Roku's first in-house TVs launch at Best Buy starting at $150

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Roku has launched its first televisions designed and manufactured in house. The starting lineup includes 11 models across three series that are available exclusively from Best Buy from today.

The entry-level Select Series HD features sets with screen sizes of 24-inch, 32-inch and 40-inch priced at $149.99, $199.99, and $279.99, respectively. As the name suggests, models in this series top out at HD resolution with only a handful of other amenities to speak of.

Step up to the Select Series 4K and you'll find screen sizes of 43-inch, 50-inch, 55-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch, all of which support automatic brightness adjustment, HDR10+, Wi-Fi 5 connectivity and 4K resolution. Select Series 4K models further include a feature-rich remote with private listening capability, Ethernet connectivity, personal shortcuts and a lost remote finder function.

Sets in the Select Series 4K category range in price from $319.99 for the 43-inch variant to $799.99 for the 75-inch model.

Last but not least is the Plus Series 4K line, which is comprised of 55-inch, 65-inch and 75-inch sets with 4K QLED panels. In addition to automatic brightness and HDR10+, these models further deliver local dimming, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Bluetooth connectivity, Wi-Fi 6, and a rechargeable battery in the remote.

Roku's 55-inch Plus Series 4K model is priced at $649.99, the 65-incher goes for $799.99 and the top-end 75-inch QLED model commands $1,199.99.

Roku said its new range is designed to fit any room or budget and naturally, all of them come with the company's streaming platform baked right in. They are also compatible with the new Roku Wireless Soundbar due out later this month for $149.99.

Speaking of, Roku also announced a platform-wide OS update rolling out in the coming weeks that will deliver improvements to content discovery and access. Local News, for example, will feature live news channels personalized by location and curated by AI. A more personalized Sports experience is also on the way, based on location, viewing habits and your favorite teams and sports.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97878-roku-first-house-tvs-launch-best-buy-starting.html

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I wonder what kind of hardware they're running in those TVs. I'm still rocking a 50" 1080p TCL Roku and the thing is so dang slow. I think it's running an original, crappy Atom CPU in it....it's slow.

Want to pull up Netflix? Cool.....60 seconds later you're lucky if you're at the pick user screen.

Looking to scroll through shows on any channel you're browsing, you're lucky if the button presses respond and show up on the screen within the first 5 seconds.

Need to have captions turned on? Okay....maybe 30-60 seconds later the captions start to show up and then randomly throughout the show the captions hang, don't show for a chunk of time or outright cause the TV to hang and do a reset on its own.

Thankfully I didn't pay for this TV, I won it in a raffle about 6 years ago. I just suffer with the slowassTV and make due with it because I don't want to spend money on something new. It's not that I'm cheap, I just don't want to drop a good chunk of money on a quality TV.

To bypass the slowassTV, I just plug a Roku stick into one of the USB ports and that little stick flies in comparison to the TV itself. Netflix loads up in about 5-10 seconds, captions don't hang or stop displaying, no random restarts and cycling through shows on any channel is responsive.

As much as I enjoy Roku, if their TV quality is anything like TCL's, I'll avoid them.

 

[Raendor]

I wonder what kind of hardware they're running in those TVs. I'm still rocking a 50" 1080p TCL Roku and the thing is so dang slow. I think it's running an original, crappy Atom CPU in it....it's slow.

Want to pull up Netflix? Cool.....60 seconds later you're lucky if you're at the pick user screen.

Looking to scroll through shows on any channel you're browsing, you're lucky if the button presses respond and show up on the screen within the first 5 seconds.

Need to have captions turned on? Okay....maybe 30-60 seconds later the captions start to show up and then randomly throughout the show the captions hang, don't show for a chunk of time or outright cause the TV to hang and do a reset on its own.

Thankfully I didn't pay for this TV, I won it in a raffle about 6 years ago. I just suffer with the slowassTV and make due with it because I don't want to spend money on something new. It's not that I'm cheap, I just don't want to drop a good chunk of money on a quality TV.

To bypass the slowassTV, I just plug a Roku stick into one of the USB ports and that little stick flies in comparison to the TV itself. Netflix loads up in about 5-10 seconds, captions don't hang or stop displaying, no random restarts and cycling through shows on any channel is responsive.

As much as I enjoy Roku, if their TV quality is anything like TCL's, I'll avoid them.

You said yourself it’s an old one. Of course it will be a much faster contemporary chip.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

You said yourself it’s an old one. Of course it will be a much faster contemporary chip.

It's been like that since we got it. Slow. It only cost me $20 (cost of the raffle tickets). $20 TV is great! Except it's slow as hell. I've got Roku sticks that are just as old and they fly in comparison, it's rather sad.

I'd be surprised if their stand alone brand TVs are any better over the TCL models.

 

[kiwigraeme]

If Google or Amazon can make TVs for this cheap - You can see the adverts already 42" $300 or $200 with adverts.
Imagine Google doing an anti-google - ie stripping out the"correct" adverts for theirs - probably not as they get less protection in law

 

[RudyBob]

Why buy cheap? Need a power supply?

 

[Inthenstus]

I wonder what kind of hardware they're running in those TVs. I'm still rocking a 50" 1080p TCL Roku and the thing is so dang slow. I think it's running an original, crappy Atom CPU in it....it's slow.

Want to pull up Netflix? Cool.....60 seconds later you're lucky if you're at the pick user screen.

Looking to scroll through shows on any channel you're browsing, you're lucky if the button presses respond and show up on the screen within the first 5 seconds.

Need to have captions turned on? Okay....maybe 30-60 seconds later the captions start to show up and then randomly throughout the show the captions hang, don't show for a chunk of time or outright cause the TV to hang and do a reset on its own.

Thankfully I didn't pay for this TV, I won it in a raffle about 6 years ago. I just suffer with the slowassTV and make due with it because I don't want to spend money on something new. It's not that I'm cheap, I just don't want to drop a good chunk of money on a quality TV.

To bypass the slowassTV, I just plug a Roku stick into one of the USB ports and that little stick flies in comparison to the TV itself. Netflix loads up in about 5-10 seconds, captions don't hang or stop displaying, no random restarts and cycling through shows on any channel is responsive.

As much as I enjoy Roku, if their TV quality is anything like TCL's, I'll avoid them.

What.. it is a dinosaur is todays standards. No wonder it is slow.. my TCL Roku TV from 7 years ago is still going strong and kicking. It is slower than my other newer TVs, but it takes… 8 seconds to open Netflix? You need to reset that TV to defaults and/or upgrade the OS.

 

[Uncle Al]

Hopefully they built their entry with a LOT better security than others that simply added Roku. Those are easily hacked and very hard to eliminate without a complete factory reset, and after that there is no guarantee you won't get hacked again quickly ......

 

[andyross]

Do any models supports Ethernet, or are all WiFi only?