Mormon Channel for the Roku Channel Store

[aboushley]

In my opinion, the Mormon Channel and BYU Channel should be two separate Roku Channels. They may have some content overlap (possibly General Conference or others), but they are unique enough that they should be separate.

That being said, I would really love to see both of them come to Roku as soon as possible!

[zonazag]

The content on the LDS Video Podcasts private channel is pretty good. (October conference was there pretty quickly afterward.) The main thing missing is Live coverage and Mormon Messages. Other nice things might be some of the training type videos from sites like Duty To God and such. I agree that BYUTV and Mormon Channel should be separate, or maybe two sections within the same channel.

[JonesRC]

TThe main thing missing is Live coverage and Mormon Messages.

We are working on the design of an Official Channel from the Church and the intention at this point is to include Conference, Mormon Messages, and S&I Firesides. Your suggestions on additional content are welcome as well and appreciated. We'll have to engage BYUTV in some talks, seems to be a very hot item.

[JamesAnderson]

Any video content on lds.org is also needed, not just the recent General Conference but as far back as is on the website. There are also other videos, like on video.lds.org, that are not aggregated in a way that they could be more useful. You presently have to go all over the place to find the video content, because it's in several departments. Ditto for audio material, after all, many of the upcoming A/V devices that people will view Church content via the Mormon Channel apps will handle both audio and video content, etc., through the same devices and interfaces.

This goes back to the 2000 release of lds.org, where each department at CHQ maintained its part of the website, and in many cases finding anything, whether it be a print, video, or audio resource, was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, or several, and still is in some cases yet. Basically things get put up and as far as anyone who needs something always finding exactly what they need, the old statement 'never the twain shall meet' seems to be the case at times.

http://www.youtube.com/familysearchvids has a small amount right now but that could grow as well.

[ericluft]

We are working on the design of an Official Channel from the Church and the intention at this point is to include Conference, Mormon Messages, and S&I Firesides. Your suggestions on additional content are welcome as well and appreciated. We'll have to engage BYUTV in some talks, seems to be a very hot item.

I am very interested in an Official Channel from the Church. I don't currently own a Roku device, but if a Church channel like the one described above existed, I think I would buy one just for that content.

[JamesAnderson]

There will be many more devices that will likely be able to use various apps for Mormon Channel. For several well-known Internet services now, there already is a large number.

Case in point; US residents can access an Internet radio site called Pandora, the service started in 2005 and it took three years to get 6 million users. Now two years after taht and it ballooned to 65 million plus today. Part of the reason is the smartphone apps they developed. Part of what happened there was getting it onto hardware, according to them they are on over 200 separate electronic products such as TiVo, Blu-ray DVD players, and a whole host of others of which I am not familiar with. Another company that has done similar things but with video is Netflix, that is expanding rapidly as to how you can watch movies through devices as well, although being video, not as many devices handle their apps now.

Things will boil down to how many products use what OS, and what modifications may be needed for what products and how popular the product is that the Mormon Channel app ends up being developed for. But there will be enough that the Mormon Chanel app will likely see development for most of the operating systems and individual devices as needed in the end.

[circa1978-p40]

The nice thing about the way that the TV market is evolving is that two of the main companies in the space (Google and Apple - though Apple does not have Apps on the TV yet) are building on top of their mobile OS. Therefore some of the development can overlap with the Mobile Apps that are already being developed. So the main devices to be concerned with in my opinion are going to be:

Google TV - built on Android http://www.google.com/tv/developers.html
Roku - http://www.roku.com/developer
Boxee - http://developer.boxee.tv/

Other platforms on the fringe are Samsung Apps, Yahoo TV Widgets and Tivo.
And in the future perhaps Apple TV (does not yet support apps, but seems inevitable) - Built on iOS

So that leaves us with 3 primary platforms - one overlapping with a mobile platform.

I have Boxee and have developed an unofficial Mormon Channel which I have posted on my own repository (http://apptree.me/dir). For now I was planning to polish of a few last changes and add it to main Boxee App directory as an "Unofficial Mormon Channel" so that more people can use it. I'd be glad to hand it over and make it Official as well. I'd also be happy to share the design with any one who wants to get started on any other platform. I am not likely to jump into the development on Roku as I'm in Canada and we don't have them. But I'd be glad to help where I can with design/UI/IA.

[zonazag]

It has been about a month since the last post, any update on the Roku channel?

I would like to be able to watch the new leadership training video on my TV if possible rather than at my computer.

[todrobbins]

Has a page on the LDS Tech wiki been created for the Mormon Channel Roku project yet? I'm interested in contributing.

[sgoodmansen]

As a new Roku owner, I want to put my vote in for this as well. Before the next General Conference would be ideal

I vote to also include the Legacy podcasts http://feeds.lds.org/LDSLegacy
to the channel. Also the Joseph Smith Papers would also be great.