Roku and Tatung to Collaborate

The two companies announced today they will be working together on developing new CE products for the U.S. and foreign markets.

As part of the arrangement between the companies, Tatung has license rights to the SoundBridge product line and will distribute the network music players in Asia. Roku SoundBridge is the network music player that lets consumers listen to digital music and Internet radio anywhere in the house. The worldwide sales of Tatung group companies totaled US$7.5 billion in 2004.

We have reviewed several of Roku’s products here on Designtechnica and can safely say the company is very forward thinking. The Roku HD1000 is a high definition picture viewer and was the first of its kind when we reviewed it back in 2004. You could wirelessly view pictures stored on other computers throughout their home.

And without a doubt, Roku’s most popular product, the Soundbridge, lets you wireless stream music from the internet or your PC throughout your home network. We reviewed the Roku Soundbridge last December.

From what we can tell, Tatung took a stab at the PDA market here in the states a couple years back, but we have seen little of them since them. Back in 2003, the Tatung brand was being advertised everywhere at CES 2003.