We’ve had a site running for a couple of years now without any issue. Our content is hosted on Vimeo, and via their “showcase” option can produce a Roku.json feed that we’ve been using.
We run it through a script of our own to add categories and do some filtering for other reasons, but the format remains the same.
About a week ago our feed status went back – all it says now is “xxx items have error: Required video url is unreachable.”
We have refreshed the feed, and told Roku about it, several times. I even took our scripts out and went back to just having Roku point directly at the unchanged Vimeo feed. Still nothing.
Given that it’s got the number of items correct and tells me their titles it appears to get the feed file itself and read it, and is just having issues with the video URLs. Surely a systemic error and not a content error as 100% of my videos are reporting failure.
Anybody experienced similar? Is it a Roku-side issue? A temporary thing? We’d changed nothing, so items in the feed that have been working right along all of a sudden fail. We even refresh the feed multiple times daily so there is no time-to-live issue with video links expiring, which we’d seen in the past.
Yes, I am having the same issue and I have a new channel. The same error shows up for me as well. I believe it is Vimeo. I have troubleshooted it all like you said and nothing has changed.
Vimeo has discontinued their support for Roku. No one is saying if it is Vimeo that Dropped Roku or Roku ended things with Vimeo. But the wonderful, easy solution has come to a sad end. Now when you go to the OTT Division of Vimeo, they want $14,000-$18,000/ year to set something up for you! Good Grief!
I have managed to set up a WordPress channel as a temporary fix (adratv.com) while I struggle to figure out Direct Publisher solutions. By going to our site with their smart devices, our viewers can still screencast to their smart TV’s. Not elegant, I know, but hopefully it is a temporary workaround.
The WP Smart TV plugin for Word Press looks hopeful. I am getting everything to connect, but I am getting Roku errors with their JSON feed, possibly the same “Video Release date” format errors that Vimeo started getting with their feeds.
The developer of WP Smart TV, says that Roku may be getting ready to dump Direct Publisher and that this is the beginning of that…
If anyone has come up with a good solution, please let me know.
That’s certainly annoying, given that Showcases → TV Apps → Roku still features prominently in their video management. I wouldn’t confirm that they’ve ended Roku support until that goes away.
Behind the scenes it appears that they’re doing some additional redirects, probably for CDN support, that are breaking the video players. I think the same issue happens with the Amazon feed.
What I’m doing in my case is to use the feed that Vimeo does produce for the showcase, grabbing it myself, running it through a script that swaps out the Vimeo URLs for a separate hosting provider where we keep duplicate copies of the videos, and then putting that modified feed file back up on my own site. It’s a bit redundant but it works to keep us online.
Aw, bleep, I guess that counts as official! Thanks. I guess my current solution of relying on the showcase output is also going to break soon. At least this time I get a heads up.
I tried to follow Vimeo’s suggestion to have my viewers download the Vimeo App and have them screen cast from that, but in order to really use the app you have to sign up to get an account with Vimeo which triggered a barrage of attempt to get people to sign up for a monthly account to upload videos. Vimeo, as great as they are, sure have a VERY “Subcentric” approach to their apps and website! You can tell your supporters that they can find you on Vimeo, but can they … really? Go to Vimeo.com and the first thing they want you to do is sign up for a monthly plan. Searching for an organization, channel or specific video is extremely difficult! They really need to work on this, IMHO.
Agree with everything. They work well for us as a content provider at the moment, but I expect we’ll need to get completely off of them sooner than expected.
Well, If you know your way around Word Press, I found this to be a good temporary solution for at least having our viewers still find our videos and easily screencast them, with no confusing subscription asks.
Word Press, Vlog Theme, and the plugin Vimeotheque Pro. You can set it up so that simply adding a Vimeo video to a showcase, auto feeds it to your WordPress Site. Just took a day or so to set up.
I don’t think that’s exactly correct. The URL that you provided ( https://help.vimeo.com/hc/en-us/articles/12425990752529–Learn-more-about-Vimeo-ending-support-for-TV-apps ) is about Vimeo discontinuing their Vimeo-branded apps on various platforms. On Roku, this refers to the “Vimeo” channel which has been basically dead since Vimeo changed their thumbnail URL format in 2021. It does not mean Vimeo streams are no longer playable on Roku. Even though Vimeo is not exactly as Roku-friendly as it used to be, there are plenty of devs (as of August 2023) who are still using Vimeo with their Roku projects.
Yes, the “feed” that Vimeo was providing for Showcases might no longer work. But SDK channels written to access Vimeo’s API can still access complete Showcase information including all metadata, thumbnails, and stream URLs.
Some Vimeo MP4 URLs stopped working with Roku too. It looks like this is because the URLs now use several levels of indirection in order to get Vimeo’s various CDNs which Roku’s OS cannot handle. Fortunately this seems to affect only a subset of MP4 URLs. See the note here: https://www.instanttvchannel.com/roku/vimeo. Vimeo’s newer HLS and DASH URLs seem to work reliably with Roku.
Sorry to revive an old thread, but this same issue just came up in another thread related to Direct Publisher to SDK conversion. Not sure if the OP in that thread is getting his information from your post.
We just went through a month of bleep with Vimeo. As of June 27, Vimeo is no longer supporting playout to any third party (it will only play on a Vimeo app, and the user has to screencast to a TV). They aren’t telling anyone this. We found out, like everyone else, because our titles were not going live in Roku.
In addition, you should be aware that if your channel is successful, Vimeo has a 2000 GB bandwidth cap and if you exceed that cap, they will threaten to terminate your Vimeo account (as in forever, you can never have another Vimeo account, in theory), unless you move to a plan that is $300 per month (minimum) and 30,000 GB per month. We asked for time to ramp up to that (we exceeded the bandwidth cap by like … 100 - 300 GB, i.e., we were at 2100 GB - 2300 GB, nowhere near 30,000 GB). They were very unfriendly and unhelpful.
We were actually willing to try the higher plan (we did not have another short term option), and asked about the playout issue. If we moved to the more expensive plan (any of the more expensive plans), then would the vimeo links work in our apps? The answer is - NO. We went back and forth with Vimeo, had to get a supervisor involved, and eventually threatened legal action if they shut down our account because their TERMS OF SERVICE (the contract with YOU), does not clearly say they can terminate a fully prepaid annual plan, when they unilaterally have changed the functionality of the account. Just passing on this info and hope you find it helpful.
Thanks. I guess my current solution of relying on the showcase output is also going to break soon. At least this time I get a heads up.