ROKU launches its own channel featuring free, ad-supported movies

https://techcrunch.com/ ^ | 9/6/17 | Sarah Perez

[V K Lee]

Roku, a company capitalizing on the cord cutting trend to the tune of a $100 million IPO, is today launching its own channel for users of Roku streaming players, sticks and TVs, which will connect customers to hundreds of movies and some TV shows they can stream for free. The channel itself will include content Roku has licensed directly from studios, as well as movies aggregated from other channel publishers on its platform.

Like its rivals – Apple TV, Chromecast and Amazon Fire TV – Roku offers an easy way to access all the top streaming services, as well as many of the niche players. However, unlike the other competitors, Roku hasn’t really used its platform as a way to push its own video marketplace or streaming service the way Apple does with iTunes, Google with Google Play Movies & TV, and Amazon does with Amazon Video and Prime Video.

That’s now changing with today’s launch of “The Roku Channel,” as the new service is called.

Roku’s previous channels – “Roku Recommends,” launched in 2011 and “4K Spotlight,” launched in 2015 – were curated selections of video content.

[Mr. K]

I am still getting XTV

[V K Lee]

You will until a system update is done, either manually by you or automatically when done by Roku. Not certain how they schedule their updates: an overall system update periodically, or in certain channels which need the updating.