International Channel Stores

This week, we began shipping Roku 2 XS and Roku LT units in the UK and Republic of Ireland. To support this international launch, we’ve created separate Channel Stores for each region. What was before the only 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 channels that were available original Channel Store have been automatically placed in 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 regions, 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.

Let us know if you have any questions.