Roku Dev Summit 2024

Not in typical blog-style. Just simple, interesting notes from the Roku Developer Summit 2024.

Keynote

Dev portal updates

• Scheduled publishing now available 24/7, provided the app was scheduled a full business day in advance
• Rollback capabilities coming to partner channels too, not just self-service channels
• Alignment between manifest and UI versions of the app
• Analytics crash reports per model available to better understand memory and performance problems
• Added support for search beta channels to better test search feeds, don’t count towards regular beta channels (currently only available working for channels not live with search feed)
• Search feed getting support for username/password for search feed protection
• Easy option to rollback devices from beta OS to production OS
• Submit beta apps using dev portal api (not new, reminder)

Engineering updates

• Roku research monitor for deep insights into Brightscript performance — perfect for Roku OS updates
• Self-serve UI for payments and payment fails
• Roku 14.0: Label additions (MonoSpace Label Node, LabelBase Node) for better label control
• Roku 14.0: Optimisations in media playback
• Roku engineering focus on: 1. Next generation tech, AI/ML and new video codecs, 2. Committed to streamlining dev, 3. Prioritising performance of among others channel launch and analytics tooling, 4. Enhancing roku pay for more subscription models and other revenue enhancements.

Multiview

• Demo with Fubo
• Allows 4 streams on new Roku Ultra device, up to 2 streams on older devices

2024 Roku Ultra with voice remote launched

• Cpu 40% faster
• Various HDR support
• Game-ready with low latency and bluetooth connectivity

Roku Pay

Catalog 2.0:

• Support for add-on subscriptions next to a base subscription
• Support for bundles
• Quarterly billing allowed in an attempt to reduce churn
• Price changes for existing customers now self-service
• New Catalog 2.0 SDK introduced to support new features
• Catalog 1.0 will be deprecated (no timeline given)

Roku subscription recovery program:

• Reduces passive cancellation rates by as much as 44%
• Increases customer lifetime by 3.5 months
• Will use AI/ML models to improve even more

Audience growth

• Mention of new Ad Manager for access to Roku’s premium ad inventory
• Search optimisation (e.g. continue watching on homescreen) through search feed
• Search feed metadata improvements (robust, genres, titles, key words)
• Feed recommendations:

User Experience

• New Roku typeface, available in Q4, which will replace the existing Gotham fonts in the SDK
• User research insights:

Roku test automation (RTA)

• Node-based tool for integrating automation tests
• Can be combined with other TV automation for potential cross-platform testing
• Can be run from regular CI/CD workflow (with self-hosted runners)

Roku OS developer beta program

Content Discovery

• Continue watching with cloud to cloud integration for real time updates (Beta)
• “Coming Soon” content on the home screen
• Kids-focused section with kids & family highlighted content
• Sports-dedicated zone with both first and third-party content
• Sports-content pushed through Gracenote integration

Roku dev tools

• Brightscript Profiler improved stability and reliability
• Debug Protocol stability and performance improved, better support in VS Code
• Roku Resource Manager 3.1 released and available today
• RRM 3.1 showing deep insights into cumulative rendezvous event duration and count
• RRM 3.1 showing object allocation per thread now

Community tools update

VS Code updates from the past ~year

Brighterscript

• Language server rewrite still in progress, call for testers

• Heading towards v1 release of Brighterscript (https://github.com/rokucommunity/brighterscript/milestone/1)
• Don’t skip on plugins powered by Brighterscript, without needing a Brightscript project
• Looking for contributors!

Ads

• Increase viewership with Roku Ad Manager by promoting your own Roku channel in e.g. the banner on Roku’s Home Screen or in screensavers
• Search and Discover banner either on CPM or CPI base
• Get started with Roku Ad Manager with a campaign for as little as 500 dollars
• Demand API integrations are intentionally done in a hands-on manner as every integration is going to be somewhat unique

Monetising your Roku channel

• Paid apps — Roku gets 20%, app gets 80%
• Ads — Roku gets 30%, app gets 70%
• In-app purchases — Roku gets 20%, app gets 80%
• RevenueCat’s SDK is open source, took ~3 months to develop with 6 month lead period (https://github.com/RevenueCat/purchases-roku)

Voice AI Games

• Oak → React-written components that compile to Brighscript/Scenegraph code → game changer?
• Volley is not planning to open source Oak at this point in time

SceneGraph updates

• Multiview will work with any protocol, HLS and Dash and DRM as well as long as DRM is consistent across the different streams
• No built-in way to detect if the network of the user can handle multiview