TV: Metz and TCL bring Roku TV to Germany
At the IFA, televisions with Roku OS will also be launched in Germany. After introducing the players, the US company is taking the next step.
After the streaming players, the US company Roku is now bringing its TV platform to Germany. At the IFA, manufacturers TCL and Metz are announcing a series of televisions running Roku’s software. Roku takes over the initial implementation and adaptation of the operating system to the TV hardware for the partner brands as well as the future supply of updates.
Roku has been on the North American market since 2008 with streaming players. After Netflix stopped its plans for its own streaming player, the project was outsourced to an independent company and continued. Recently there have been rumors that Netflix might be interested in acquiring Roku.
“We are a software company”
Roku was instrumental in establishing small streaming players and sticks on the market. Roku has also been available as an operating system for smart TVs since 2014. The company also sees itself more as a software manufacturer, explains marketing manager Lloyd Klarke in an interview with voonze online. “We built the software stack completely from scratch starting in 2013.” The basis of the operating system is a Linux kernel.
The Roku OS for TV combines the various signal inputs of the device as well as various apps and streaming services in a clear interface that can be personalized. The system knows the channels of the German cable networks, satellites and DVBT-T and displays them with channel symbols. The Roku TVs come from the factory with a statistically determined channel sorting. The Roku television can also be connected to digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa or the Google Assistant.
Roku makes it a point that the software runs well on the hardware of the TVs. The company makes reference platforms available to manufacturers for this purpose. To what extent the manufacturers then implement the Roku OS is up to them. The company delivers updates twice a year and also continues to supply older devices. It is said that there is no defined time frame for updates.
Ordinary sloppiness
The search, which usually involves quite a bit of fumbling with the remote control on televisions, reacts quite quickly to the first characters at first glance and quickly offers possible results. It displays content across services. Voice search is possible via Roku’s smartphone app, which can also be used as a remote control and is easily recognized by the TV or streaming box in the WLAN.
The app can also be used to switch the TV sound to headphones connected to the smartphone. The software tries to calculate any audio offset as best it can. If necessary, this can also be corrected manually with a slider in the app.
Roku now runs on around 63 billion devices worldwide, says Klarke. The company does not reveal what share players and televisions have. Roku has now firmly established itself in the USA and Canada and runs on around every third television. The company is also active in Latin America and some European countries.
Roku players have been available in Germany since last year. Sky customers already know the brand from before: the streaming stick sold exclusively for Sky Ticket was manufactured by Roku. With the new television sets from Metz and TCL, Roku TV is now coming to Germany. The manufacturers will reveal details about the devices at the IFA; Around a dozen models between 32 and 65 inches in HD, 4K and 4K QLED can be expected.
(vbr)
