Roku

Roku

Roku

Roku

Roku

Roku announced two new streaming devices today that sit in the middle of its device lineup. The Roku Premiere and Premiere+ set-top boxes are barely "boxes" at all; instead, they resemble the company's streaming sticks more than any of its other devices.

If you took the Roku Ultra, the company's top-tier device, and slashed it in half and shrank it a bit, you'd get the Roku Premiere and Premiere+. The streaming devices are about the length of your index finger and the width of two fingers, making them lightweight and nearly invisible when sitting on an entertainment console while connected to a TV. The front side is a glossy black while the flat back side holds an HDMI port and the power port.

The Premiere devices basically replace the old Roku 2 and Roku 3 devices, all of which took up more space with their boxier designs. For those who don't want a device as big or expensive as the Roku Ultra, they can get either the Premiere or the Premiere+, both of which have quad-core processors and support HD, 4K, and 4K HDR streaming.

The ability to accept voice commands differentiates the Premiere+ from the Premiere: the former comes with Roku's voice remote, allowing users to press a button and say things like "show me stand-up comedy" and "show me TV dramas." Voice control is a feature that has become ubiquitous across entertainment tech, particularly set-top boxes and other streaming devices. Since these devices bring in content from myriad sources (think Netflix, Hulu, network apps, connected cable boxes, and others), voice commands can make finding content across all of those sources easier.

The Roku Premiere player cannot use voice commands, but it comes with Roku's regular remote. Both devices stream 4K and HDR content, and they come with HDMI cables for easy connection to most TVs. Now, aside from Roku's Express line for older TVs, all of Roku's devices have a variant that streams 4K content. As 4K TVs become more affordable, Roku wants to offer as many 4K-capable devices as possible so it can reach customers with various types of budgets and streaming needs.

Roku is also trying to make free content more accessible on its platform, and it has added some features recently to make that happen. Using "free" in a voice command is one of them—saying "show me free action movies" will reveal all of the free action movies accessible through all of the channels available on Roku, including network apps, your cable provider, and The Roku Channel itself. Roku filled its own channel with ad-supported content so users could have another source of free content to watch on their devices, but some users may not know that free content lives across many other channels available on Roku devices. Using voice search to browse the "Featured Free" section is a new way to discover this content.

In addition to the Premiere and Premiere+ players, Roku announced an upgrade to its $99 Ultra set-top box with an improved remote finder that also has a few new tones, including the Game of Thrones theme music. Pressing the remote finder button on the top of the Ultra will force it to play a sound to help you locate it when you've misplaced it. Also, the Ultra will now come with a pair of JBL headphones.

The Roku Premiere player costs $39, and the Premiere+ costs $49 and will be a Walmart exclusive. Both players will be available in early October.

Listing image by Roku