Roku’s announced a seriously impressive update… assuming you’re running recent, supported hardware. And, surely, the highlight of OS 7.5 is the ability to pause live OTA television on Roku Televisions. While Roku’s CEO declared the “DVR is dead” way back in 2011, the company seemingly recognizes the ongoing draw of linear programming in 2016 – but intends to “get rid of the five commercial block.” As such, pairing a Roku TV with 16GB USB thumb drive will enable a 90 minute buffer to pause television while hitting the head or intending to crash through a 60 block with 40 minutes of ad-free programming. Hopefully it’ll also allow us to scrub through the buffer to catch a bit of missed dialog or replay some dramatic event. But I’m left to wonder if they’ve invested the engineering resources to go this far might full-fledged DVR functionality also be on the roadmap? CES is just around the corner…
Other Roku OS 7.5 goodies: HDMI-CEC volume control (!) and “private listening” via smartphone.
Roku OS 7.5 will begin to roll out to some supported Roku players today, and following their recent launch, will conclude with the new lineup of Roku players in the next few weeks. Roku OS 7.5 will begin rolling out to Roku TV models next week and is expected to be available on all supported Roku devices before the Holidays.