Roku Focuses on Free and Easy Streaming

Roku has some new players, plus new wireless speakers that connect to their TV.

What's going on, I'm rich tomorrow.

This is Rich on Tech with me as Lloyd Clark, director of product management here at Roku.

Thanks so much for joining me. Thank you for having me.

So let's talk about streaming in general. I feel like every single day I hear the term streaming or cord cutting. And you guys were doing this a long time ago.

By the way, we have been doing this for a few years. We were one of the pioneers, and we make it easy to stream to your television and if you haven't streamed yet, you will.

And so streaming has obviously gotten a lot easier because people are aware of it. Internet has gotten faster, a lot of companies have come on board with their apps.

So do you find that people are still learning about this?

Oh? Absolutely, there's people who have not yet streamed of their television, which is why we offer a selection of products. We have a product that is available that has a full Roku operating system on it, but sales for only twenty nine to ninety nine and it's a great way to get started into streaming.

And what makes Roku different in your mind versus these other fireTV, Apple TV Chrome casts out there.

Oh, there's a number of things, which first and foremost, it's an entire company that wakes up every morning thinking about streaming. We built a lot of our products on three core ideas. One is, let's get a bunch of content and a lot of good content available. Let's make it affordable for everyone, so which is why we have prices as low as twenty nine dollars. And let's make it easy to get to the show that you want to get to.

So with that in mind, one of the things I've always thought of when it comes to Roku's a you're kind of like Switzerland. You pretty much have like every streaming app represented for the most part. And for the second thing is I always think of the universal search that you guys were doing long before a lot of other folks. So tell me about that universal search and what's kind of new with that with.

The free absolutely search was additor a platform a number of years ago with the idea that we want to help someone to get to the show that they want to get to. It's now extended to hundreds of channels. You can search across many many of the channels on our platform, and we just recently added the ability to for free. So if you want to watch something, let's say a comedy movie, you can say search for free

Now that's with voice search, right, So I can say search for free comedies, right, or free kids movies whatever?

Can I do that with my type in search?

Like?

Can I type comedies and then free?

It's probably simpler with your voice. We do find search though. Using text, there's only two or three characters that you need and you usually get to the piece of entertainment that you want to So I know that just today, I was looking for Samuel Jackson. So if I type in SA and by the time I get to m Samuel's at the top of my list, and I saw he had eighty seven movies available on Roku. It's fantastic.

And also you're organizing things when you search by kind of like popularity too, Like you're kind of using some secret sauce in the background, right.

Well, there's no secret. It's bipopularity based on what people are searching for, and then where it plays back is entirely based on price. So let's say you want to watch a movie, that movie might be available on three, four, five, six different channels, and we'll list them in order and based on price.

Okay, very cool, and tell me about the you have Featured Free and you've got the Roku Channel.

What's the difference between those two.

Roku Channel was added to Roku about a year ago, and it's a channel on your home screen and it gives you quick access to free content, whether it's movies or TV shows. It's a great place to find something to watch at night. It is now so popular it's about the top five I think on our platform for who's using that. Another one that you just mentioned, Featured Free, was just added about a month ago, and this is

So a lot of times I've noticed with like let's say I have like an ABC app, Right, some of that stuff on that app is paywall?

Do you have to have a subscription to ABC or whatever? And some of it is free?

Yeah, So what a lot of people don't realize is that exactly what you said, Dan, that some of it is absolutely free, and that's why we work with these companies to bring it forward so that consumers can get to it right away.

And again, just to be clear, I mean this is ads supported in many cases, so you might be seeing ads while you're watching a lot of this stuff.

Well, absolutely, and what we find is that consumers don't mind the ad as long as.

They don't have to pay for it, so free is pretty important.

Free is a big driver of what Roku does.

Okay, let's talk about some of the other things that you showed me today.

Spotify is coming back to Roku, and tell me about that.

Yeah, we have a number of different ways to listen to music on Roku. Amazon Music was added a few months ago. Pandora Premium is coming to Roku. That is exciting, and we're also excited to welcome back Spotify. They were off the platform a few months working on the user interface, but they're back on now.

