SAN JOSE, Calif.—Roku today announced an array of new features soon to be available on its streaming platform that will further personalize consumers’ viewing experiences, particularly on sports and music.
For sports fans, Roku has introduced a new favoriting feature in its “Sports” zone that allows viewers to track live and upcoming sporting events for their go-to teams in one curated row, and promises a new “Highlights” feature in the near future that offers clips from recent sporting events they may have missed or want to relive.
Additionally, Roku will add motorsports in its Sports experience early next year as well as new sports content from Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max in the coming weeks.
Roku said it will also add new updates to its Live TV streaming experience that will personalize the order of channels in its EPG and remove channel numbers.
For music lovers, Roku says it will offer a more “immersive experience,” with new controls to shuffle, skip ahead, add video playlists to their Save List for listening, receive recommendations for similar playlists, and more. It’s also creating 75 new playlists from Warner Music Group’s Atlantic Records’ library in honor of the label’s 75th anniversary.
New personalization features include updates to Roku’s “What to Watch” to get content to viewers faster, allowing them to browse by categories including TV Shows, Movies, New & Popular, Free, as well as new experiences related to a specific genre or topic such as food or home. Also new is Roku “Mobile App Search” which will provide a more visual and immersive way to discover new content on its mobile app.
Roku Photo Streams has added support for Google Photos and several other new features for Roku Smart Home Video Doorbell have also been added.
Roku has also added the ability for viewers to customize picture settings when streaming on Roku on 4K TVs, by adjusting color temperature, color space, gamma correction, and noise reduction directly from the TV. Expert picture settings are already available via the Roku Mobile app.
“As the leaders in streaming TV, we’ve made it our priority to offer a platform that anticipates our user’s needs and adapts in real time,” said Preston Smalley, Vice President of Viewer Product at Roku. “With endless content to choose from and ways to watch, we will continue to innovate and release feature updates to our millions of users that better the viewing experience, making Roku the go-to destination for TV streaming.”
Roku OS 12.5 is rolling out to support Roku TV models and streaming players in the coming weeks.
