Any updates on the current International channels on Roku with the whole dishworld deal?
We are having hard time contacting dish to strike any deal. We are a VOD movies channel.
This probably belongs in the developer forum, but… are you contacting them via one of the methods detailed here? viewtopic.php?f=34&t=50512
Yes that is right. Was anyone successful in contacting dishworld ?
Sunny,
I you haven’t heard back, please drop us a line at partners@roku.com and we’ll look into it for you.
I also tried contacting them, but since I did not get a timely response (2 weeks), the application I was going to be developing for work is instead going to be built on Boxee. 
I prefer Roku, but my boss said because of the problem with Dishworld not responding in a timely fashion we can’t use Roku, too bad, it would have been over 10,000 units just for the first location we were going to deploy to. We have our own content, only available in our facility, but we provide it in many languages. They were a bit concerned about possibly using Roku to begin with as soon as they saw the requirement of needing DishWorld’s approval to host our own multi-lingual content, I still don’t understand how it benefits anyone to have someone else give me approval to publish my own content.
Before anyone even suggest just side-loading the channels, that is just not an option with as many units as we would have (10,000 is just the first of currently 14 rollouts we would be looking at), plus we wouldn’t know if the channel is in use at the time. We would update the channel in the store and just know that it would go out to all the Roku’s within a day.
“SkipFire” wrote:
I also tried contacting them, but since I did not get a timely response (2 weeks), the application I was going to be developing for work is instead going to be built on Boxee.Before anyone even suggest just side-loading the channels, that is just not an option with as many units as we would have (10,000 is just the first of currently 14 rollouts we would be looking at), plus we wouldn’t know if the channel is in use at the time. We would update the channel in the store and just know that it would go out to all the Roku’s within a day.
At over three times the price, the number of units you’re talking about would cost an additional $1,000,000 to switch to Boxee (at a discount), in just the first rollout. Seems like an awfully dramatic financial decision to make after only two weeks… I think I’d be making a few more phone calls and sending a few more emails first..
Only 2 units were purchased for a PoC, we are just working on finalizing the development plan, purchase for deployment would have been sometime next month once we had the channel developed.
“SkipFire” wrote:
Only 2 units were purchased for a PoC, we are just working on finalizing the development plan, purchase for deployment would have been sometime next month once we had the channel developed.
Unfortunately it will take a few months of constant emails and phone calls for them to even take a look at it.
“Nick255” wrote:
“SkipFire” wrote:
Only 2 units were purchased for a PoC, we are just working on finalizing the development plan, purchase for deployment would have been sometime next month once we had the channel developed.
Unfortunately it will take a few months of constant emails and phone calls for them to even take a look at it.
I’m curious as to how you can make statements like that…? The deal has only been in place for a month, and I know of at least two channels that have already been greenlighted, one of which was over two weeks ago. If you want to be bitter about the deal, then fair enough, but making unfounded statements in an effort to discourage other developers isn’t really fair.
If you don’t hear back from DISHWorld (ottpartner@dish.com) in a timely fashion (ie a couple of days), please drop us a note at partners@roku.com and provide at least a few details so that we can inquire on your behalf. This should be a fairly smooth process at this point, but ti’s clear there are still a few wrinkles to be ironed out.
Patrick
Unfortunately it still doesn’t address the underlying issue of bringing a new approval group into the mix. Private channels previously did not need any approval and now my project managers are not ok with needing approval for something that isn’t even going to work off the corporate network but has a multi-lingual interface and multi-lingual content.
Personally I say there is no problem because there is no “foreign language” in the United States. In order to have a foreign language you have to have a domestic language. The flip argument is that English is a foreign language because it originated in Europe not in the US.
Also, I can’t find the new information in the agreement on the developer portal (http://www.roku.com/Libraries/Legal/Rok … .sflb.ashx).
I appreciate your concern and while private channels previously did not require permission from Roku they did have to observe the requirements of the developer agreement.
Channel Developer Program Requirements
3. Content and Channel Information (Metadata) Restrictions
B. The Content and Channel Application accessed, displayed and performed via a Channel
Application may not:
vii. contain foreign language or international Content generated outside of the US,
including but not limited to movies, sports, video on demand and/or news
services, without the prior written approval of Roku.
I must have missed those 5 words (generated outside of the US).
What document contains that information? I can’t find it in the channel developer agreement.
^ The developers agreement, page 18.
“SkipFire” wrote:
I must have missed those 5 words (generated outside of the US).What document contains that information? I can’t find it in the channel developer agreement.
Page 18 at the link you posted: http://www.roku.com/Libraries/Legal/Rok … .sflb.ashx
As of today that document (at the above link) has a footer indicating that it was revised July 2012. The language about content generated outside of the US was not in the 4.1 SDK distributed with a release date of 12/21/2011 (document footer states a Dec. 2009 revision in the 4.1 version of the Developer Agreement document), so it’s only been there <= 8 months. The 4.1 release is the last one I have saved in my Roku dev folder, from before they switched to the wiki-hosted documentation, and it (the zipped 4.1 SDK with example source code and developer documents) is also still available for download from http://owner.roku.com/developer.
Making such a dangerous move as to put a censorship for international channels is very brave. There are many ethnic communities who created their solutions especially for Roku and were successfully promoting their service to tens of thousands people in USA. Take off those private and public channels (just because they compete with Dish Network) and your whole project goes down the drain. Who needs another device to watch Netflix? Boxee offers an open platform, ability to connect an OTA antenna and watch all the local channels in addition to hundreds of plugins they offer. Android boxes are coming. Why should people buy Roku if you keep changing your requirements and licenses so people learn that the service they watch on their dearest Roku device is no longer available? There are private channels for Chinese, South Asian, Russian, Polish, Serbian, African, Caribbean, Spanish and other communities and all those channels should be taken off because they compete with Dish Network, a behemoth who forces people to pay premiums for unneeded content. Just give it a good thought. Imagine you get an Illinois Catholic church to dictate which other religious channels should be added, what will happen to all those other Christian communities - they will choose a truly open platform without censorship.
