As the Roku 3 has been around for over two years already, Roku decided to refresh its very successful line of media streaming device recently by adding a voice search feature on it.
The American company based in Saratoga, California had to make the upgrade in order to keep users at bay while waiting for the arrival of the more enhanced Roku 4 expected to hit the retail markets this coming fall. The other key reason is for the company to ensure that the Roku 3 will have a leg up on its closest competition, the Fire TV box of Amazon.
The voice search button on the Roku 3’s new remote gives it a distinct edge over Amazon’s Fire Box TV. It also makes the media streaming device quite techie too, despite being two years old already, details The Verge.
All the users have to do is to speak out the name of a movie, a TV show, an actor, or director that they are looking for on the remote and the software will search in the device’s media library and results come out instantly.
When Roku launched the voice search feature of the Roku 3 in April, the company also made a brief demo of how the new attribute works and how accurate it can be. The good news is that despite the refresh and the addition of the voice search feature on the remote, the Roku 3 still retained its $99 price.
New software
Along with the voice search feature that Roku introduced to the Roku 3 in April is the Roku Feed, a new software that aims to give user a heads up whenever movies in theaters eventually make their way to on-demand services including Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Netflix, and others.
Users just need to add the films they are looking out for and Roku will automatically notify them once it becomes available for streaming on some site or sites.
There is also the Movies Coming Soon feature in the Roku Feed but it is not clear where Roku will be taking it. Fans are hoping that Roku would eventually come up with its own list of movies and TV shows other than those listed in Netflix or Amazon but the company still has to work on that.
Hot-selling media streaming device
Roku 3 is officially the hottest selling media streaming device in 2014. Despite tough and serious competition posed by Apple, Amazon, and Google, Roku did not just manage to hold its own against the big boys in the tech industry but also pulled off an upset win.
Well, it’s technically not an upset win since Roku has been lording it over the media streaming device market for quite some time. The California-based tech company just managed to hold its lead despite serious threats from the big names of the business.
But the big boys would certainly not take the beating and go quietly into the night so some of them are coming back big time, with more powerful and sophisticated media streaming devices than ever before now in the pipeline.