Fresh from last week’s NASDAQ debut, blushing ingenue Roku is celebrating by refreshing its entire product line and rebooting the software that runs across all its devices. The new Roku boxes look promising, with updated specs and more affordable pricing. And those software enhancements are plentiful. If you use a Roku box for your HBOing, Plexing, and Netflixing, ice up the champagne and join the party.
The biggest news is that the company’s entire line of players will see a refresh, from Roku’s basic streaming stick to its beefy 4K-capable home entertainment hub. The top-of the line Roku Ultra, which has 4K capability and the best-performing innards of any Roku device, gets an updated remote but stays at $100. Last year’s Ultra recently saw a price drop from $130 to $100, and the lower cost will stick around for the 2017 holiday season. That means Roku’s premiere box is $80 cheaper than Apple’s new 4K streamer. With the Roku Ultra, you also get a wider selection of streaming options and a remote that won’t send you into a petulant frenzy after five minutes.
Apple’s not the only company applying pressure; Amazon’s new 4K-capable Fire TV showed up just last week boasting a competitive $70 price tag. Serendipitously, Roku now has its own $70 4K option, the upgraded Roku Streaming Stick+. This thumb-sized chunklet plugs directly into your set’s HDMI port, and now includes a wireless receiver built into the power cable. The company claims this new antenna design will greatly improve upon the Wi-Fi performance of last year’s stick, so 4K HDR content streaming at 60 frames per second shouldn’t show any degradation problems.
Want to go cheaper? There’s the regular Roku Streaming Stick, which does HD streaming and now comes with a remote that uses voice controls. That’s $50.
But the cheapest way into the 2017 Roku experience is the updated Roku Express. The $30 HD streamer—which looks like a Roku puck of old that’s been halved—gets an update today with a new processor the company claims offers five times the power of last year’s low-end streamers. That should translate into snappier menus and an overall less sluggish experience.
The Roku Express+ is the same device, but it’s enhanced with analog component connections for people who have very old televisions, or those without nieces or nephews courteous enough to maybe purchase them something nice with HDMI inputs after all they’ve done for you. It costs $40.
All of these new streamers are available for pre-order at Amazon and all the other big retailers, or directly from Roku. The products should show up on shelves within a week. The Roku Express+ is exclusive to Walmart—preferred retailer of the CRT zombie army—and goes on sale October 8.
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The software updates coming to Roku devices and Roku TVs—sets manufactured by TCL, Hisense, and Roku’s other partners that are sold with Roku functionality built in—see the company investing extra effort in refining the search features, particularly those powered by voice.
On Roku TVs, there’s a new “Smart Guide” for HD antenna owners that shows a familiar, DVR-style grid of whatever’s playing on over-the-air stations. Programs listed in the grid that are also available over streaming apps appear with a purple asterisk next to them. Choose to switch to the streaming option and Roku kicks you to the exact episode page within Hulu, Netflix, or wherever the show lives.
One key enhancement coming to both Roku TVs and the company’s sticks, pucks, and boxes is natural-language voice search. Users can hold the remote to their lips and ask for “science fiction shows,” or “The Expanse,” or “Ridley Scott movies” and get relevant results aggregated from across all the services they use.
The plain-speaking search feature brings Roku closer in line with Apple, Google, and Amazon, all of whom have been selling devices with this functionality since last year. The competition in streaming hardware is furious on all fronts—price, performance, search, content libraries. It’s just more evidence that in this current television renaissance, what you’re watching is just as fascinating as how you’re watching.