The Roku Channel started out as an exclusive bonus for Roku devices with some free movies and shows, but has now grown into a full-fledged streaming service. It has been slowly rolling out to non-Roku devices, and now it’s coming to Android TV and Google TV.
The Roku Channel is now officially landing on Google TV devices as well as Android TV set-top boxes and TVs. The service is already available on a range of devices, including Amazon’s Fire TV ecosystem as well as Samsung TVs. The addition of Google TV, and Android TV in general, will mean that it will be available on a far wider range of streaming devices and smart TVs. The Roku Channel is already reached by an estimate of 100 million people, and there are a lot more TVs and streaming boxes running Google’s software to push that number even higher.
The Roku Channel doesn’t just serve as a hub for accessing content hosted on other streaming services, but it’s actually a streaming service of its own. Roku produces in-house content that it then makes available through this platform, and it has a library of content of its own. More importantly, most of the content available on the platform is completely free to watch, with everything outside of the “Premium” section being fully available for everyone using the channel.
This is huge news for several reasons. Roku and Google haven’t really been best of friends in the past few years. Almost two years ago, both companies were involved in a highly-publicized dispute regarding the availability of YouTube and YouTube TV on Roku devices — and while it was eventually solved without disruption of service for Roku users, Google was almost about to pull those apps from the platform. With this rollout, it’s clear cooler heads are prevailing, and both companies are becoming friendlier to each other, at least publicly.
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/903998/the-roku-channel-is-now-on-android-tv-google-tv/
