If you’re one of those people who loves to customize – from your Star Wars-themed screen saver to your “Whirled Peas” bumper sticker – then you’re sure to love the latest development coming from Roku. Announced at the Appsworld conference in San Francisco yesterday, Roku will offer customizable home screens to its interface next month, adding one more way to lend a personal touch to your video streaming universe.
Detailed in a report by Gigaom, the new themes will be available for purchase from third-party developers through Roku’s app store. Adding a new motif won’t change the basic structure of your Roku home screen, but will bring a personalized flair to the experience with what is sure to be a plethora of choices, conjuring images of the golden days of Winzip skins, or decked out Myspace pages – remember Myspace?
While Roku does have a full selection of hardware accessories to choose from, new software add-ons such as the home screen themes are yet one more way for Roku to monetize beyond the sale of the box itself.
The themes will be easily integrated into Roku’s streamlined billing service, which the company already utilizes to sell reams of apps, or channels, from third-party developers. And with Roku getting a 30 percent cut of every app or service sold to its customer base – which at last count tallied over 5 million devices sold in the U.S. alone – simple add-ons like customizable home screens are easy money.
