June 16, 2017
Today we’re proud to announce the relaunch of Sony’s Crackle on the Roku platform! Last year, Crackle approached Float Left to help the port the existing channel into the Roku’s SceneGraph (SDK2). The primary purpose was to replace the previous deployment on the old SDK that wasn’t compatible with Roku’s SceneGraph.
Crackle is a free, over-the-top video service from Sony and was one of the first ad-supported (AVOD) channels deployed on Roku. Crackle boasts an extensive library of on-demand movies, TV shows, and some original content, i.e. “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee”.
The Crackle Roku Channel ranks as one of the most popular channels on the Roku platform. Over the past several years, Crackle has built a large viewer base as a result of their content selection as well as the user-experience of their TV apps. Crackle has deployed apps across set-top boxes, SmartTVs, mobile devices, and gaming consoles. Having a consistent user-experience across all of these devices is critical to their success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqXvMKWpOXE
Float Left is the industry authority on Roku Channel development having launched hundreds of channels for premier brands since the company’s founding in 2010. Float Left has consistently stayed ahead of the curve on the Roku platform considering their position in the market as one of the top streaming media devices. Since the company’s founding, Float Left has been working hard to create the best experiences for the Roku audience.
Crackle’s UI centers around the “always on” concept, which provides allows quick entry into content, while still allowing a user to browse Crackle’s wide selection of movies and TV shows. Crackle and Float Left both agree that a quality TV experience reduces the number of steps users have to take before watching content. It requires a clear approach to navigation and content discovery. These elements need a clear understanding of user behavior and were fleshed out during the design phase of the project.
Float Left created two versions of the experience: the enhanced version and standard version. The Roku 3, 4, Premier, Premier Plus and Ultra models run the enhanced version, while the rest of the models run the standard version. These two versions exist to account for performance requirements on models with fewer performance capabilities.
Download the channel here:
https://channelstore.roku.com/details/2016/crackle