“Bigmike333” wrote:
Well, looks like another two weeks has come and gone with no ability to test unpublished channels. Also, Roku is tinkering with adding things to your published channels you may not appreciate. Such as a huge search icon that allows your viewers to search within your channel, even if you have only one icon the viewer can click on, as most of my channels are set up this way to connect to live streams. Now there’s two icons, one of which is useless, and it throws off the balance and look of my background images. By the way, you can’t make it go away. Please let them know if this bothers you, as it is best to nip this in the bud before they populate this to all Direct Publisher channels. How about we fix this preview problem first, instead of adding excess junk to developer’s channels?
Where do you see this ‘tinkering’ as I haven’t seen that.
I have not seen this on my channel, either.
Today, I updated my Json feed for my test channel (unpublished). It took longer than normal to update, but, it worked. And, when I opened the channel on my device, I did not receive any errors. The new videos were all available.
I mention this because I don’t know if the Roku problem is officially fixed. I have not seen any kind of announcement.
The new “features” are being migrated into the Direct Publisher channels. It’s only hit one of mine so far, and man is it ugliness. Support told me we will have to live with it. If you want to look a it, search out America Matters TV and install the channel. Normally, there is only one clickable icon that comes up, with the logo. If the show is live on the air, the show will begin playing when you click that logo. Otherwise, it reverts back to the home screen. Look below the main icon and see the search icon Roku has inserted. Click on that and look at the ugliness… When they put that icon on there, it moved everything up and out of balance with my background image. This is not in my json feed, I can assure you of that.
Here is what they look like if you’re interested:
Has there been any resolution on this? I am still having trouble with my unpublished channels… as soon as you launch it throws error: “there appears to be a problem. please try again” and just crashes… this has been going on weeks now. What is the deal?
I even deleted the channel and started over from scratch and still the same issue.
“avodahsoftware” wrote:
Has there been any resolution on this? I am still having trouble with my unpublished channels… as soon as you launch it throws error: “there appears to be a problem. please try again” and just crashes… this has been going on weeks now. What is the deal?I even deleted the channel and started over from scratch and still the same issue.
I have an idea. Make another Roku account, make your channel based on another developer account (with another email address)
“mosafer” wrote:
“avodahsoftware” wrote:
Has there been any resolution on this? I am still having trouble with my unpublished channels… as soon as you launch it throws error: “there appears to be a problem. please try again” and just crashes… this has been going on weeks now. What is the deal?I even deleted the channel and started over from scratch and still the same issue.
I have an idea. Make another Roku account, make your channel based on another developer account (with another email address)
Hi,
I have actually done this on post #15, I actually used another Roku device with another roku developer account that is bound to that other device… created channel…still no progress, same issue.
Update as of June 7, 2019… still same error on my end, “there appears to be a problem. please try again” something then it just closes and goes back to Home… this is for different developer accounts, different unpublished channels… error still persists.
Thanks,
Paul
Same here… I can’t get anything to work on unpublished channels. Any update from Roku, anybody else?
Baradanikto
If you rename your json file to anything different than the one you are using, and then have the Feed Status check it, your private channel will be inoperable from that point on. Not suggesting you do this, but the bug still persists.
Bigmike333 and all others with this problem…
For my unpublished (test) channel, I do, in fact, rename my feed file each time I make a change because I want my changes reflected immediately. I use Amazon’s CloudFront caching and if I don’t rename the file (ie. I use the same name), the changes are not reflected until the cache has been refreshed.
There must be some other condition, as I stated earlier in this thread, that is contributing to the “bug”. How else would I be able to continue to update my channel? Is it possible that there’s a problem in the actual feed file? For example, a stray BOM in the file. I know early on when I first started creating my Json feed file, I had problems with the file and the use of a BOM in the file. That’s one of the reasons I decided to write my own software to create and manage Json feeds.
I downloaded your trial version of the software. Is there a comprehensive set of instructions for it that explain what each element of the program does, formats, changes, etc? It is well laid out, but I have no idea how it puts out a json file to upload. Even if it did, it would crash on Roku. The json file I have been using worked in the past. All I changed was the url for the live stream, which plays fine in VLC, and plays fine after I go ahead and publish the channel. The only way to preview it though, is to actually publish the channel. This is not a good plan. My channel worked, but how many will not?
Big mike333…
I’m not sure what you mean by a “comprehensive list of instructions”. The software does come with a Help file that explains how to use it. If you’ve got specific questions, please PM me, or, contact me through the website in my signature.
Hi Guys,
UPDATE:
As of June 24th, 2019… the issue seems to have been “FIXED” already… I was able to create unpublished channels, delete, add new, and all working fine now!!!
Hopefully it stays fixed 
Thank you all who contributed to this thread
Did the problem come back?
In my test channel, when I do a “preview” from the panel (roku web), the screenshot shows the thumbnails and categories.
But if I enter the channel on my roku device (it is not yet published, I install the test channel using the code provided by roku), it shows the presentation screen, the logo and only 2 icons: (search and information).
I’m having this exact problem. Is the bug solved if you just go straight to publish the channel?
JSON: https://riiactive.com/wp-json/tv/roku/
Thanks!!
EDIT: After publishing, my channel is now working.
Same problem, wasted a whole day on this.
It should not be necessary to publish (waiting 2 weeks!?) just for testing purposes.
Extremely frustrating for new developers who want to quickly integrate.
I am having the same issue here. Unpublished channel, feed status shows no errors, preview works, but no videos show in the channel on Roku device. This seems it has been an issue for over a year!! How has this not been fixed yet?? Are there any workarounds besides publishing the channel? I actually do not want to publish because I intend to keep my channel private and unpublished.
it shows the presentation screen, the logo and only 2 icons: (search and information).
The same for my test unpublished channel.
just got from support:
Our engineering team has deployed a fix for several channels that were only seeing a Search and About icon in their Direct Publisher channels. However, we are not sure if this particular fix addressed all the issues reported over the last few weeks due to the wide variety of channel reporting this issue.
But still all the same.
Seeing this on my channel right now as well. Preview version in the developer portal looks fine, but only seeing “Search” and “About” buttons on device. If it matters, I’m using the Showcase feed URL from Vimeo: https://vimeo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026953671, which doesn’t allow me to really customize how the JSON is returned other than the options I can configure through Vimeo’s side.
