Roku Developer Program

[TheEndless]

"destruk" wrote:
Yes, if nobody is using FLV, perhaps it's because it is unsupported and undocumented. So, rather than twiddling our thumbs waiting, hoping for support, we'll just get started on converting to what is already working, h264. The poll was from last march, and no movement was taken on it at all, so we've given up and submit to your preferred format.

What a bizarre response... As you pointed out, the poll was posted last March, and after nearly a year, a total of three developers responded affirmatively (the rest of the posts were from the non-developers with generic, non-specific, pro-additional formats comments). What about that would suggest that Roku should focus any efforts on supporting the FLV container? Without RTMP streaming support, FLV container support seems pretty pointless to me.

[destruk]

If it was me, I'd want as many codecs and containers to be supported as possible, to make it easy for more content to be available. By requiring one of two formats to be used for any and all content (yes I know others 'may work' - but who has the time to test?) - perhaps that could be why it's taken this long to get more than three developers making channels? Is that more bizarre?

[TheEndless]

"destruk" wrote:
If it was me, I'd want as many codecs and containers to be supported as possible, to make it easy for more content to be available. By requiring one of two formats to be used for any and all content (yes I know others 'may work' - but who has the time to test?) - perhaps that could be why it's taken this long to get more than three developers making channels? Is that more bizarre?

With well over 100 public channels and countless private channels, I think your "three developers" math may be a little off. They put the question out to the developer community to see if there was any interest. With only three developers saying yes, it makes perfect sense to me that they would focus their efforts elsewhere. If you don't have five minutes to test whether your FLV videos work or not, PM me the URL of one of your FLV videos and I'll test it out for you. It will literally take me longer to type this response than it will for me to test whether your video works or not.

[AVP777]

So are you saying that flv wrapped h264 will work?

I tried one and got audio, but no video.

[destruk]

TheEndless, I'm just saying to post any kind of poll on the developer forum isn't going to give an accurate sampling to make any kind of decision over. With a forum I help run, we have 30,000 registered users, and our last poll, stickied, stuck on the front page for 2 weeks straight 24/7 labelled as important, please give input, got a total of 14 responses. When you are getting 200 unique visits per day, * 14 days, that isn't a good sampling either.
When you register, most websites get an email address - email the poll or question out and it might provide you with better information, or modify the roku box itself to run a poll once a month on a single question for all the users out there. Simply pointing and saying three people responded to a post on a forum in support of FLV isn't anywhere near an accurate method to eliminate anything.
If the poll actually had a few options like - yes, I would use FLV if it was available, or no, I don't care about FLV - at least then you could probably point to it and have more clout in your final decision, saying of those who responded 3 said they want the feature and 10 said they couldn't care less. Still, it wouldn't be as accurate as an even unbiased sample. Monetarily, perhaps those three developers who wanted FLV could have created channels to rival Netflix and Hulu, but we'll never know now because they left to develop for other platforms.

[BoloMKXXVIII]

"destruk" wrote:
TheEndless, I'm just saying to post any kind of poll on the developer forum isn't going to give an accurate sampling to make any kind of decision over. With a forum I help run, we have 30,000 registered users, and our last poll, stickied, stuck on the front page for 2 weeks straight 24/7 labelled as important, please give input, got a total of 14 responses. When you are getting 200 unique visits per day, * 14 days, that isn't a good sampling either.
When you register, most websites get an email address - email the poll or question out and it might provide you with better information, or modify the roku box itself to run a poll once a month on a single question for all the users out there. Simply pointing and saying three people responded to a post on a forum in support of FLV isn't anywhere near an accurate method to eliminate anything.
If the poll actually had a few options like - yes, I would use FLV if it was available, or no, I don't care about FLV - at least then you could probably point to it and have more clout in your final decision, saying of those who responded 3 said they want the feature and 10 said they couldn't care less. Still, it wouldn't be as accurate as an even unbiased sample. Monetarily, perhaps those three developers who wanted FLV could have created channels to rival Netflix and Hulu, but we'll never know now because they left to develop for other platforms.

destruk,

While you do have a valid point, I think it would be helpful for you to remember that Roku is a small company with very finite resources. There are quite a few items that should be addressed but Roku uses it's resources to fill the biggest needs. Squashing bugs that are making current channels unstable must be a high priority. Adding features that have been requested by many users for a long time (like official USB support) must be higher priority than adding official FLV support when there hasn't been a demonstrated demand. Would some people use it if it was offered? Sure. Would Roku add FLV support if they had 5 times the number of full time developers? Probably.

[destruk]

I can understand that. Just the little nagging issues keep gnawing at me, and I can get passionate about what I think needs to be done is all. No offense is intended.