As of today, Best Buy is stocking and selling the company’s range of TVs, its first foray into the market. It’s going to be really interesting to see how Roku does in the market, either in actual sales or as a result of the experience changing its approach to the development of its core Roku OS technologies.
Roku TVs are smart TVs powered the company’s own TV OS. The Roku Plus Series TVs are available in 55-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch sizes and use 4K QLED panel technology. They support HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG. The TV range falls somewhere in the middle of the range between Roku’s existing OEMs like TCL and HiSense, and the proprietary offerings of companies like Samsung.
“Our goal is to make everything about a smart TV delightfully simple, from finding the TV that’s perfect for you, to opening and unboxing, to enjoying your favorite movies and TV shows,” said Mustafa Ozgen, President, Devices, Roku. “We made purposeful decisions to ensure that our Roku Select and Plus Series TVs embody what users love most about the Roku streaming experience, and we brought in our expertise in picture quality and audio to give consumers an entertainment upgrade at an incredible value.”
Roku is trying to paint the whole thing as a market opportunity for the customer to develop its TV OS with real consumer engagement. That doesn’t seem to be a good enough excuse for a company that is going into a big box retailer like Best Buy. Roku is now a TV vendor, no matter how you want to pitch it.
If this was a win-win situation, Roku may end up building the brand and making it easier for its OEMs to establish their offerings on retailers shelves and websites. On the downside, Roku is a software company more than it is a hardware company. TVs are a lot of hardware to handle. It should be fun to watch what happens, either way.
