How to setup Roku with Wowza Streaming Engine and Hosting Marketers

You need first to decided what you want to do, live streaming? Video Streaming? then order the appropriate Wowza package at

I suggest you contact us with your requirements, because the bitrate on the packages are not very high and if you going to stream high quality videos you will need higher bitrate, we will customize your package by increasing the bitrate and reducing the number of users allowed.

The formula we use is as below:

package bitrate x viewers allowed = A

A / bitrate requested = new number of viewers

If your wowza package that you want to order is  Wowza 300 you allowed 512kbps.

https://hosting-marketers.com/wowza-hosting/

512 x 300= 153600

Now if you ask for 2000kbps bitrate:

153600 / 2000= 77 viewers

so you will have 2000kbps bitrate and 77 max. viewers.

Now for the instructions how to Stream to Roku using Wowza streaming engine.

So lets say you want to stream videos, you will need to order Ondemand Streaming.  After you order and agree on the bitrate upload a few videos files in MP4 format and slightly below the bitrate allowed. Your HLS URL for any of your videos would be something like this

https://11234566777778.streamlock.net:1937/8XXX/mp4:video.mp4/playlist.m3u8

you will have your HLS URL from your wowza control panel, on it should click on “Media Player” and you will have on the left a player and on the right the code for the player, copy it to a notepad and find on it the “sourceURL” that will be it for the sample file. replace the sample file with the name of your uploaded video.  For instructions on setting up the ondemand streaming check the tutorial here.

Now lets go  basic instructions for packaging and uploading your application and creating a private channel on a Roku set-top box to stream videos from our Wowza to the Roku device.

Notes:

• You may need to configure your stream as a multi-bitrate stream as outlined in How to create Apple App Store compliant streams (audio only rendition).
• If you experience playback problems, see How to switch between absolute and relative URLs in Apple https Live Streaming playlists. This article describes how to switch back to using absolute paths for iOS playlists. This has been fixed in recent Roku firmware updates.
• If your stream only uses AC3 surround sound audio, set the Roku Audio mode (found in Settings > Audio > Audio) to Auto. If Audio is set to Stereo and the stream only contains AC3 audio, users unable to playback surround sound will not hear audio in the stream. Viewers can identify if their HDMI device can decode Dolby Digital AC3 surround sound by looking for a (DD) or (DD+) label next to the Autosetting. To increase accessibility of your stream, make sure you have both stereo and surround sound audio tracks in your stream.

• Setting up the Roku device and Roku SDK

  1. Get your Roku running and associate it with an online Roku account.
  2. In your online account, sign up for the developer program, and then download the Roku SDK (Software Development Kit) and unzip RokuSDK.zip.
  3. Navigate to the Packaging Your Application section of the Roku SDK documentation, and then follow the instructions to set up a DevID and Password. These credentials are used when packaging your application before uploading to a channel.
  4. Unzip the RokuSDK/examples/zips/simplevideoplayer.zip example and edit the simplevideoplayer/source/appMain.brs file as follows:
     1. Comment out the following lines using an apostrophe (‘) character:

        'urls = ["https://video.ted.com/talks/podcast/CraigVenter_2008_480.mp4"]
        'qualities = ["HD"]
        'StreamFormat = "mp4"
        'title = "Craig Venter Synthetic Life"
        'srt = "file://pkg:/source/craigventer.srt"

     2. Uncomment and modify the following lines so that the urls line matches the one below:

        ' a test stream from Wowza
        urls = ["https://11234566777778.streamlock.net:1937/8XXX/mp4:video.mp4/playlist.m3u8"]
        qualities = ["SD"]
        streamformat = "hls"
        title = "my video file"
        srt = ""

        Note: To play your own content, change the urls value to the playlist URL of your content.
  5. Select all files in the simplevideoplayer folder and compress these files (not the folder itself) into a zip file to upload to the Roku box.
  6. Follow the Run the package Utility instructions in the Packaging Your Application section of the Roku SDK documentation to upload your package zip file and register your application to the Roku player. After successfully uploading the application to the Roku box, the application will show up as a channel.

  After completing these steps, a prompt to run your application appears on your Roku box. After the application is running, you can refer to the Roku SDK documentation for information on how to set up a private channel and make it accessible to users to subscribe.