“destruk” wrote:
If I was to create a brand new channel right now, which hasn’t been on the site at all ever before, and I wanted to make use of new features in the release build that just publicly started pushing out to boxes last week, I would want as many people to have instant access to my content and my service. It is a large support problem if I was to advertise on my website, advertise on Google, have it on Facebook to say “Join my channel now in the channel store right now for this amazing application” - only to have my possible customers all email me saying they don’t see it as an option because it doesn’t show in the list if their firmware is obsolete. And to simply say “oh, you have to update manually, or you need to wait XX days for your firmware to be updated before you can see it to add” - it’s a very bad design decision.
If you developed your channel for firmware that wasn’t out yet, and if you used a new feature in that firmware and if you released it immediately after Roku first decided to roll out the firmware, then you might have the problem you mentioned above. I wouldn’t want to do a major marketing push on untested features though.
How long must I wait to see if my channel is reaching the entire audience I am aiming to attract? And just because my box didn’t auto update in seven days, who is to say that 7 days is the limit? It could take 14 days, or months for all I know, for the update to be pushed to my device. I don’t see how you can miss these issues? How long does the entire installed base take to receive these?
Roku representatives have talked about the release procedures. It generally looks to me that they allow the release to a (relatively) small subset of customers outside the beta before allowing it for everyone. It seems designed to help them catch any problems with a wider group of people that the beta group may have missed, for any number of reasons.
Sure the easy way out is to simply NOT use any advanced features from what the boxes are shipped with, but then, do you see what I’m getting at?
First thing on new Rokus after initial setup and before getting to the home screen the Roku downloads the latest firmware available. That may or may not be the VERY newest, but it’s still much better than what it probably ships with it. New features only come with major point releases, such as 2.8 and 29. There are many more minor point releases between those, such as 2.9.1509, 2.9.1510, which are designed to fix any bugs found. You can be fairly certain the level of features every Roku has.
With my local cable company they take the service down every two days or so - for about 20 minutes, to update the channel content - it is a reliable push where they also set up newer firmware changes, etc etc - why is Roku’s software patch process so slow and unreliable? Unless you expect your end users to manually check for updates themselves?
But what assurance do you have that they aren’t running the same sort of scheduled releases, and you just don’t know what group you are in?
Thanks kbenson. I suppose the smart way to tackle this entire issue is to write an app for latest complete-installed firmware revision (if that is possible) and then add the newer features to it - that way no matter what firmware the end user actually has it will be guaranteed to show up in the channel store - and they will always be grabbing the latest version available for their revision. Do you think someone from Roku could list the oldest revision of firmware being used in the wild and update that when they complete their push series to everyone?
Just develop for the latest major point release, which every user should have. If it’s right after a major point release change, make sure you developed for the older release but tested against the new one (get in the beta program). After a week or so in the new major point release, feel free to enable the features that require the new version.
