Dave Zatz

Along with the introduction of the 2015 Roku 2 & 3 comes the new “Roku Feed” feature. At launch, it’s pinned to the Roku home screen as My Feed and provides an interface to “follow” new movies – easily keeping tabs on when a title moves from the big screen to a digital rental or purchase, along with sale updates. The area is a bit spartan at the moment and sadly Roku’s fantabulous universal search doesn’t yet integrate with upcoming releases – so new movies must be manually browsed. But we imagine this functionality will ultimately integrate tighter with Roku Search, including voice, and perhaps content-beyond-movies will be included. Heck, there’s still room for agnostic video playlists.

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The 2015 Roku 3 ships with a new “Enhanced Remote” that includes a new magnifying glass button and microphone to power voice search, à la Amazon Fire TV and even Comcast Xfinity. When the magnifier is pressed, the lower third of the Roku screen indicates the remote is listening for movie, TV show, actor, or director – tying into Roku’s top-notch universal search across disparate video content providers.

In very brief testing, the voice recognition has been accurate – moreso than my Fire TV even. But this may depend on your personal enunciation and search patterns. Speaking of search, the results leave a little to be desired as new release movies featured in Roku Feed are not currently indexed. I’d think these two new services should work together… and perhaps it’s just a matter of time. Regardless, this is a nice-to-have that surely beats “typing” via a virtual keyboard or even iPhone app. And we expect it’ll be a requisite feature given Siri’s presumed inclusion via an Apple TV update. Related, we can imagine Roku making voice search available to more models and customers via update to their iPhone and Android remote control apps. Until then, expect to see this remote also sold as an optional accessory for the 2015 Roku 2 and 2013/2014 Roku 3 models.

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The new 2015 Roku 2 (4210) and Roku 3 (4230) streamers we unveiled last week have begun arriving at retailers. Indeed, my local best Best Buy has both on the shelf. For the timing being, these units retain their existing US pricing – clocking in at $70 and $100, respectively. However, with the recent Apple TV price reduction and presumed summer updates, it’s safe to assume we’ll see periodic sales if not an outright drop in the coming months.

For 2015, we see power parity between the Roku 2 and Roku 3… as both feature the same hardware, including a slightly revised enclosure that pretty much maintains the same footprint as the prior editions. Beyond that exterior though, we believe the guts are identical same this time around. Whereas the 2013 Roku 3 was significantly faster and featured newer, better apps than the Roku 2, it looks like we’re on even footing this year. Which brings up the difference in the two models…

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