If you’re looking every day for the DIRECTV Now app to appear on Roku, well, you can stop looking. At least for awhile.

While the companies said last November that the live streaming service would be offered on Roku in the first quarter, it appears they will miss the deadline. By how much we don’t know.

AT&T, which owns DIRECTV, told CNET’s David Katzmaier last week that DIRECTV Now would be added to Roku sometime “this year.” Katzmaier had asked if the launch would be in the first quarter, as previously announced.

And Cord Cutter News reported yesterday it was told by Roku that DIRECTV Now would not be added in the first quarter. Instead, as CNET was informed, it would be sometime this year.

The Roku blog, which first announced the DIRECTV Now partnership last November, has updated that original post with an ‘in 2017’ rather than its previous ‘1Q’ launch date. The post, which was written by Andrew Ferrone, the Roku vice president for pay TV, does not provide additional specifics, nor even acknowledge that the launch date has been changed in the original post from the first quarter to ‘in 2017.’

The sleight-of-hand on the Roku blog reminds this reporter of the ruling force in George Orwell’s Animal Farm which simply erased from the wall any law it no longer supported without providing any explanation or acknowledgement of a change.

So what’s holding up DIRECTV Now and Roku? As I noted in a March 13 article here, DIRECTV Now has suffered from numerous technical snafus since its launch on November 30. DIRECTV Now is likely nervous that the addition of Roku, the leading maker of streaming devices, will significantly increase subscribers, and that could lead to more technical snafus.

After all, AT&T executives have said the early errors have been caused in part to a larger number of subscribers than the company anticipated. They simply weren’t ready to handle the traffic.

We’ll keep you posted if there are any changes on the Roku-DIRECTV Now front. But for now, you can stop looking for DIRECTV Now on Roku.

— Phillip Swann

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