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Pandora, TWiT, Revision 3, Facebook Photos, and Others Coming to Roku
You might already know Roku as the box that lets you stream content from Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand onto your television, as well as baseball games via MLB.com (at least during the summer). Now Roku is adding ten new channels and bundling them into what it's calling its "Channel Store." Among the new options: San Francisco-based Revision 3, Oakland-based Pandora, Leo Laporte's TWiT.TV, MediaFly, and blip.tv. You'll also be able to take a gander at your Facebook and Flickr photos , your MotionBox videos, and your social networking content from MobileTribe. While you need a subscription to access the existing three channels, Roku says the new ones are free. And Roku says it's not stopping there. New channels will be added as soon as developers get their content configured to stream on the Roku player. In addition to helping get Internet content onto the television, Roku says it's leveling the playing field for people and companies who've got great ideas for TV but don't want to play the cable game. "Now content producers and distributorsfrom single-person shops to billion dollar corporationscan deliver their content to consumers without having to go exclusively through cable operators, satellite network or TV affiliates," company CEO Anthony Wood said in a press release. Roku launched its first player in May 2008. It won't provide exact numbers of units sold but says it's in the "hundreds of thousands." Roku spokesman Brian Jaquet says the company's customer base has so far skewed "a bit older," probably due to the simplicity of the box (not a lot to set up) and because many customers get exposed to them through Netflix marketing. The company expects the new channels to pull the demographic lower, to twenty-something "technology geeks" looking for a diversity of Internet content. Email This Post |
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