How to Host Videos for Roku Channels (using a Best Video Hosting Service)

What is Roku?

Roku is a streaming platform that allows users to watch movies, TV shows, and other content from their computers or mobile devices. Roku offers an easy way to watch content on your TV without the need for a cable or satellite service. The platform offers hundreds of series, movies, and channels that can be watched on your TV. Many Roku channels allow users to watch videos, which are typically hosted in a player on the channel’s website. In this blog, you will learn about how you can host videos for your Roku channels.

How to create a Roku channel?

To start, you will need a Roku account. If you don't already have one, sign up for a free trial. You will need to have a Roku player and a Roku TV to make a Roku channel. You will then need to create a Roku channel. This can be done by using the Roku website or Roku's mobile app. When you are creating a Roku channel, you will need to decide on a name for the channel, what information you would like to put on the channel, and what categories you would like to put the channel under. The Roku website also has a Roku Channel Directory, which can help you find Roku channels that already exist.

How JSON feed works

In order to create a Roku channel, you need a JSON feed in a particular format that includes the video data including links of your videos and their thumbnails. The videos should be hosted somewhere remotely and the JSON feeds will only contain the link to the videos (not the video files).

Video hosting for Roku?

The videos for Roku should be hosted somewhere in order for the Roku feed to work properly. The videos can be hosted anywhere in MP4 or HLS format. Although the MP4 videos should work with the Roku feed, however, there are some benefits of adaptive streaming is used.

The video should be hosted with fast storage and ready for play on-demand via CDN. If the storage is slow or the CDN is not used, the viewers will experience buffering in the videos and hence it won’t be an optimal solution.

MP4 vs Adaptive Streaming (HLS) for Roku

The MP4 videos don’t use adaptive streaming technology and normally are slow as compared to HLS. Which can adapt the video bitrate according to viewers fluctuating internet speed. So, an adaptive streaming technology such as HLS is a must-have to play Roku videos smoothly.

Best Video Hosting For Roku

Although we would be a bit biased here, you can use DynTube is the best video hosting service to host Roku videos. We use fast video storage and NVME-based CDN solution to load, cache, and deliver videos in a faster way. Also, DynTube is one of the cheapest solutions to host Roku videos and have big storage and streaming limits.

Create Roku Feed on DynTube

It is very simple to create a Roku feed using DynTube. You can simply select a project and choose a sorting order to generate a Roku feed. The feed will be available instantly for you to use it in your Roku channel. If you upload new videos on DynTube (in the same project), you won’t need to generate a new feed after every update. The feed will be automatically updated and your videos will be added to the field automatically.

Click here to get a free trial of DynTube service to see how it can help you with your Roku setup.