Roku releases IDK to allow consumers to develop applications for their Roku
blog.roku.com
blog.roku.com
1. The only public development API requires the use of their proprietary language BrightScript which is poorly documented, and for which no official compiler, interpreter, or runtime environment is available. Enthusiasts had to create an interpreter for it (https://github.com/sjbarag/brs) to speed up development time. Previously you had to push your app to a Roku to run it before you could learn of any syntax errors.
2. They do have a C/C++ API, but they limit access to big orgs and require an NDA to use it.
There are plenty of cool projects, like a Prince of Persia port (https://github.com/lvcabral/Prince-of-Persia-Roku).
That they are finally shoring up their poor developer ecosystem with C/C++ and JavaScript APIs is great, but it's unfortunate that they aren't allowing these apps to be distributed through their official store.
Step 1: be a cheap (the cheapest?) option in the early phase of a market. This way you build up a sizeable customer-base using a market-segment with low/no expectations.
Step 2: app-developers will be forced to support your platform, despite low-quality platform, ecosystem or SDK if they want to be “everywhere”.
Step 3: With better/more popular apps supporting your platform you can start making more expensive devices or even sell/rent your platform to other players needing a checkbox to check before they can launch (ie smart-TVs).
Roku is really crap to use, but by playing by this book they’ve seemingly done well (as a business) so far.
I have used Google TV, Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku. I have used Roku both as a separate device and built into a TV. Out of them all I prefer to use the Roku. I even sold an Apple TV which was given to me and used part of the sale to replace it with a Roku Premiere+ which I found to be a much better experience.
> you have to click Home again to get to your main apps
Both of these are changeable via settings (if you’re talking about the current generation remote, if the old one an Apple TV can be trained to use any other remote). I have a bunch of Roku devices and an Apple TV and typically prefer the Apple TV: the apps are of higher quality, Airplay is a great added feature and most importantly: no ads. Roku used to have barely any but they’re adding more and more and it’s getting obnoxious.
I think parent commenters are referring to how the Apple TV app — which is great, but can be avoided by using the Home screen — aggregates all available content, and has a dedicated Apple TV+ tab. In other words, the Apple TV app is also the Apple TV+ app.
If one uses it in a search box inside the app, it works in the local context. Imagine having to teach one's elderly parents what the difference is when the remote only has something like 5 buttons and one of them doesn't work how it's supposed to in a consistent manner. Local context vs. global context in searches is an absurd concept in the purview of the average consumer. Hell - I can't understand it half the time because it's so counterintuitive.
That's shady behavior and prioritizes Apple's own services over EVERY competitor.
Besides its terrible remote (the gen I have, at least), the usability constraints are insulting.
Roku has other severe limitations, but they don't outright manipulate their UI and their user experience in such an underhanded manner.
Also there's no software configuration to change that terrible touch remote into something usable. Rewinding to catch a missed line is always "I hope it works" moment.
The old one was justifiably maligned, but the current one is great.
Disney plus crashes more often than not in any given watching session.
Hbo Max tends to crash on the menu about 50% of the time.
Netflix crashes fairly often but not as bad as those other two.
I think it's still the best single solution for streaming but they really do need some quality control on their apps.
Having to wait for your TV to restart in the middle of a movie is never great.
And I noticed the “crashes” disappeared. Turns out there’s a bug with my remote that seems to automatically send a home signal to the device. But it’s also strange because it affected different apps differently.
I rarely saw it with Netflix. But YT was almost guaranteed.
I would love a dumb TV with one of these lil boxes again, but finding dumb TVs is hard and they're usually expensive and for commercial use from what I've found
The thing struggled to keep sound and video in sync every time I disable or enable captions and then requires a restart to fix the issue.
That’s literally the most basic function this device is supposed to support and it cannot. I have never seen such a problem with any other device I’ve used, including a variety of chrome casts, a fire stick, an Apple TV, an XBox/XBox One, and even XBMC (installed on the original XBox), a variety of RPi solutions, etc.
I disagree, I find the Roku experience to be quite easy to use and it does what I want with no surprises in the UX.
