Here are the last 20 channel apps added to the Roku streaming platform:
Telemundo Deportes En Vivo
Sweatflix
The Lounge Channel
Watch OWN
Let’s Play Video Games
StyleCraze
Elena Genevinne
UTech
HalfTicket Kids
Photo Puzzle Free
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Maddie Welborn
Ally Law
BeautykLove
Digital Concert Hall
Film Dice
All Living Things
Yoga Wiz
KidzKingdom
Gourmet GPS
How 2 BBQ Right
Nowhere in that esoteric list, or in the entire list of Roku channel apps that now exceed 3,000, will you find DIRECTV Now.
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Yes, DIRECTV Now, AT&T’s new live streaming service, which the telco believes will one day become its primary video business, is still not available on Roku, the nation’s leading streaming platform.
AT&T promised that DIRECTV Now would be available on Roku in the first quarter. But that deadline passed more than a month ago and we still have no indication when it will be added.
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But that’s okay. We do have the the Ally Law channel, the How 2 BBQ Right channel and the Gourmet GPS channel. Somehow, the proprietors of those services have figured out to produce an app for Roku.
But not AT&T.
And so it goes…
— Phillip Swann
It’s obviously very easy to launch a Roku channel, given that 3,000 entities have done it already. It’s interesting that both DirecTV Now, and the new Hulu TV service, don’t have Roku apps. In the case of DirecTV Now, I suspect that the tie-in with Amazon for free promotional Fire TVs keeps DTVN contractually from launching on Roku.
From what I understand, the OS in Roku is written in C++, and is not an Android or OS/X variant. This makes it a complete rewrite in order to support Roku.