Roku Launches $60 HD Streaming Media Player

Competition is always good and the battle among streaming media players for the consumers’ living room is resulting in some new products and attractive prices.

Roku has announced three new media players that include HD streaming support of up to 1080p and improved connectivity to home entertainment systems.

The three Roku models will be the $60 Roku HD with support for 720p , the $80 Roku XD that includes wireless and 1080p HD, and the $100 Roku XDS that adds dual-band wireless technology.

“Customers can now buy an HD-capable Roku player with wireless for 40 percent less than the price of our original $100 Roku HD player,” says Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku in a statement. “Or, think of it this way: for around the price of two Blu-ray Discs, a Roku player brings you access to limitless instant streaming entertainment choices available.”

Roku’s latest line-up is a response to not just the recently launched $100 Apple TV, but also newer products that are competing for consumer attention.

As more web users turn to web video–watching Hulu, Netflix streaming movies, and episodes of their favorite TV show–companies are trying to find a way to make it easier to pipe that content from the PC to the flat screen TV. Earlier this month, a company called VeeBeam announced a $100 streaming media player that would connect your PC to the TV. Google TV, Google’s streaming media box that aggregates cable TV programming and web video, is expected to launch next month. Even Intel has started integrating streaming media software into some of its chips and laptops.

Roku’s new players will continue to offer shows from Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand. It will also include sports from the MLB.TV site, music from Pandora, and photo and video sharing from Flickr and Facebook.

There are some new features. The $60 Roku HD will stream video at up to 720p and has built-in wireless and ethernet for broadband connectivity. The device is also smaller and sleeker. It is about 1 inch tall and less than 5 inches wide. It will come with composite A/V cables and an HDMI port.

The Roku XD and XDS versions will have 1080p HD support and include a feature called ‘Instant Replay’ that lets the viewer instantly skip back in 10 second increments without having to wait for a rebuffering delay.

See Also: