Roku Developer Program

[squirreltown]

Ten weeks since the announcement that Devs will be able to build themes (skins). Not a peep since, despite the fact that everything needed already exists - the specs, the pkg. format, the store...
Any word on this? Too busy writing the press releases for the RokuWatch and 4K video support? :roll:
Some specs would be nice.

[TheEndless]

"squirreltown" wrote:
Not a peep since, despite the fact that everything needed already exists - the specs, the pkg. format, the store...

What makes you think everything already exists? Did you read that somewhere? If you're just assuming that because the built-in themes exist, that's probably not a safe assumption, as those could use a completely different, or less refined version.

They just started rolling out 5.4 firmware to the public (viewtopic.php?f=28&t=68878). Hopefully the needed bits are included in that, and that's what's holding up the release of documentation.

[squirreltown]

"TheEndless" wrote:

What makes you think everything already exists? Did you read that somewhere? If you're just assuming that because the built-in themes exist, that's probably not a safe assumption, as those could use a completely different, or less refined version.

Seasonal themes. That's what makes me think that.
Hopefully you're right about 5.4 - it would make sense.

[squirreltown]

Just thought I'd give everyone a heads up so they can get ready for the one-year-anniversary party for this thread.
Can't decide what theme I'm going as this year.

[beq]

Now this is interesting. I saw just the other day that the newest channels on the Channel Store are all labelled "Themes" (Star Treks, GoT, etc). A few are free while others are $1 - $3 (some supposedly include a screensaver companion).

Most are from Roku themselves, but the Adventure Time Theme's developer is "Meemo" -- is this now available to all devs?

[BradC]

man, if you thought the channel backlog was long now, what do you think it would be if they all the sudden opened up themes and 10,000 new (ugly ass) themes started pouring in for review?


🙂


just sayin it may not be a bad thing.

[krackers123]

It seems they now have support for theme packages as seen by the ones available in the channel store. However, they have yet to document the API for this. I'm betting it involves an XML of some sort like the ones used for seasonal themes (http://cloudservices.roku.com/proxy/ass ... rTheme.xml) and a special flag in the manifest file. However, as there is no way to decrypt the pkg file one can not be too sure.

Also, I wish they would at least open it up so people can privately make their own themes.

[squirreltown]

"BradC" wrote:
man, if you thought the channel backlog was long now, what do you think it would be if they all the sudden opened up themes and 10,000 new (ugly ass) themes started pouring in for review?

I certainly disagree that thats any reason not to do them. In spite of what Roku seems to be aware of, there is a world full of excellent graphic professionals out there, every bit as competent and experienced as any programmer that reads this board. Having just checked out the screenshots for the new "themes" section on the site-formerly-known as-the channel-store, i was pretty astonished at how bad they were. Not a hint of imagination. They look like they were thrown together at lunch. I mean all of them.. in one lunch.

[EnTerr]

"squirreltown" wrote:
I certainly disagree that thats any reason not to do them. In spite of what Roku seems to be aware of, there is a world full of excellent graphic professionals out there, every bit as competent and experienced as any programmer that reads this board. Having just checked out the screenshots for the new "themes" section on the site-formerly-known as-the channel-store, i was pretty astonished at how bad they were. Not a hint of imagination. They look like they were thrown together at lunch. I mean all of them.. in one lunch.

It might be "invitational only" at this point. The Co is probably testing the waters, how lucrative such themes are:

• If *very* lucrative, they may keep to themselves and selected sub-contrators.


• If medium return-on-investment, they may open to developers at-large and skim %


• And if very low consumer interest, then is hard to justify the fixed cost of documenting/creating process, so should just chop it

[squirreltown]

"EnTerr" wrote:

And if very low consumer interest, then is hard to justify the fixed cost of documenting/creating process, so should just chop it

Good points as always EnTerr, but as I said above - a year ago, I suspect the technical aspects of this are well set, and releasing them to devs would be trivial. To my eye Roku is staffed by people who are excellent at business, marketing or programming, and when graphics are required one of those people is given the house copy of Photoshop and told to wing it. You're never going to generate consumer interest doing a lame job. To translate into programming-speak, Roku's graphics efforts are an un-ending string of goto:'s