Mormon Channel for the Roku Channel Store

Discussions on how emerging technology can assist the distribution of media content through mobile, kiosks, Internet, social networks, etc.
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aboushley
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Roku Channel Progress

#31

Post by aboushley »

What is the status of the official Roku Channel?

I am glad that so many people have shown interest and that the Church is working on this new technology.

Until the Church does release the official channel, you can catch the conference talks and Mormon Messages using the private YouTube App that you can find here: http://www.thenowhereman.com/roku/
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JonesRC
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Roku Channel Update

#32

Post by JonesRC »

Great to see the interest in the Roku Channel. We have recently finalized and signed the agreement with Roku and downloaded the SDK. We are in the process of designing the Channel and prepping content for it. Currently we are planning on putting Conference on it as well as Mormon Messages.

We are also in the process of evaluating other OTT channels including Google TV, Boxee, Tivo, and the Sony and Samsung Web-enabled TVs.

As many of you probably know, we have an official page in iTunes now and have made the most recent conference available in 11 languages (itunes.lds.org). We have provided multiple video formats in both session and speaker format. Having this channel gives us content that is now available for playback on the Apple TV in the podcast section. I might say the HD video looks great, only 720p but shows well on a large screen device.

It's our intention to create both an open and private channel for the Roku. Both channels would contain Church content and would serve two different audiences. Your ideas and thoughts for the type of content you could see on the channel would be welcome. Thanks for the interest and comments.
aboushley
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#33

Post by aboushley »

Why have both an open and private channel? Is the private channel like a beta/labs channel and the open channel the current full release? Or do you plan to have 2 completely different channels? If so, what will be the difference?

Have you investigated the possibility of being able to broadcast General Conference live through the Roku channel?

What can I do to help move this project forward?

Do you have any connections to BYUtv? Or would I want to contact someone at BYUtv to discuss a BYUtv Roku Channel?

Thanks,

Adam
aboushley
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#34

Post by aboushley »

As far as content suggestions for the Roku channel, this would be a good place to start:

http://lds.org/videos

I wish we could tap into the BYUtv content, but I am not sure how the content licensing works.
JamesAnderson
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#35

Post by JamesAnderson »

This area is moving very fast, and time will tell what technologies stay and which disappear, but it's gettint where we can't keep up with it fast enough either.

Sony web-enabled TVs are going to largely use Google TV/Android. See http://www.google.com/tv for that and the other info, including the box option to using Google TV. Google TV will use Android apps pretty much out of the box, but like the iPad those may not be fully optimized to take advantage of the layout of a TV screen vs. a smartphone screen. They will introduce a new app store for the optimized apps for the TV screen. Details for developers will come out next year according to the above site.

Ford is working on and how now released an SDK for, the Ford Sync system, which will allow app developers to make their apps car-freindly by allowing voice commands to be used, you'll use a regular smartphone, as they found that to develop for what was big three years ago was just not going to work, they needed a frontend to stay up to date, the smartphone was it. After all, Pandora was barely on the radar three years ago, today it has 65 million users, a good chunk of that growth came in the last 18 months. Mormon Channel didn't exist then either. And don't forget all the new features that can and will be introduced to both smartphones and their apps over the next few years too. After all, the car is the 'last frontier' for Internet radio, and over a third of all radio listening is in the car.

TiVo will be another one, I've seen some of what they are doing and it also includes Pandora, and soon eveyrone is going to have Pandora or some other web radio app standard out of the box. So it makes sense to develop for all of them.

Windows 7 Phone comes out just after Thanksgiving. So we finally get a Windows Mobile platform to fully develop Mormon Channel for.

This blog post from the 'Radio and Internet Newsletter, which I've isolated to allow people to go back to it a long time after now, tells a lot of this in stories 1, 2, and 4. The blog has a lot of 'backoffice' stuff about Internet radio, but often has a lot of details about what is going on in the retail marketplace for web radio applications and the hardware that plays them.

http://textpattern.kurthanson.com/artic ... developers

Another news site article about Ford Sync:

http://www.gpsbusinessnews.com/Ford-Rev ... a2534.html

Now to content for the Mormon Channel app, the video side is going to need to go back as far as possible on the General Conference and CES Firesides, etc., to make the web TV apps a real value. Other content besides is anything on the Mormon Channel Youtube page, and even this one from FamilySearch: http://www.youtube.com/familysearchvids Most of what is found on video.lds.org (hope I got that irght) should be in the app as well. If possible any of the material on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Youtube page too. They have put up a fair number of things as well.

One audio item is whatever can be cleared from the Church Music site should be on any Mormon Channel app as well, I think that is an item that some have been asking about elsewhere as well.
aboushley
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Roku Mormon Channel Map

#36

Post by aboushley »

I started putting together a concept channel map for the Roku Mormon Channel using Google Docs Drawing tool. Anyone can edit and contribute to it.

http://goo.gl/UMie

I am willing to help with any coding as well if needed.

Please let me know.

Adam
JamesAnderson
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#37

Post by JamesAnderson »

I could barely read the flowchart, how do I enlarge it without possibly screwing things up for other users/editors?
aboushley
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#38

Post by aboushley »

Try using the magnifying glass tool.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/298089/2010-10-12_1436.png
dkunz-p40
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#39

Post by dkunz-p40 »

jonesrc wrote:Great to see the interest in the Roku Channel. We have recently finalized and signed the agreement with Roku and downloaded the SDK. We are in the process of designing the Channel and prepping content for it. Currently we are planning on putting Conference on it as well as Mormon Messages.

It's our intention to create both an open and private channel for the Roku. Both channels would contain Church content and would serve two different audiences. Your ideas and thoughts for the type of content you could see on the channel would be welcome. Thanks for the interest and comments.
I'm glad to see that progress is being made in developing an official LDS Roku Channel. I would love to see byu.tv on the channel as well to allow viewers to watch the BYU football games ...or maybe it should be a separate channel.

Doug
JamesAnderson
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#40

Post by JamesAnderson »

BYU does have a lot of content, they redid their site earlier this year and it would be something that they could do if they desired to. But they would need to do it themselves so it would handle all the types of things they wanted to make available for it.

In their case they would want to put the two networks, and BYU Radio in the app, but with the recent move to Ooyala for streaming BYU Radio they would have to find something else since a third-party LDS radio app had to switch from KBYU-FM/HD1's stream to KUER-HD3's online stream for that third-party app to have a classical station. Android has a cow with .wma streams for some reason although recent versions claim to be able to handle them.

So they would have to work out a lot of things before they were to put something together.
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