Okay, and now let's talk about the new speakers, because you've got these wireless speakers, which makes getting a good sound off your Roku TV nice and easily. Now I say Roku TV because I don't want to get people so excited that they think if they have a Roku they can just get like this surround, crazy awesome sound from you guys.

So they do.

Work with your TVs, your TCL branded Roku TV, or any Roku it's.

Any Roku TV that's been sold from one of our manufactured partners works with these new set of speakers. And I'm glad you pointed out it is a Roku TV speaker, not for the players, and it's because we want to give a good sound experience for everything that you're playing on the television, whether you've connected something else, whether you're watching maybe something on the tuner, everything that plays in that television will come through these speakers.

So that's why you can't just necessarily do it on the Roku, although maybe if people are accepting of that, we might in the future.

If you get a lot of people send comments to you, we'll take.

A let let them know it Roku that you want these speakers for every Roku box, not just the TVs. But they do sound great. You played some demos for me, and there's so many games we play with the sound on our TV. You got to raise the volume. You gott to lower the volume. Sometimes you're talking, you can't hear it. You put it really loud, and then you have an action. It's too crazy. So this kind of you have little tools that will help you level them do.

And it's exactly that was my life before these speakers, So always riding that volume button. So if I'm watching at night and I don't want to wake up the kids, I have to turn down the volume, and then i can't hear the dialogue and I've got to turn up the volume. Or even switching between pieces of entertainment like a commercial comes on. Usually those are mastered at a

And there's a separate setting.

Specifically for speech clarity. This is actually the setting for me because I have a hard time understanding a lot of what the actors are saying. And when I turn that on, it really focuses on the frequencies, specifically for dialogue, enhances the dialogue so I can understand what they're saying.

Important because I know you're saying this for you.

But that happens in almost every movie where if you're watching in a movie theater, sure you hear everything because it's the loudest possible sound in the world. But if you're at home, you're a normal person that's not blasting your TV in front of everyone, So it is tough to hear these actors sometimes, and I'm glad you guys did that feature now. Also with these, by the way, the speakers connect your TV just by plugging them in, So it's a two pack for what two hundred.

Dollars or two hundred dollars You get to see the two speakers. Also included as a new remote for your television. And then there's a brand new remote that we've included called the Roku Touch. And this remote is really meant to be used away from your television somewhere, so maybe it's in your kitchen or your desk, maybe the entryway, and it gives you quick control. Probably use mostly for music, if you want to start a podcast or if you

So it looks like a hockey puck kind of thing.

It's got your basic controls on it for you know, playing things. And the main thing about this is any voice come that you can do on your TV.

Or is this you separate voice command.

It's the same operating system here, and so when you press that mic button, it gives you the same control that you would have from when you're sitting on your couch, but you can use it from anywhere that you can hear your speakers from.

You've got a mic button, you've got volume up and down, you've got play pause, forward back, and then you've got these two preset buttons.

Oh they're great and we use them a lot as we've been testing out their product at home. It's like a radio preset button. You press and hold it, it will save the last command that you gave to the television. For example, let's say I want to play jazz on Pandora, Press and hold that number one and it saves it for later use when I come back later on the day, I want to get access to that, I just press that button and I get to my music.

Interesting.

So the way I could describe this as kind of like it's almost like Roku's answer to a Google Mini or a almost like.

A smart speaker, but just for your Roku.

So it has some functionality that's built in, but it sits somewhere outside of your TV. And speaking of Google, you guys are also doing some integration with them now too.

We are. We're excited to open up the platform for compatibility to those devices that have Google Assistant built in. So if you've got a Google Home or a Google Mini or another Google product that has Google Assistant in it, you can control your rokud player or your Roku Television through the voice on that product.

And so what will I be able to do with that integration.

Everything you can do with the Roku today, the same examples that we just gave with the Roku Touch, except to be hands free through the Google Assistant.

Okay, so sort of the same things that you would command for the TV or the Roku Player, but using the Google kind of interface and the hot word too.

And what you said before you know, Roku really is a switcherland of streaming. So we open up our platform to multiple different kinds of content, and now open up a platform to multiple different kinds of devices.

