Roku Developer Program

[yeddish]

Can someone point me in the right direction in regards to accessing Youtube videos from within a Roku app? I've been searching for the information and haven't been able to turn anything up.
Thanks.

[sjb64]

If I'm not mistaken that would be a violation of YouTube terms, and so wouldn't clear the Roku channel review. I could definitely be wrong though and would welcome correction, as we could certainly find uses for this too.

Your title said API, which usually is for your own videos - if the videos are yours you have too many options to list of course, but I assume you're trying to access all YouTube videos.

[yeddish]

That's what I'm gathering now that I've changed my search terms a bit. It would be for my own videos. The reason that I would want to use Youtube would be so that Roku watches would count toward my views on Youtube, but it looks like that's not possible. The big question for me now is: Why is there a sticky urging people to move to Youtube API v3 on this board if you can't use the Youtube API from Roku?

[sjb64]

You can use the API freely, using roURLTransfer, but the API doesn't play videos, it pretty much does everything but. It's possible to play a video directly off a YouTube feed (even tho not the base URL), but since you would be able to play any video at that point, I still think it a terms issue.

[TheEndless]

It is explicitly forbidden by YouTube's TOS to play video back in any video player that is not controlled and/or approved by YouTube. Presumably this is so they can accurately track the video views, analytics, and enforce ads. That aside, even if they are your videos, you'd still be using YouTube's bandwidth to play them back without re-imbursing them. If you do a search on CDN bandwidth costs for streaming, you'll quickly see why they wouldn't be okay with that.

The relevant section from YouTube's TOS:

"YouTube TOS, Section 4.C." wrote:
You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.

[belltown]

"yeddish" wrote:
The big question for me now is: Why is there a sticky urging people to move to Youtube API v3 on this board if you can't use the Youtube API from Roku?

Technically, you could use the YouTube API for purposes other than actually playing videos -- displaying a list of videos, for example, without actually playing them; or maybe even using the images returned by the API as part of a screensaver channel. Those would all be legitimate uses of the YouTube API from Roku, and would need to be updated to use the YouTube v3 API.

[yeddish]

Interesting. So, it sounds like it's a big fat no for what I'm looking to do. Oh well. I went ahead and implemented what I was looking for through the videoplayer example. Quick way to kill an hour. 🙂

Now, on to the app to play my podcast. That should be much more challenging than the video one.