![]() ![]() But mostly, it gets the job done for watching TV. It has some unique touches, such as private headphone listening through Roku’s mobile apps, support for hotel and dorm-room Wi-Fi connections, and some unique nuisances, like the inability to toggle between recent apps and a giant ad on the home screen. Otherwise, it’s the same old Roku software. Like Apple’s version, Roku’s single sign-on doesn’t work with some of the biggest cable providers, such as Comcast and Spectrum, or with some TV Everywhere apps (most notably Disney), but it’s still a time-saver, and it works with some streaming bundles such as Sling TV and PlayStation Vue. It follows Apple TV in supporting single sign-on, so you can authenticate with a pay TV provider in one app and automatically gain access to many others. In lieu of sweeping changes, the latest Roku OS 8 brings some subtler improvements. And while the platform has some stragglers using Roku’s old, ugly app templates-looking at you, PlayStation Vue-Roku has given those developers an ultimatum: Those apps won’t be allowed to issue updates starting next year, and they’ll be removed entirely in 2019. New services like Hulu with Live TV, DirecTV Now, and Plex Live TV are just as polished on Roku as they are other streamers. Meanwhile, Roku seems to be getting over the app quality issues that had been hurting the platform. Being able to quickly look up specific movies or shows by name is helpful–and Roku’s latest software brings some new features, such as genre search and filtering by streaming service–but Roku’s voice search is still far behind other platforms in several ways. Roku’s voice controls aren’t so forward-looking. With Roku’s support, TV controls are suddenly the norm, and those that don’t offer them-namely Amazon’s Fire TVs-seem antiquated by comparison. That’s partly because Roku’s streamers are cheaper than those options, and partly because of the company’s overall popularity. TV controls feel like a revelation on Roku, even though Apple TV, Nvidia Shield TV, AirTV, and the Xiaomi Mi Box offer similar features. Roku got it right on the first attempt on three recent Vizio TVs and an eight-year-old Sharp TV, but there’s no way to manually program the remote if Roku’s setup doesn’t work. That’s a broader selection than other platforms, and Roku even offers handy a 4K Spotlight app for finding UltraHD content across different apps.ĭuring setup, Roku automatically detects the model of television it’s plugged into, and will attempt to mute the volume using a series of TV codes until you confirm that the controls work. Roku supports 4K video from all those sources and a couple dozen more, including Netflix, YouTube, Smithsonian Earth, CuriosityStream, and Toon Goggles. Although Roku hasn’t made any splashy 4K content moves, akin to Apple’s price parity with HD for iTunes movies, third-party stores like Amazon Video, Vudu, and FandangoNow have started matching some prices on their own. The main difference between Roku’s two new Streaming Sticks is video quality, with the pricier Stick+ delivering 4K and 4K HDR. (Neither device picked up the 5GHz band in this location.) ![]() Only in the furthest corner of my house did the Stick+ show an improvement over its cheaper sibling, with a signal strength of “Fair” instead of “Poor” over the 2.4GHz band. The Roku Streaming Stick+ goes a step further, moving its wireless receiver out of the stick itself and into the power cord, though in my testing this didn’t make much difference. Both of the new sticks also use dual-band 802.11ac, rather than the 802.11n standard of the previous model, allowing for longer range and faster speeds over the 5GHz frequency band with a compatible router (they’ll support 802.11n if that’s all your router is capable of).
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