Older Roku Channels Have Until the End of the Year to Update

Roku has been upgrading not only its boxes but also its user experience. In recent months many high profile older Roku Channels such as MLB.TV and PlayStation Vue have updated with new refreshed looks. This is part of Roku’s effort to push channel owners to update. Now it seems that it has come to an impasse with older Roku SDK channels.

You may have noticed that Roku has numerous Roku channels that look similar. That happens because Roku offers templates for channel developers to build from. Now Roku is sunsetting its SDK1 templates that you have likely seen a lot of.

(If you own a Roku this will not affect you. Your Roku will continue to operate just like it always does. This only affects channel developers.)

Here is what the SDK1 looks like:

Roku gave channel developers almost 2 years’ warning that they need to upgrade their Roku channels and started to notify them last year that on January 1, 2019, all SDK1 visual screen components will be removed from the Roku OS.

Back in January, Roku announced that all channel updates must use the updated templates from RSG or the Direct Publisher system. Anyone who does not update by January 1, 2019, will find their Roku channel no longer working.

So it seems Roku wants to be as friendly as possible to developers while at the same time as they force developers onto newer, more powerful templates.

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