Roku has managed to break into the smart voice assistant market. Roku said Wednesday that it will commence a voice assistant that will permit clients of existing Roku players and TVs to control the gadgets by voice. Roku is extending its licensing program to incorporate producers of soundbars and smart speakers, and furthermore plans to begin a “Roku Entertainment Assistant,” as a component of a developing push to assume control over the entertainment experience in individuals’ family rooms.
“We’ve always focused on making it incredibly simple for consumers to find and enjoy streaming entertainment on their TVs, and with an expanded Roku ecosystem, consumers will be able to add great sound to their TVs and audio around the whole home in a modern way,” said Roku CEO Anthony Wood.
While Roku’s video streaming gadgets officially empower clients to give verbal orders, the new framework, which will be incorporated into programming, will empower remote associations and coordinated voice functionality, inclusive of audio. Clients of the new setup, the organization stated, will have the capacity to say things like, “Hello Roku, play jazz in the family room,” and a smart soundbar utilizing Roku Connect will play it regardless of whether the TV is off. Licensing of Roku Connect, as with the smart TV interface, will be an expanding objective for the organization.
The organization intends to additionally detail the new activities in a press conference on Monday, the main day of CES, which goes through Jan. 11 in Las Vegas.
Roku said that “TCL is the first brand that will have a device under Roku’s new entertainment licensing program, though it declined to share exactly what kind of gadget this will be ahead of CES. It also said that Magnavox will be the ninth and newest TV brand to offer Roku TVs, as part of its CES 2018 announcements.”
Roku executive Mark Ely, who joined the company in September after his startup Simple.TV shut down, said, “Roku is licensing its OS and putting out reference designs rather than making its own series of inexpensive smart speakers, like Amazon does. For Roku, licensing the platform has been “the fastest way to acquire active accounts, much more so than acquiring new customers by selling streaming media players”.
The additional highlights will empower Roku to keep pace with intensely advanced offerings, for example, Google Home or Amazon Alexa, which are likewise venturing into a scope of more up-to-date smart home frontiers.
