Roku ventures into home entertainment

American company Roku on Wendesday, January 3, announced its plans to add a voice-controlled digital assistant to its streaming TV players. It also plans to wirelessly connect its video players with sound systems and for this it has expanded the partnerships that it already has forged with television manufacturers during the last five years.

The voice capabilities which Roku possess are limited to performing search requests and launching apps. The assistant will be able to field broader requests about video, music and other tasks tied to entertainment. This is being seen as an attempt to catch up with Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon Alexa. It can perform tasks and control appliances that have nothing do with entertainment.

The announcement also made it clear that the assistant won’t see the light of day until this fall as part of a software update. And by the time the assistant is available, Roku anticipates to have an array of agreements to license its software to the manufacturers of smart speakers, sound bars and other audio devices. TCL will be designing the sound system tied to Roku's video players.