Okay, and tell me about the new devices you've got, So to lower priced four K these are the kind of your least expensive four K yet it is.

So with the launch of the new Roku Premier and the Recup Premiere Plus. These are the lowest price four K players that we've launched ever to date. And it's really building on the trend of four K in the home. There's a lot of four K TVs being sold, a lot of them. Of course they're going to be Roku TVs, but some of them aren't. This is why our streaming players business exists. That's why it still keeps on growing.

Okay, and let's just go through the differences.

So the Premiere you get basically your standard kind of four K streaming player.

Yep, what is the plus add on top of that?

The Plus is really a difference from the remote, so both the players are exactly the same. They'll work with regular high def televisions or work with four K televisions, whatever television you have. The difference on the remote is the Premier Plus offers the ability to use voice, so it's good a voice button on there. It also will control your TVs power and volumes no matter what TV you have got it connected to. Will be able to get rid of want to be remotes as you're watching Rocan, so.

You have a volume on the remote. We do actually and power.

To me, that's worth the ten dollars, but it's an exclusive to Walmart, right right. So my advice, if you're gonna get one of these two, you gotta go with the one that's ten dollars more. Find a Walmart because just having that one less remote in your house is so much easier. And the voice command too, I mean,

Can for that price.

And you also mentioned something I thought was interesting about the kind of you guys live in this world of every day you wake up at Roku trying to make streaming TV better and people always ask me, you know, should I get a smart TV? I always say no, with the exception of something like a Roku Smart TV, because the software in there is updated and it's made nice.

It's a problem that's existed with so called smart TVs up until now that they create a wireless updateable product, but they don't update it. And this is something that Roku's done from the very very beginning. Everyone of our products gets updates on a consistent basis, including our televisions. They run the same operating system as our players, and when we roll out a feature, we roll it out every the recup TV while the speakers work with every

Okay, good, so you're on board.

With me, but I agree because it's like your company that your entire goal is to make streaming better every day, which means the apps, all the apps I'm looking at the screen, the Netflix, the Pandora, the Ihearts, the Hulus, they're updating those.

Whereas you buy.

Smart TV from one of these manufacturers that could be a big name. Yes there's a Netflix app on there, but you might not get it updated as often as you'd like. And I'm a tech person. I want my stuff. I love app updates as like one of my favorite things on my phone, my TV.

Anything.

Love app updates because that means I'm getting new features and things are getting better. So is there anything I missed that you that I failed to mention to you?

You know, I'm glad you're pointing out. The agnostic view of Roku is that we just want you to watch a little bit more television. We don't really play favorites of where you watch it, so that's why we order things in price and we play well with others. We just want you to watch a stream a little bit more.

And one more future I forgot to mention I do like is the private listening, which means you can plug some headphones into your remote control. And that's a big deal because when you have your first kid, you realize just how important it is to watch TV in silence because you don't want to wake them up.

It's fantastic. So on the Roku Ultra, we are including now some premium headphones from JBL. It's a great value. They're valued at thirty nine dollars. We're putting that together with the Roco Ultra at its consistent price of ninety nine dollars. But for those people who don't have that remote with the headphone jack, this is fantastic. Through our mobile app, you can do private listening through the mobile app on any one of our players.

Oh wow, that's huge.

You just plug a pair of headphones into your phone, listen through the app.

And if both you and your wife want to listen at the same time, you can both open up the same app and both listen at the same time.

Wow, that's great. Okay, and give me some times on these things. So when of the speakers come out. Speakers are available for pre order now. They're gonna start shipping in November.

Okay.

The players will start taking pre orders at the end of September. They're gonna get to stores in.

October, okay, and Spotify.

Spotify is coming. I think it's somewhere in October. It takes a while to roll out to all the different platforms.

Okay, so Spotify October. All right.

Thank you so much, Lloyd Clark, director of product management here at Roku, thanks so.

Much for joining me.

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I'm Rich jamiro You can.

Find links to everything I talk about here in the show notes or on my website, rich on tech dot tv.

I'll talk to you real soon.