Hello everyone,
As you may have heard, last week Roku announced international availability starting in the UK and Ireland and are currently taking pre-orders in those countries. I’d like to spend a few minutes covering our international expansion, what it means to you as a developer or publisher, as well as other recent changes that may affect you.
UK and Ireland Expansion
We will begin shipping units into the UK and Republic of Ireland by early February and would like to provide a good selection of channels when users start setting up their Roku players. To support this international launch, we’ve created separate Channel Stores for different regions. The current Channel Store is now shown as the US Channel Store on our developer site. We’ve also added UK, Ireland and Rest of World (RoW) Channel Stores. Users will be assigned to the appropriate channel store based on their location at the time of account setup. Developers must to opt-in to each region in which they want their channels available. All current channels have been automatically placed in to the US Channel Store, so there is nothing you need to do if you want your channel to continue to appear only in the United States. If you wish your channels to be available in additional region, you’ll need to log into your developer account and submit a new version of the channel that adds the additional regions (Instructions below).
There are some important considerations for making your channel available in the international Channel Stores:
- Do you have rights to your content for distribution in that region? Many licenses restrict the geographies and delivery methods for the content.
- Do you have an addressable audience in the region? You will have to pay for delivery of this content, even if it’s not your ideal audience.
- Are you able to monetize your content in the region?
- Is your channel geographically aware? Roku doesn’t do any geographic IP filtering except for directing users to the appropriate channel store. If you need to filter your content based on geography, this functionality will need to be added to your channel.
- Do you have appropriate and sufficient delivery capabilities in the region? Depending on usage, you may need in-region CDNs or datacenters to serve these international users.
While we want the widest selection of content available in each region, we urge developers and publishers to consider carefully the impact to their business when deciding to submit their channels for additional regions. It should be noted that Roku reserves the right to choose which channels it publishes in which regions and may not publish a channel in each region the developer chooses.
How to Make Your Channel Available in other Regions
If your channel is an existing channel, you’ll need to log into your developer account, create a new version (by clicking “Edit Channel”), add your channel package (it can be the same package currently published), then click edit to choose the appropriate channel stores from the drop-down list. Submit the channel update to start the publication process. For categories in the new regions, please choose the most appropriate ones. We will be reviewing and revising channel categorization before launch.
If your channel is a new channel, you’ll pick the Channel Store(s) at the time of channel creation.
New Features
Changes to Channels that Utilize Roku Billing
In order to support Roku-billed channels in multiple regions, we’ve made a few changes to the Roku Billing Service. Pricing for paid channels is now done through the selection of a pricing tier. These tiers allow us to manage the currency conversions transparently and bill for purchases in the appropriate currency (e.g. GBP in the UK, Euro in Ireland). You’ll notice that the pricing tiers include a base price; in regions that require us to collect VAT, we do so and pay developers based on the net purchase price, excluding VAT.
Test Users
Additionally, we’ve added the concept of Test Users for paid channels. Through this feature, you can allow specific users to add your paid channel without actually billing them. This is great for developers to confirm the function of published channels or for you to allow reviewers or VIPs to use you channel without paying.
In-Channel Purchases
You can now create and sell digital goods within your channel, for example a new level for your game or a pay-per-view movie. Additionally, you can enable users to upgrade from free versions of a channel to a premium version in-place, without interrupting their experience to visit the Channel Store. The documentation for these features is not finalized just yet, but if you’d like to implement this in an existing or soon-to-be-published channel, please contact us at partners@roku.com so that we can assist you.
Introducing the Roku Streaming Stick
Finally, you may have seen Roku’s recent announcement for the forthcoming Roku Streaming Stick. This product, due in the second half of this year, takes all the functionality of the Roku2 and places it in a package the size of a pack of chewing gum. The Streaming Stick will be compatible with all TV’s that implement the new MHL port, which is being added to a number of TV models this year . Our first announced partner is Best Buy’s Insignia brand. The Streaming Stick will automatically turn an MHL-enabled TV into a “Smart TV’”, and the in the future a user can upgrade their TV again just by buying a new Streaming Stick. From a developer standpoint, there should not be anything specific you will need to do to make your channel Streaming Stick compatible; if it runs on Roku2, it should run on the Streaming Stick. For more information, please see our press release.
-The Roku Team
