The current Holiday season has given shoppers plenty of choices in as far as media streaming boxes are concerned since there are just plenty of products to choose from in the market these days.
But the frontrunners are Roku 4, the Apple TV, and the Amazon Fire TV, which have just been released one after the other a few months back.
The fourth generation Apple TV is a little bit expensive compared to the competition but it has its very own tvOS App Store that both Roku 4 and the Amazon Fire TV most certainly cannot have.
Apart from being a sentimental favorite among consumers, Roku 4 also offers a solid choice for anyone looking for something a little bit different in their media box, notes iDigital Times.
In terms of price, the Amazon Fire TV is the most competitive with its $99 retail price, followed by Roku 4 which is being sold for $129.99, while the Apple TV is priced at $149 for its 32GB model and $199 for the 64GB model.
Why Apple TV lags behind
Other than its price, Apple TV also does not have the expandable storage space provided by both the Roku 4 and the Amazon Fire TV through a microSD card slot. Both Roku 4 and the Amazon Fire TV also have a USB slot that can be hooked into an external hard drive or flash drive, which Apple TV does not have, which is typical for most devices of the American tech giant.
In terms or resolution, both the Roku 4 and the Amazon Fire TV can actually support up to 4K streaming while the Apple TV can only support 1080-pixel resolution.
The Apple TV also uses a dual-core processor compared to the quad-core processors of the Roku 4 and the Amazon Fire TV.
Apart from the tvOS App Store, the only other major advantage of the Apple TV over the Roku 4 and the Amazon Fire TV is that it operates beyond the usual channel basis.
With the tvOS App Store, the American tech giant has allowed third-party iOS developers to develop apps that use the same pricing and structure as iOS apps, giving consumers plenty of choices than those being offered by channel-based media boxes.
Cutting the cord on the cable
Other than the three frontrunners on the consumers’ choices for streaming boxes, there are also the Smart TVs, the Xbox and the PlayStation, the Roku Streaming Stick, the Google Chromecast, the Nvidia Shield Android TV, and the TiVo Bolt, cites CBS News.
Apart from providing the consumers with plenty of TV viewing options, the media streaming devices all do away with the cord on the cable, which is slowly becoming passé in modern-day viewing experience.
Despite the stiff competition, the Roku 4 seems to be a cut above the competition. After coming out in the market early in October, most critics gave favorable reviews on the device, commending the American tech company based in Saratoga, California, for ensuring that its new streaming device lives up to the hype.
At a retail price of $129.99, which is $30 higher compared to the Roku 3, the Roku 4 is still cheaper by $20 compared to the Apple TV based variant released on September 9.
With the emergence of the streaming box, the days of TV are said to be coming to an end. The Roku 4 only shortened the numbered days of the boob tube because it further makes watching over-the-top TV content as easy as possible.
For one, Roku boasts of over 3,000 channels or apps, but more importantly, it has the stuff that viewers really want including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Sling TV, Vudu, Crackle, HBO Go, HBO Now, Showtime, YouTube, Vevo, GoPro, casual games, cable authentication apps, and more.
The Roku 4 actually shares a similar design with the Roku 3 but the latest streaming device is larger.
The voice-activated remote control also looks very much like the earlier ones and also has the same headphone jack as the remote control of the Roku 3. However the Roku 4 remote control has a physical button on top of the streaming box that sends an audio alert to the remote so it can easily be located whenever it is misplaced.