--Offers 10 Free Channels Including Blip.TV, Facebook Photos, Flickr, Pandora, Revision3, and TWiT
Over-the-top-TV company, Roku (note: the company recently launched two new set-top boxes--see the article published on itvt.com, October 28th), on Sunday night announced the launch of the Roku Channel Store, together with 10 channels, all of which are offered free of charge to customers who want to add them to their Roku menu. According to the company, the Roku Channel Store will serve as an "open platform" for delivering quality content to the TV, and the 10 new channels with which it is launching are "just the beginning": numerous other developers are currently working on Roku channels, the company claims, and additional developers are expected to adopt the Roku platform over time. Roku says that new channels will appear in the Channel Store automatically as they appear.
The first 10 free Roku Channel Store channels are (note: Roku also offers three paid channels, which launched prior to the officially unveiling its Channel Store/open platform strategy: Netflix--the service with which it originally launched its Roku Player box, back in May, 2008--Amazon Video on Demand, and MLB.TV): Blip.TV (hosts and distributes independent Web shows), Facebook Photos (according to Facebook, the Roku Channel Store implementation of its photo service will allow users to view slideshows of recent photos posted in their news feed, as well as their personal photo albums or tagged photos, and their friends' photos), Flickr (which says that the Roku implementation of its service will allow users to view photos from their photostream, groups or sets and to browse and view photos from around the Web via Flickr photo feeds), FrameChannel (which says that its Roku service will let users view photos and updates from their social networks, follow over 1,000 channels of news, weather and sports, and add their own favorite blog or RSS feeds), Mediafly (which says that its Roku service will provide users with access to "over 6 million episodes on virtually any topic...plus your own personal videos"), MobileTribe (which says that its Roku service will allow users to access Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo!, Orkut, Flickr, Picasa and Google Contacts), Motionbox (which says that its Roku service will let users browse and watch their home movies in HD), Pandora (which says that the Roku version of its personalized radio service is fully integrated with the Web version, so that users can enjoy all their existing stations and create new ones right from the Roku box), Revision3 (original Web programming), and TwiT TV (offers 40 hours of live technology programming each week, including chief TWiT Leo Laporte's own "This Week in Tech" show; as a result of its launch on Roku, the company, which traditionally has specialized in audio podcasts, is now offering video programming).
Roku bills the new Channel Store as providing content owners and publishers with the opportunity to reach "an already large and growing" audience of Roku users, and claims to have "leveled the playing field for content owners" by creating an open platform for delivering television over the Internet. "The Roku Channel Store turns the Roku player into the world's first open platform designed specifically for the TV," Roku founder and CEO, Anthony Wood, said in a prepared statement. "Now content producers and distributors--from single-person shops to billion-dollar corporations--can deliver their content directly to consumers without having to go exclusively through cable operators, satellite networks or TV affiliates."
In order to create a channel for the Roku Channel Store, developers build an application using Roku's free software developer kit (SDK), which the company says is available upon request by emailing partners@roku.com. According to Roku, the Roku Channel Store--which is compatible with all Roku Player set-top boxes (i.e. the Roku SD, Roku HD and Roku HD-XR models)--will be delivered as an automatic and free upgrade to all existing customers over the course of the next two weeks, and new customers will be upgraded automatically when they first install their Roku Player (note: the company says that customers who want to use the new service before the automatic update will shortly be able to update their box manually--instructions are available under the Roku Channel Store tag at http://www.roku.com/support/faqs). In order to browse and use the Roku Channel Store, customers will be prompted to create a Roku account.
A video demo of the Roku Channel Store (h/t HackingNetflix) is embedded above.
