Create a Roku Channel in under an hour

Roku has more than 60 million monthly active users in the U.S. alone. It's the #1 OTT platform with thousands of public and private channels.

In this article, we'll show you how to create your own Roku channel in no time. We'll give you all the information you need: what video streaming solution you need, how much it will cost, how much time it will take, and what's involved.

Whether you're an experienced video content creator or just starting out, our goal is to make the process of creating a Roku channel as easy and accessible as possible. Let's get started.

Why create a Roku channel?

As one of the most widely used OTT platforms, Roku gives you a convenient way to deliver content to your audience.

Therefore, creating a Roku channel allows you to reach the largest TV streaming audience in the world, expanding your potential customer base.

Creating your own Roku channel offers several benefits:

• ▸ Increased visibility: having your own channel on Roku helps you get noticed and reach more people.
• ▸ Direct access to your content: viewers can find your content without searching through a sea of others.
• ▸ New revenue streams: a Roku channel can generate revenue through advertising, subscriptions, or in-app purchases.

In summary, a Roku channel provides a convenient and accessible way for your audience to interact with your content. This leads to higher customer satisfaction, more referrals, and increased revenue.

Creating a Roku channel: Direct Publisher vs SDK channels

When creating a custom Roku channel, you had the choice of two different app development methods: Direct Publisher or a custom SDK channel.

However, Roku discontinued Direct Publisher on January 12, 2024. If you want to create a new custom Roku channel, you can no longer use Direct Publisher — the only way is to create a custom SDK Roku app.

Let's dive into the SDK app builder method.

How to create a Roku SDK channel without coding

Direct Publisher was Roku's no-code channel builder solution — gone now. The good news: OTT app builder tools like Tappla introduced no-code solutions for creating a custom Roku SDK channel, no programming skills required.

These tools come with pre-built Roku app templates that you can customize. The main difference between OTT app builder tools is how they handle your video content. To understand that, let's first look at how Roku accesses and streams your video.

How Roku streams your videos: Roku's content feed logic

You cannot upload your videos directly to Roku — Roku does not act as a CDN. Instead, you host videos on a third-party CDN or your own server.

This sounds inconvenient, but it's actually a good solution because you don't have to import your entire library into a new system.

The connection between where your videos are hosted and your Roku channel happens through what Roku calls a content feed (also known as the Roku JSON feed). It's a piece of code containing your video URLs and metadata: title, thumbnail, category, playlist, content type, etc.

When end users use your Roku app, the app loads your video content from the feed and populates itself with the thumbnails it finds. So every time your feed updates, your Roku app updates automatically.

Examples

• ▸ You host videos on a CDN like Boxcast, Streamhoster, or 5CentsCDN — connect their Roku feed URL and changes sync automatically.
• ▸ You use Vimeo to host videos and Tappla to generate your Roku feed URL — Vimeo edits sync to your Roku channel automatically.
• ▸ Your CDN doesn't provide content feeds — copy and paste video URLs into Tappla and we generate the feed for you.

Alternatively, if you don't want to deal with a content feed at all, you can build your Roku SDK app directly with an OTT app builder like Tappla. Connect your videos and Tappla does the rest.

Key differences between OTT app builder platforms

OTT app builder platforms help you create Netflix-style TV streaming apps for Apple TV, Roku, or Fire TV. They fall into two main categories:

Category A makes sense if you're already looking for a video hosting solution and you're comfortable managing and syncing across platforms.

Category B makes sense if you want to keep your videos where they are and have flexibility to manage them in one place. Category B builders sync automatically because they connect directly to your existing hosting. No more updating playlists, thumbnails, or titles in multiple places.

Plus, Category B platforms are usually less expensive.

The cost of creating a Roku SDK channel with Tappla

Since Tappla doesn't require you to upload all your video content, you can connect your videos wherever you already host them — no additional storage cost.

If you don't have a hosting solution yet, you'll need a CDN or Vimeo. Vimeo Standard at $20/month is one of the cheapest options, and Tappla integrates directly with Vimeo's API.

Walkthrough: how Roku Direct Publisher used to work

Since Roku discontinued Direct Publisher, you can no longer use it to create a new channel. For those who want to know how it worked, this section is preserved for reference.

Direct Publisher was Roku's own channel builder. Creating a Roku account was the first step.

1. 01 Sign in to your Roku Developer Dashboard. Click Add Channel under My Channels.
2. 02 Choose between Direct Publisher and SDK upload. Select Direct Publisher, enter a name (changeable later), and click Continue.
3. 03 Select the Channel Store country (only where you have rights to distribute), languages for descriptions, and whether the channel targets children or adults.
4. 04 Paste your Roku feed URL. Use the JSON feed format — it lets Roku categorize your videos and use all metadata, and Roku applies different launch behavior based on content types in your feed.
5. 05 Branding: upload your logos and choose colors to match your style.
6. 06 Pick one of two pre-built channel layouts. Direct Publisher was for non-coders, so customization stopped here. (For full layout control, you needed the Roku SDK.)
7. 07 Define playlist categories. Best practice: define them in the feed and select From feed here. With Tappla + Vimeo you categorize each Vimeo Showcase from the Tappla dashboard.

The remaining steps were short and self-explanatory. After a few more minutes you had your first Roku channel.

Summing it up

That's how to create your own Roku channel in under an hour. If you want to build your Roku SDK channel and use your existing video hosting, check out Tappla's Roku SDK channel builder. It integrates on-demand videos from your CDN or Vimeo and adds live streams from third-party providers.

If you also want to build your own Apple TV app, check out Tappla's Apple TV app builder — create an Apple TV app from your Roku feed, Vimeo, or your CDN.

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