Roku Developer Program

[boogernose]

What do you use  (hardware wise)to get a Channel published ?

Hard Drives and what?

[codeMonkeyMike]

I don't understand the question? I upload it to the Roku store, no hardware needed.

[boogernose]

So its Cloud based for smaller channels.

Does this mean all your content is uploaded to the cloud?

Other Channels stream direct Im sure.

I'm just interested in the Network and hardware.

[speechles]

You use the Roku hardware to push the ZIP to the device. You use the Roku hardware to pull the PKG from the device. You publish the PKG to the Roku store using a computer or similar.

[boogernose]

@speechles 

Are you going to tell us Amazon and CBS and Netflix etc. stream in this fashion?

Perhaps you simply dont know. Because I know for a fact it isnt the case.

Perhaps you can explain to us how LIVE channels stream via your system?

I'm just asking whats being used and you only know what works for you and no more clearly.

[speechles]

Amazon uses NDK. The Native Development Kit. Roku has now made it hard to tell which apps use which version of the SDK.

We stream live channels to the Roku via HLS because it does not natively allow transport controls when using RAW TS inside the video player.

[boogernose]

Maybe thats what I needed to know.

It is all cloud based. I was curious.

[sanity-check · Accepted solution]

Let's assume you're sincere, if you're interested in how channels (or "apps" as everyone else calls them) are developed Roku has a series of videos that cover the basics, for example

https://developer.roku.com/en-gb/videos/courses/rsg/core-concepts.md

If you want to try it you just need a normal computer (Mac, Windows, Linux). Anything made in the past 6-7 years will work fine - system requirements aren't high.

It probably is not the best way to learn programming from scratch because Brightscript can be pretty unusual/weird/annoying and you might pick up habits which are quite bad in other languages. It's also not widely used so if you run into trouble it could be hard to find help. But if you're only interested in making Roku channels that's the only thing you can use. (Otherwise, Python is a good choice.)

[speechles]

It is a Roku store. Roku uses the cloud to deploy their applications. Those applications can be script based and hand written. They can also be auto-generated and fed a list of url to render video from. If you choose either you must provide your own hosting for content. The url your content is deployed from must be provided by yourself. You must provide the delivery platform to get content to the Roku. The Roku merely provides a mechanism to either script an experience or get an out-of-the-box one. The scripted experience requires coding and knowledge of scene graph XML and brightscript. The out-of-the-box is just an RSS XML basically you feed into a pkg generator.

This is why I assumed at level 18 there was funny business going on. This is common knowledge. It isn't something hidden and obscured like most everything else developed on Roku. The Roku community is fierce with competition. There is a feeling of everybody isn't showing all their cards. Like this is a serious poker game.

Then here you come waltzing in and asking about that stuff. This is serious. Maybe you shouldn't do this. That was my sink or swim statement. Don't drown. I was not being mean. I was being serious.

Please take us serious. We are here to help you. Not here to entertain you. Well partly to entertain but at the same time help. Hopefully this helps. 😉

[boogernose]

@sanity-check  Thank You.

That was the kind of helpful info and link I needed.

I thought it was a simple question and opened the string.

I have many old Independent films that I was thinking of transposing and publishing.

I now know Roku is all Cloud based. I however will need more Hardware.