When a Roku is just sitting there doing its thing, it’s fine; but when you have to get it to do something else, it’s like a line at the DMV.
For me, the best aspect of it was their openness. All of the other competing products had their own streaming services, which meant problems with the other providers- why they spun this off from Netflix in the first place. This means the search will go across the different services to answer the pressing question of the day- which service is this content on and at what price? I was considering starting a company to offer this service until Roku met my need there.
Now though, the battle with Google over YouTube has me suspicious of this status. The temptation to chase recurring revenue streams is quite high.
Simple. Solid. Works.
Nothing but praise from my side.
Literally, thank Gawd, as native TV smart apps are an absolute waste of time (they might as well retire them all now) and I don't want to get sucked into the other ecosystems.
2) Google’s insistence on it having a physical remote for their Chromecast players which in itself was likely a result of the fiefdoms which led to Chromecast and Google TV being separate products for the longest time.
Both of these things are not true anymore. Roku is no longer a neutral platform. And Google Chromecast now comes with a remote.
I see very little reason to pick a Roku over the Chromecast with Google TV and I suspect that Roku’s disadvantages will only worsen with v2 of the Google device.
Amazon: about 1,300,000 employees
Google: about 135,000 employees
Roku: about 2,000 employees
Maybe they just don't have the resources to support a rich third-party dev ecosystem
Why redo everything?
I'm generally pro-open source, so this is not coming from a place of shooting down open source, I'm just reading the context in this thread.
My personal experience is that when one individual has a bunch of problems with a number of others, it is probably the one individual that’s the problem.
> they seem to have an issue with a lot of folks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roku#Carriage_disputes
4. They have 4 listed disputes in Wikipedia: NBC/Universal, HBO, Spectrum, and Google; the first three were resolved (the first one the same day as the grievance).
There are hundreds (if not hundreds upon hundreds) of services provided over the Roku hardware/service including it's direct competitors (Amazon Prime TV / Fire stick), more than I can sit here and count without wasting my life.
You would have readers believe that Roku is out there pissing everyone off, being the bad kid on the block, making demands and being a troublemaker. They have had 4 disputes. 4. Out of hundreds of partners. 4.
And do consumers benefit from access to 300 "screen savers" but no HBO Max or other service they've paid for but cannot access on Roku? (Note: the HBO dispute was resolved and is now fully supported on Roku, but during its launch, was not available on Roku) Roku wants us to think so, but my family simply says "Let's just get a Google or Fire stick".
The partner count is specious. The real question is whether Roku provides access to the partners each person wants. Removing, or threatening to remove, top players for whatever intention does not engender trust.
Every TV in my house had a Roku a year ago. Post covid, we now have just one. All those tiny partners and apps on the Roku catalog couldn't offset the fact that what the family wanted to see either wasn't on Roku, or was on some corporate gamesmanship countdown.
And it's so disappointing. They were the player without a bias, providing open access to the TV screen to any tiny niche media player. But they changed. Can't blame them, but it feels like this short term money grab of making media and forcing higher fees for access is the first step on the path to being the next Tivo or WebTV.
Again, I'm not sure how you can consider a company with a market cap of over 40 billion, and making 1.7 billion in revenue, some sort of "underdog competing against giants".
In their space, it's more like giants bumping each other around.
That's basically the definition of an underdog if you have a fraction of the number of resources (employees).
Which is not about the resources at all but about viewpoint on success.
So i'm going to say "no, it's not basically the definition of an underdog".
Even in slang, you aren't an underdog if you could have whatever you need, but choose not to. You might be one if you need something, don't have the resources to get it, and have to make do anyway.
That is not the case for Roku - they could hire as many people as they like.
But it does seem like they are fairly successful regardless.
These are also not reasonable comparisons since the vast majority of the numbers in the other two companies are not on the software/hardware development side.
I would actually guess if you compared "the size of the team working on Google TV/Amazon Fire TV/etc", Roku is probably bigger (or the sizes were very close).
I would be shocked if it was "tiny" in comparison.
Author of that interpreter here - didn't expect to wake up to that repo appearing in a top HN comment! That started as a side project and was maintained with a few coworkers during spare work hours (thanks, Hulu!) for the past 3 years, along with a unit testing framework that runs in it (https://github.com/hulu/roca).
