and I don't have a lot of upfront cash, does anyone have a suggestion about a cheap CDN if I need to go that way?

I don't have a lot of experience here, but there were some posts a while back about this. I'm sure some people will chime in.

3. What options do I have for a PPV channel. Can I charge for the channel annually, or can I charge per video (DVD) like a rental service?

Roku offers built in billing for one time purchase, and both monthly and yearly subscription models. For this they take 30% off the top, like Apple in their app store.

If you wanted to charge per-DVD, you could maybe set it up such that you released a new one time purchase channel occasionally (e.g. quarterly), with bundled content. Sort of like a magazine. you could also release a separate "subscription" channel that always updated it's content to match the quarterly released channels (like a magazine subscription).