Tech Forum

For those of you that don't know, the Roku Player is a small black box that streams internet content through your home wifi network or hard wired into your router. Up until recently you could only stream Netflix, Amazon On Demand, or MLB content. But in the last few weeks Roku released the Roku Channel Store. With the release of the Channel Store there are now many channels that range from technology podcasts to internet radio through Pandora.

Now to my main point.

I want to get a Mormon Channel on the Roku Channel Store. I do not have the know-how to make this happen but I'm sure many of you do. I can just imagine the Book of Mormon study classes and General Conference streaming through my Roku box and I just can't wait. They even have the ability to do live streaming so we could get General Conference set up to stream live!

Sorry for sounding like a salesman, but the Roku has saved my family a lot of money. We turned off Cable and Dish and now pay less then $10/month to Netflix to stream all of our TV and Movies and get all of the new content such as Facebook, Pandora, etc for free. The Roku player can be purchased for only $79 and has absolutely NO subscription charges (sorry again for sounding like a salesman).

The only thing I can think of that is close to a video Mormon Channel is BYU-TV, and I guess the postings on YouTube. I guess what you are requesting is that the Church make this content available to Roku?

+ 1 for me on this.

I have made the first step to getting more info. But I think that the church, or whoever provides the streams, to look in to it and create an "Official" channel.

I would love to be able to stream conference live using my roku instead of watching it on a computer.

It would also be cool to have a Mormon Channel app for Boxee. Boxee is a free media player for Windows / Linux / Mac based on XBMC. It has an "App Store" like the Roku Channel Store where you can download applications. The Boxee API for creating applications is documented and anyone can develop an app.

betteridgejl wrote:It would also be cool to have a Mormon Channel app for Boxee. Boxee is a free media player for Windows / Linux / Mac based on XBMC. It has an "App Store" like the Roku Channel Store where you can download applications. The Boxee API for creating applications is documented and anyone can develop an app.

I like Boxee because it supports so many different formats, looks good, supports multiple platforms and will now be sold as a "box" in addition to just being software.

BUT the whole market is yet to take off and currently they are so many different products out there and no clear leader so it is questionable whether the church would priorities any. I think it is more likely that a church member would write an add-on wrapper for each of these players as long as the church make the clips available via RSS/XML files.

The multiplicity of formats for streaming audio and video have proven to be a headache for the big leaguers in broadcasting as well as the little guy. I only know of one broadcaster that seems to be putting all its streams into all available formats, which total about 20 right now, and that is Clear Channel.

As for Mormon Channel, they want to have it in as many ways to receive it as possible, right now that is just the web player and the iPhone app, but they want to be able to get it to any device available, so one doesn't have to choose a particular device just so htey can get it. They are working on solutions, and the LDS Tech Wiki has some good information on projects to get it on some of the major platforms beyond the iPhone as well.

JamesAnderson wrote:The multiplicity of formats for streaming audio and video have proven to be a headache for the big leaguers in broadcasting as well as the little guy. I only know of one broadcaster that seems to be putting all its streams into all available formats, which total about 20 right now, and that is Clear Channel.

But that is exactly what products like Boxee are trying resolve by supporting as many formats as possible as well as allowing people to write their own apps and adding their own RSS links.

On that note I tried to add the church's general conference XML formatted rss link in Boxee and while it could display each entry it wouldnt play/stream them. It was rejected immediately so it couldnt be bandwidth etc. So if anybody has any idea why not let me know.

It cannot be the file format either because I downloaded the mp4 file and it played fine once it was played locally by selecting the folder etc.

Many thanks for the feedback and suggestions!

By way of background, when we launched Mormon Channel, the online player was put together using Flash. There was a method to the madness; Flash offered the best opportunity to integrate with our program listings. And of course, when you're producing a channel with lots of great talks and content, it can get frustrating for listeners to constantly be asking, "who was that who just spoke?".

However, we also recognized that Flash wasn't yet able to offer the same integration with both mobile devices and the host of new boxes out there, from Roku to wifi radios and the like.

With that in mind, we have a new MP3 stream in final testing right now. Our first priority will be to support new mobile applications, including PalmPre, Blackberry, WindowsMobile, and others. But there is no reason that the same stream couldn't be utilized for other platforms as well.

Keep the suggestions coming!

Best,

Chris Twitty
Digital Media

I've not tried it but I believe Boxee and XBMC support RTMP, so you may be able to get it to receive the current streams.

A large number of internet radios use the Reciva Database to get themselves listed on the devices.

I suggest trying to get the channel listed there.

https://www.reciva.com/.

I think the Roku equivalent is http://www.radioroku.com.

I think Pandora is not a directory but personalised service more like a predictive jukebox.