Roku, Inc.

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Roku, Inc
Private
Industry Consumer Electronics / Broadcast Media
Founded 2002
Headquarters Saratoga, California
Key people
 Anthony Wood, CEO
Products Roku 1; Roku 2; Roku 3; Roku 4; Roku Streaming Stick; Roku TV
Number of employees
 170[1]
Website www.roku.com

Roku, Inc. (/ˈroʊkuː/ ROH-koo)[2] is an American private company that manufactures home digital media products. The company is based in Saratoga, California.[3] Roku manufactures a variety of digital media players that allow customers to access Internet streamed video or audio services through televisions, including subscription-based services as well as services that are available through the receiver free of charge. Roku licenses its hardware and software to other companies.[4][5][6]

Company profile

The company was founded in October 2002, by ReplayTV founder Anthony Wood. Roku (六) means "six" in Japanese, a reference to the six companies Wood has launched.[7]

Legacy products

Roku's consumer products line-up included:

  • PhotoBridge HD1000, a system for displaying images on a high-definition television, as well as streaming MPEG video. The unit has four card readers on the front and can read from a CompactFlash Card type II, Memory Stick, MultiMediaCard, SD Memory Card, or SmartMedia Card[8]
  • Roku SoundBridge, a network music player[9]
  • SoundBridge Radio, a network music player with built-in speakers and subwoofer, AM‑FM receiver, volume-ramping alarm clock, preset buttons, SD slot, and headphone jack[10]

For retailers, Roku also produced:

  • BrightSign solid-state media player, designed to drive HD displays in a retail environment.[11]

Roku's audio products did not use internal storage but relied on Wi-Fi or Ethernet to stream digital audio over a network, either from Internet radio or a computer attached to the same network.[12][13] Roku introduced the Radio Roku Internet radio directory in August 2007; Radio Roku provides a directory of Internet stations, accessible from a web browser or from SoundBridge players.

Roku Streaming Player

The XD/S has HDMI and component output for high-definition video on new and older televisions.

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Main article: Roku

Roku Streaming Players are set-top boxes for the delivery of Over-the-top content. Content on the Roku Streaming Players is provided by Roku partners, identified using the "channel" vernacular. Each separate channel supports content from one partner though some content partners have more than one channel. In May 2011, Roku stated the Streaming Players had over one million viewers and had delivered 15 million channel downloads.

Both on-demand content and live streaming are supported by the devices. For live TV streams, Roku supports Apple HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) adaptive streaming technology. Both free and paid "channels" such as Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video, and others are available, as well as some games.

Roku Streaming Players are an open-platform device with a freely available SDK that enables anyone to create new channels.[14] The channels are written in a Roku-specific language called BrightScript, a scripting language the company calls "similar to Visual Basic".[15]

References

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External links


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