At CES 2023, my favorite streaming platform is getting into the SmartTV business:
These Roku-branded HD and 4K TVs are the first ever to be both designed and made by Roku, underlining the company’s commitment to delivering a best-in-class streaming experience at an accessible price. Roku Select and Plus Series TVs, as well as a new Roku TV Wireless Soundbar, will be available in the U.S. in spring 2023.
Roku
The Roku Select and Plus Series TVs will be available in the U.S. beginning spring of 2023 with retail prices ranging from $119 to $999 for the full lineup of 24” – 75” models.
Our Diagnosis of the Roku TV Strategy
Bob Raikes, Display Daily’s founder, had looked at the possibility of Roku TVs last year:
It wouldn’t be surprising if Roku was looking at this. One of its key users in the US is TCL which has also developed Google TVs, although it has hit some software issues with that platform (TCL Google TVs Pulled from Shelves in the US Due to Software Issues). It’s hard to see, given the slim pickings in TV hardware, why Roku would want to go this way, although it must be seeing a significant impact on its dongle business as SmartTVs become ‘good enough’ based on their internal processors.
Bob Raikes, Display Daily
As a Roku owner, and the owner of an unhealthy number of SmartTVs (WebOS, Fire TV, and Android TV models clog up the minds of many in my household), I can attest to the fact that I prefer using my Roku boxes even when I have a perfectly good SmartTV with the same channels and apps. What is really missing from the equation with SmartTVs is that they are difficult to support and that means that they don’t lend themselves easily to troubleshooting or getting fixed, and there is no one to talk to when you hit a wall.
The most egregious example of this issue came up when on particular Fire TV (a Toshiba model, to be exact, from Amazon) went wacky, meaning it started to go on and off all on its own, not even the ever reliable and helpful chat bots on Amazon gave succor. They referred me to Toshiba and Toshiba sent me right back to Amazon. We have iFixIt for phones. We have nothing for SmartTVs, and they’re supposedly going to get smarter and have streaming games and all kinds of other things happening. Who is going to support all these computing devices that will have computing failures?
Roku may be able to pull off something because of its brand. It may not have the style of an Apple TV but it has the legs and stamina. And, it has the distribution channels. Maybe having sticks and boxes and TVs is an enticement for consumers. Maybe, just maybe, they don’t want to trust SmartTVs when it wasn’t too long ago that TVs were relatively dumb. But Bob’s voice is always going to be in the back of my mind: “…. given the slim pickings in TV hardware, why Roku would want to go this way …”
