1. Roku Voice Search is among the coolest Roku features
Roku’s
last two installments, the Roku 3 and Roku 4, packed a powerful punch
by allowing users to search titles and content by voice search. Nearly
all onscreen typing can be a tedious task when searching titles. Roku
Voice Search proves to be one of the coolest Roku features thus far. It
allows you to instantly find a movie or show by name or actor which
minimizes the time of searching for something to watch. Leaving you
more time to enjoy your media and less time typing in titles and
keywords to get what you want.
2. Roku Hotel and Dorm Connect
With
hotel and dorm connect, Roku enabled cordcutters with Roku players or
Roku Streaming Sticks to stream and access their media from hotels or
college dormitories. Hotel and dorms often have unique identifiers such
as room number and last names when accessing paid services’. Once a
WiFi network is established, Roku brilliantly assigns a unique router
name and password for your device. For step-by-step directions on how
this works see our previous post on
hotel and dorm connect
for Roku explained. Work arounds for Roku features existed before
hotel and dorm connect but now connectivity is as easy as pie.
3. Roku Media Player
That
hard drive you have with a zillion movies and TV shows on it stays
relevant because of features like the Roku Media Player. Roku Media
Player allows you to play various movies, photos and music files via USB
connection right through your Roku player. Family vacations, CDs from
your personal collection, and old movies not available on Netflix or
Amazon Video can be played directly through your HDTV by connecting your
external hard drive to the USB port of your Roku Player. The
Roku Media Player App probably gets the least amount of hype of all Roku features but ships preinstalled on all devices for ease of use.
4. Roku Recommends
Since
2014 Roku Recommends has highlighted many newly released channels
available in their channel store. Most add great content value for a
variety of ‘Life Hacks’ from recipes to shopping, fitness and travel.
The
Roku Recommends App
is great for those new to the Roku community who do not know which
channels to add. Albeit, channels or apps can be added to your device
at no cost but may require an in-app purchase to access the content
within. The channels you will likely find on Roku Recommends, often are
hand picked and free. Whats more, it offers a boat load of information
and entertainment the whole family can enjoy. Add Roku Recommends to
track whats trending on the best streaming player.
5. Breaking News Highlights
In
a twenty-four news cycle across various networks sometimes its great to
access whats happening now. Since many major news networks in the
United States and Europe have a parallel Roku channel, offering breaking
news highlights, it allows us to stay in touch with whats going on.
Cordcutters make out in this case since all news networks with a Roku
channel provide updated content without a paid subscription. Networks
typically upload several one to five minute news segments to their
channel everyday. They often highlight the crux of the stories without
the commercials and paid advertising. This usually comes at no
additional cost to cordcutters who stream their content via the internet
and are able to get updates on whats going on in the world between
programs of their choosing.
