Roku Direct Publisher

[jmatt0806]

I'm just getting started with a Direct Publisher feed and I keep getting the following on the Feed Status page:

Unable to download from feedUrl.

I've tried refreshing many times over the last day and get the same message every time. I've checked the JSON file on my server and it is there, the JSON is valid and I've followed the developer specs. How do I know the actual problem?

[37mediagroup]

Hmmm, it would help if you posted a link of the url to inspect. I assume for privacy reasons your not looking to. I would suggest pasting the json content into myjson.com or something, and see if the Roku accepts that feed. It would help narrow down some things if it works or doesn't imho. If it does accept it, it's like something with where/how its hosted, or the url name & extension. 

[jmatt0806]

"Pasnow" wrote:
Hmmm, it would help if you posted a link of the url to inspect. I assume for privacy reasons your not looking to. I would suggest pasting the json content into myjson.com or something, and see if the Roku accepts that feed. It would help narrow down some things if it works or doesn't imho. If it does accept it, it's like something with where/how its hosted, or the url name & extension. 

OK, the myjson.com site worked with the same JSON. I noticed myjson.com has CORS enabled in the response and my host doesn't. I don't have a way to enable CORS on my server so I'll have to stick with using myjson.com for now.
My next problem: I only have one video to display on my Roku Channel and it's an M3U8 live stream that isn't always running. How can I handle this situation? Right now the feed status returns: 
Required video url is unreachable.

If someone views my channel when the stream isn't running, I just need to have a splash page with times when it is running.

[37mediagroup]

Ok cool.  I would search the DP forum for livestreaming. I've seen a few posts questioning it, but not sure many get answered as alot of us haven't used a live stream feed. Are you able to temporarily turn on the live feed while you submit it?  Just to trick it. Throw up black or color bars?

[mitchstein]

"jmatt0806" wrote:
My next problem: I only have one video to display on my Roku Channel and it's an M3U8 live stream that isn't always running. How can I handle this situation? Right now the feed status returns: 
Required video url is unreachable.

If someone views my channel when the stream isn't running, I just need to have a splash page with times when it is running.

Ok, on the json file problem on your server, You need to setup the mime type json to be handled as a script file and not a txt file, something about the way the dp on roku reads the json file, I posted the steps on an IIS server 7.x+ a few days ago in these forums.

For the video url being unreachable.

on your server write script that creates the video file when the feed is down. on a hls script file it is just plain txt with the path to a video file.

For instance say the video url is http://www.myserver/video.m3u8
write a script (i prefer powershell for windows servers) that constantly runs and checks to make sure that file exists, if it exists make the script sleep for 30 seconds so as to not make your script saturate the cpu and create a file lock that prevents the actual feed from being created, if it doesn't exist then
simply create an m3u8 file that points to a standby video... m3u8 files are just txt srcipts that the video player reads to get the files to play. Then all is good..

[mitchstein]

Oh and one more thing if you go the powershell script route, you will need to have a user logged in for it to run, do NOT use an administrator account for that, there are weaknesses in windows security that will allow hackers to compromise your server if the admin is always logged in.. I have a special user account with very restricted access to the server for running these scripts and I never ever log on to the server locally all is done through remote desktop.. (Also not VNC, that uses the same deals as a local user logged in)..

[jmatt0806]

Ok, on the json file problem on your server, You need to setup the mime type json to be handled as a script file and not a txt file, 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The MIME type is set to "application/json", what do you mean "handled as a script file"?