Roku continues to expand its reach as the company announced today that 15 TV brands will launch Roku TV models in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the UK this year. Current partner Westinghouse will increase their Roku TV offerings in the Mexico, while new partners Polaroid, InFocus and Walmart’s ATVIO will sell Roku TV models in Mexico as well. Hisense and TCL will also extend their Roku TV options with new models later in 2020.
Other 2020 Roku TV partner brands include Element, Hitachi, JVC, Magnavox, onn., Philips, RCA and Sanyo.
“We believe that Roku TV represented more than one in three smart TVs sold in the U.S. during the first nine months of 2019, and the number of our licensees keeps growing,” said Mustafa Ozgen, Roku’s senior vice president and general manager of account acquisition.
Roku TV models gives viewers access to thousands of free and paid streaming channels and feature fast and easy cross-channel search and customizable home screens in Roku’s mobile app.
In addition to partner brands updates, the company also announced the launch of the Roku TV Ready program, which “allows consumer electronics companies to partner with Roku to help their products work seamlessly with Roku TV.”
Inaugural partners include TCL North America and Sound United, the parent company to Denon, Polk Audio, Marantz, Definitive Technology and Classé, which will feature Roku TV Ready products later in 2020.
TCL will announce their support for Roku TV Ready today, while Sound United will add Roku TV Ready to soundbars under the Denon brand through a software update later in 2020. Roku TV Ready features will rollout to Roku TV models through the Roku operating system as the year goes on.
For Roku customers, that means that if you own a Roku TV with a Roku TV Ready audio device, it will have a simplified set-up, on-device settings and a single remote to control both your TV and your soundbar.
“Our goal is to make the TV experience incredibly simple, accessible and fun,” said Mark Ely, Roku’s vice president of retail product strategy. “Roku devices continue to delight millions of consumers for these reasons. And now with this new program we hope to make it super easy to setup and control soundbars and audio/video receivers using just a Roku TV remote.”