I noted a couple months ago when Tim Twerdahl, the vp of consumer affairs at Roku, the company that makes a
Netflix-playing set top box, said that the company was seeking other partners to provide content to the device.
Well, it seems Roku is getting even more serious about this. In late September, the company’s CEO, Anthony Wood, said:
“We’re opening up the platform to anyone who wants to put their video service on this box … We’re going to release the software developer kit, so anyone can publish any channel, and users can access web content on their TVs.”
No word on the timeline for this happening yet, but it’s an appealing prospect. More official content partners is great, of course, but user-contributed channels is even more exciting: opening content development to third parties usually unleashes creativity and capacity (iPhone App Store ring any bells?).
Here’s hoping we see some channels that take advantage of the player not only to deliver video, but also other kinds of web-supplied content.
