Roku is updating its user interface to add features like a dedicated row for upcoming theatrical releases and more personalized sports highlights.
The improvements to what the company calls the “Roku Experience” were touted by several of executives, who also teased a range of hardware and other product news during Wednesday morning’s “global event” in New York City. CEO Anthony Wood said “delivering better TV for everyone … drives everything we do.” Founded in 2002, Roku now operates in 17 countries. “As our global footprint grows, so does our commitment to innovation,” Wood said.
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The new Roku Experience aims to make it easier for viewers to find what they want to watch. Roku says 57% of their users (in 90 million households) say they often give up after searching and do something else instead.
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The new “Coming Soon to Theaters” row showcases titles soon hitting the multiplex, which is not a typical filter in streaming. “If you see a movie you’d rather wait to watch at home, simply add it to your Save List, and we’ll let you know once it’s available to stream,” the company said in a blog post published after the event.
Embattled movie theater owners, who are in a pitched battle to shift the industry back to a standard 45-day window, are monitoring the streaming space closely. During Covid, with theaters shuttered and new subscription streaming outlets proliferating, long-established business practices went by the wayside. Films were released day-and-date by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and other majors, and years later the impact of those aggressive shifts is still being felt. Exhibitors and other stakeholders in theatrical moviegoing say consumers can get confused by the promotion of successive windows of theatrical, premium VOD, transactional VOD and SVOD. Some executives have cited that consumer confusion as one reason why the domestic box office remains nearly 20% below pre-Covid levels.
As streaming continues to play an ever-more-central role in the media landscape, though, capturing the interest of ticket buyers and downstream streaming customers is of great interest to movie marketers. Roku, too, sees upside in fortifying that relationship with movie audiences.
Neala Gollomp, Roku’s senior director of viewer experience, told Deadline in an interview that the goal of the “coming soon” initiative was to centralize the movie experience within Roku, rather than forcing viewers to multiple platforms. Family films like Wicked, she noted, often generate repeat viewing in streaming after they are seen in theaters, making the ability to closely track their availability in streaming is a value-add. Down the road, Roku is looking to provide theatrical ticketing through its streaming platform.
Sports has been a focus for Roku overall in recent years. The company has acquired rights to Major League Baseball and the X Games and has also sought to organize sports programming into dedicated hubs, as it did in co-ordination with NBCUniversal for last summer’s Paris Olympics. The user interface update includes a new personalized row of highlights. The feature “puts the best clips up front and center, all in one place – keeping you in the know about what matters most: your team,” the blog post said.
The “global” billing for Wednesday’s event was carried through with news about various products and initiatives rolling out in Brazil, Central and South America, UK, Canada, Mexico. Along with the Roku Experience enhancements, the company also announced new streaming sticks, TVs, smart-home wares and even a smart projector capable of projecting in 4K clarity onto a 100-inch surface.