Roku Direct Publisher

[jzachary]

My HLS links for Live streams have stopped working in Roku suddenly. In the Developer Dashboard my feed shows a -Required video url is unreachable- For my live streams obviously the link would be offline if I'm not streaming. How do you supply an HLS link for an upcoming stream without Roku throwing an error? A week or so ago Roku didn't seem to care and would display the content anyway, and when I was live it would work fine, if we were not live it just wouldn't play but the content item would still be visible. Did something change recently in how its handled?

Thanks!

[Baradanikto]

This question has been asked before on this forum.  A simple search should help provide what others have done to resolve the issue.

As for changes, is it possible that the update from Roku 9.3 to Roku 9.4 is the reason that you're now getting this message?

[jzachary]

Yeah, i have not seen any solution or explanation of the issue on this forum. Every thing i've read was unresolved or not the same issue. And there wasn't much info in general. Possibly there's more that I cant find, i dont trust the search function. This forum is terrible, every time i post i get HTML errors and it won't let me post. Janky would be a compliment.

[jzachary]

Is there no fix or information about this issue?

[37mediagroup]

I didn't realize this was a recent issue as for some time (a year or two) I thought Roku crawled channels and found if a channel had videos that weren't there, they removed them to benefit the end users so they don't encounter dead links or videos which don't play.

I know Roku did a change Oct 1, maybe it was enhanced then or affected something in your flow. With that said, the simple fix is to stream a graphic ("Please Standby") while nothing is going on, although that might increase any livestreaming fees you pay, although I would think marginally.

Depending how often you are live vs not, you could change the URL from the .m3u8 live video, to an ondemand video, again, one that says Standby or Not Currently Live or something. Again, these are basic workarounds, I don't see Roku reverting this method back so might as well try to adapt with it.

[jzachary]

Streaming graphic 24/7 just seems like a terrible approach, and changing the URL from an on demand to live wouldn't work either as the feed takes so long to update, I could do that now and it would take hours to hit the channel. Even setting the Start date for a live item doesn't help, it still gives the error even though based on the timestamp it shouldn't be visible yet.

[Baradanikto]

Additionally, per Roku Partner Success, live content is further constrained by:

Make sure you have validityPeriodStart (and optionally, validityPeriodEnd) enabled in your Direct Publisher feed. 

[jzachary]

Yes, i've always used the start and end options in the content object in the feed.

Oddly enough, the preview link in the Roku Developer site shows the content. But in the Channel it never shows up.

[mitchstein]

the hls live links also disapeared from two of my roku apps (both direct publisher) but remains on a third which is way more active with users.

the two it disappeared from are newer channels (apps) within the last 2 months created and were orking. The third was created right after direct publisher was.

All three are publicchannels. indexed in the search.

The url is an http not an https, no reason for me to https.

the url has been available 24/7 without interrupton of any kind as it is monitored and no down time has been reported.

Seems direct publisher is having some real issues since the 9.4 system upgrade,

[jzachary]

Too fix my issue I’ve created 302 redirect to a blank m3u8 file so the link is valid, when I’m streaming live I have the redirect go to my live hls link. 

so my feed is always pointed to the url that is doing the redirect.