Important ROKU Development Tips

Roku is among the most popular media streaming boxes on today’s date. With more than nine million devices sold, Roku has become one of the leading streaming devices across the globe. Creating your own Roku channel or application is the outstanding way for VOD providers to get into impeccable growth.

In this article, we have discussed some important tips that will help you in Roku app development.

Introduction

ROKU TV Developers released a series of important development tips for the ARM developers, who are looking forward to developing amazing applications for the users without chaos.

Let us together understand these Roku app development tips.

What are the Remote Control Codes for Special Screens?

There are four remote control codes for special screens, which are as follows:

1. Dump Core: Home 5x, Up
2. Debug Info On Screen: Rew 3x
3. Channel Version Info: Home 3x, Up 2x
4. Developer Settings Page: Home 3x

You Should also read about the higlights of Roku OS 9.1 ?

What are the Important Roku Development Tips?

• Capture all events sent by roVideoScreen.
• Keep a check on processing power. If your developed channel experiences a low frame rate or laggy transitions, processing power is to blame. Developers should be careful about CPU-intensive tasks and their effect on older devices.

The animation that runs perfectly on Dallas (channel)

Need not look the same on GoUSA.

Important! Developers should keep in mind CPU Intensive Tasks and their impact on older devices.

• Developer Setting Page is a must for enabling “Developer Mode” on your box.
• All files should be prefixed by the device name, followed by a colon “:” – pkg:/filename.txt. You can refer to File System for more information.
• Always use “Screen Facade Object” while launching your application so that it seems to launch immediately for the user (the user won’t experience the delay). And this also avoids flickering screen while the user exits.
• To create new UI skin for your channel, you can use theme attributes from roApplicationManager.
• You should use “Device Registry” to store “the linking information” instead of your own servers while using rendezvous style registration and account linking. ROKU TV Developers strictly suggest this to ARM developers so that, in case you need to “Factory Reset” your personal data/information won’t be lost.
• ROKU only support “.wma” and “.mp3” audio files.
• Using unique key for each application you publish, is a good practice. And you can reuse the same key whenever you update the application using “Rekey” option. Reusing the same key ensures that all versions of your application will have access to the same registry data and avoid the relinking again and again after every update.
• While using “Slide Show Component” a high-resolution image will take time to download, leaving users bored. A good practice is to provide quick feedback to the users and put on the image in your package(so, there will be no downloading), this will help your logo and will inform the customers that the “Slide Show” is “Retrieving….”.
• ROKU Developers require that your “Web Servers” support range request. If your “Web Servers” don’t support range requests, risk of running into content that is not playable or large images that cannot be displayed is high. The data will appear in the corrupted file format.
• The screens are always displayed in a LIFO (Last in First Out) order. And this behavior sometimes causes the screen to flicker. There is a close() method in the screen interface for all the screen and dialogue components that deletes the screen out of the display stack. If your screen flickers, you can use this method.

Example: Closing screens to avoid flicker.

Conclusion

We hope you will find this article helpful. After going through the above blog, we understand the important tips that are required for developing a ROKU channel or ROKU application. So, if you are a ROKU app developer or starting your career in Roku TV app developer, this blog will help you achieve your goal quickly. You can also contact 4 Way Technologies for impeccable ROKU-based software solutions. Please feel free to share your valuable feedback in the comment section below.