The Roku Channel shoud work toward adding downloads
The Roku Channel shoud work toward adding downloads
The free streamer won’t be able to offer downloads for all titles in its library, but Roku Channel Originals seem doable.
When we reviewed the user interface of The Roku Channel back in October, we came away impressed with its ease of use and super playback controls. The Roku Channel is a free streamer, but it comes as close to replicating the paid streamer experience as any of its ad-supported competitors.
Initially, I was hard-pressed to think of something The Roku Channel really needed — until it hit me. One aspect of The Roku Channel that still sets it apart from paid streamers is the lack of ability to download TV shows and movies for offline viewing. That’s something I think the service could work around, and it’s the feature I recommend it try to add most.
To be sure, it’s a lot harder to work ads into shows and movies that are intended to be downloaded for offline viewing than it is to add them to live or on-demand streaming content that requires an internet connection. Of the major streaming services, only Netflix allows customers of its ad-supported plan to download a select number of titles, and most think of it as something only premium subscribers should have.
But that’s exactly why Roku Channel should add the ability to download — if it really wants to be the premium free streaming service, it’s got to keep adding features its competitors don’t have. It crafts its own original TV shows and movies, just as subscription streamers do, and it even has exclusive live sports. But it still hasn’t extended the ability to download to viewers yet.
Even if Roku Channel did add downloads, it wouldn’t have them available for every show and movie in its catalog. Most of the TV shows and films on The Roku Channel are licensed from other studios, and getting the OK from those studios to allow those titles to be downloaded, plus figuring out how to divvy up ad revenue, may be a headache too far for Roku.
But at the very least, the streamer can start by allowing subscribers to download Roku Channel Originals for watching offline. That would require less negotiating, and would give customers extra incentives to watch Roku Channel titles like “Die Hart” and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” while they’re traveling or otherwise unable to watch content while connected.
It’s easy for me to sit back and tell Roku’s engineers and executives to get to work on an update that will cost money and more than a little difficult technical work. But that’s the cost the streamer must pay for having such a good user interface already, and it’s the feature I think it’s lacking most glaringly.
Roku Channel
The Roku Channel is a free, ad-supported streaming service that offers a broad mix of movies, TV shows, live linear channels, and original programming. Available to all viewers — not just Roku device owners — the service features licensed content from major studios alongside Roku Originals, which include exclusive series, movies, and specials previously produced for Quibi, as well as new original projects developed specifically for the platform.