Wired reports that Roku CEO Anthony Wood said that they will be releasing a SDK to enable "anyone" to add their video service to the Netflix Player.
"We're opening up the platform to anyone who wants to put their video service on this box," says Wood. "We're going to release the software developer kit, so anyone can publish any channel, and users can access web content on their TVs."
I would love to be able to view YouTube and Hulu videos on the Netflix Player. What additional video services would you like to see?
At the very least, I'd like to see some sort of industry standard intranet streaming get added. So we can stream our own movies, music and pictures. Sort of steal Apple TV's thunder.
Best of all would be for them to negotiate some deal with the DVD folks to let them remotely "capture" a DVD-ROM drive on the network to play DVDs. As long as the stream between their software and the host was encrypted, there's no reason they couldn't offer this. Of course, the DVD-CCA is likely too stupid to understand that.
Posted by: Nick Sayer | September 25, 2008 at 03:18 AM
If they add hulu.com content, then I'll definitely be buying one.
Posted by: Mike | September 25, 2008 at 09:09 AM
As soon as I read this, I sent feedback to Hulu to please add their content (when available).
Posted by: Pusta | September 25, 2008 at 11:22 AM
One of the main reasons I bought the Roku on launch day was with this type of thing in mind for the future. If hulu content becomes available, you can bet quite a few people will be cutting their cable bills in half.
Posted by: Craig Jolicoeur | September 25, 2008 at 01:32 PM
Just received this back from Hulu :-(
Thanks for the email. Roku is an interesting opportunity and while it's not currently on our roadmap, we're always investigating new ways for people to enjoy our content library. Thanks!
Posted by: Pusta | September 25, 2008 at 01:42 PM
Hulu would certainly be neat, but playback from local computers (via UPnP probably) would be pure win.
Posted by: tekkub | September 25, 2008 at 02:40 PM
One box, any provider. The target is any box, any provider (and preferably open standards). We're getting closer.
Posted by: Gir | September 25, 2008 at 03:31 PM
I would like to see anything with an RSS feed, the way Miro gathers content. Then I can watch You Suck at Photoshop on my TV.
Posted by: apocalypse | September 28, 2008 at 08:22 AM
Gir, you nailed it. Imagine if you could only access cetain websites from certain brands of PCs. For example: on an HP computer, I can go to Yahoo, but on a Dell I can't because Dell doesn't have a contract with Yahoo.
That would be absurd, and would vastly reduce the usefulness of the web. And yet, that is the situation we have with video. I hope it is only temporary. I'd like to watch Hulu and Netflix on my PS3.
Posted by: CopaceticOpus | September 29, 2008 at 07:33 PM
Streaming to the box from a computer (Mac, Linux and Windows, please) would be extremely high on anyone's want list, I'm sure.
You need to train your own reps better... I sent an email in asking if this sort of thing may be possible for the future based on this open source / SDK announcement and I got an answer back with a completely unhelpful line "Currently, the Netflix Player supports Netflix Instant Watch content only. Please sign up for product updates at www.roku.com to be notified when new features are added."
Posted by: SteveP | October 02, 2008 at 11:02 PM