There are three ways to build your Roku channel:

1. Develop your own custom Roku application.

This is a long and expensive process that can take anywhere from 3-6 months and cost thousands of dollars upfront. This option is for anyone who wants to have an SVOD (subscription video on demand), TVOD (transactional video on demand), or Hybrid model, and wants full control over every detail of the application. OTTfeed VIP Solution is a great starting point.

2. Lease a custom Roku application (recommended).

This option is for anyone who wants a high quality product without spending a lot of money upfront. You can have a FVOD (freemium video-on-demand) or AVOD (advertisement video on demand) model. OTTfeed has a great lease offer for a custom Roku application with competitive pricing.

With custom Roku application you have full control over your content. With instant content update you are able to publish your video content to your audience instantly. This is imperative if quality control is a high priority for your brand.

3. Use Roku Direct Publisher (RDP).

Roku Direct Publisher is a free application that will allow you to launch a FVOD (freemium video-on-demand) or AVOD (advertisement video on demand) model. This is a good option for anyone who has time to learn about the VOD process and doesn’t mind to troubleshoot.

Important note about Roku Direct Publisher: If you need to have instant content update capabilities, then you should go with the OTTfeed lease option. Roku Direct Publisher updates the content feed once every 24 hours, which means you need to plan at lease 24 hours ahead and in case of a mistake or an update it will take 24h for any changes to take effect.

You need two more things before you can start your Roku Direct Publisher channel: a server to store all of your video content (we recommend Vimeo), and a JSON content feed.

If your Roku channel’s content will be static, then you can manually try to code your JSON content feed, make sure it’s up to date with Roku Direct Publisher Feed (JSON) specifications.

Otherwise use an OTTfeed platform to manage your video content with ease and speed, this will allow you to focus your time on content strategy.

Here is a quickstart step-by-step guide on how to create your Roku Channel with Vimeo and OTTfeed.