I'm happy to answer any "developing for Roku" questions that come up :)
The demise of this company is long overdue.
I do.
I'm really glad that companies like pine64, frame.work, and purism, etc are starting to emerge. The Roku, Apple, John Deere etc user-hostile approach of "you don't own it, we do. You're renting it from us and we will tell you what is permitted" needs to be defeated.
>Sunsetting non-certified channels
>With the release of the IDK and beta channels, Roku will remove non-certified channels from the platform by March 2022. The Roku IDK and beta channel feature will facilitate broader innovation, improve beta testing, and offer a better development experience and a more standardized development process across streaming platforms.
So basically, channels via code seems like it's going away. I hope they have a suitable replacement in mind with the IDK
> IDK applications are for personal use only; they can only be run after being sideloaded on an IDK-supported Roku streaming player running Roku OS 10.5 (or later).
So IIUC the IDK explicitly allows consumers to sideload apps.
However, Roku collects your viewing data (including by taking screenshots) and anything else it can about you (eg. the TCL Roku TVs have mics) and sell it to its valued partners.
This is all in the EULA.
> On Roku-powered smart TVs, you can turn off ACR by going to Settings > scroll down and select Privacy > Smart TV Experience.
> Next, uncheck “Use Information for TV Inputs” to disable ACR. Although this will stop your Roku TV from identifying your content on the pixel level, Roku can still collect data about the Roku TV streaming channels you’ve installed and use.
> To prevent personalized ads on your Roku profile, go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising, then check “Limit ad tracking.” Note: This setting is also available on Roku streaming gadgets.
---
> (eg. the TCL Roku TVs have mics)
Is there any evidence that they transmit anything from the mics?
[1] https://www.komando.com/tech-tips/stop-smart-tv-tracking/544...
This is unfortunate. I was only interested in the IDK because roku is built in to my tv.
I'm going to try building and sideloading one of the IDK sample apps today. If it works, I'll update with details including the TV make, model, and OS version; if not, I'll...just update with that, I guess.
I'm not really sure what the point is here, if I'm honest. Why even bother releasing an SDK with such limited device support, especially pitched at hobbyists who can be assumed to have (and want to support) the widest device range of any developer segment? It's not as if I'm going to buy new hardware just to look at my calendars and other day-planning info over coffee on my kitchen TV rather than my phone...
From such heights, it's really becoming very disappointing.
So, yeah, early early days were Netflix bound, but with 1200 channels in 2013 and over 3000 by 2015, Roku was clearly showing more than just Netflix. At that time, sounded like Roku was the open door to distributing content to a group of hungry viewers...
And today? Still tons of "channels"... but instead of the garden of a million flowers, we instead have the top line players offering the most requested media, and so 3000 or 30000 makes little difference. In addition, a quick perusal of https://channelstore.roku.com/ reveals that past the first few "most popular" options, it's a desert out there. Lots of screen savers and public domain streamers, and little else.
So, what are Roku's options? It can promise that all can play with carriage fees reflecting consumption. It can offer it's own content (The Roku Channel) to compete. It can offer an advertising service to allow monetization of channel/media creators. And/Or, it can decide that it owns it's viewers, and instead of being an open gateway, it's a closed wall. And that's where we are: It's not easy to be a slightly-smart pipe, so Roku punted. Open no more.
I'll never get rid of all the Rokus, for hope that they'll come back around. But thinking back, the power of those early days in 2012-2015 when you got a Roku because you wanted to see almost everything without having to get a sketchy box from who knows where and have it pull torrents in the background... well, those were the days, indeed.
Although if you're going to… develop something for a Roku, I feel like a Raspberry Pi might be easier.
I'm excited about this being released.
https://www.azukisystems.com/blog/roku-private-channels/
In this post there is a unofficial twitch app and an unofficial iTunes podcast app. That type of thing would not be allowed in the Roku channel Store.
Their current developer platform is just awful to work with. I don’t have faith this will be adopted.
It's great that some companies have finally recognised the value in providing public SDK/APIs but they should be investing in supporting them also.