There are people who fuss over every aspect of their home theater, hand-picking the perfect TV, choosing an A/V receiver, and carefully auditioning speakers. Then there are people who just want to plug in a TV, kick back, and relax. For that second type of person, Roku TVs are perfect, building the features of Roku’s streaming media players into TVs that are not only handy, but affordable. Now Roku has announced another company will be joining TCL, Philips, and others in manufacturing Roku TVs: JVC.
Technically, it’s Shenzhen MTC Co. who has joined the Roku TV program, but it will be releasing its TVs under the JVC brand. Chances are good that you’ve heard of JVC before, as the name can be found on all sorts of consumer electronics, from fully wireless earbuds to 4K DLP projectors. JVC also sells a range of lower-priced TVs, so joining the Roku TV program makes perfect sense for the brand.
“Roku is America’s #1 streaming platform because it is incredibly easy to use and offers access to countless movies and TV episodes all from the home screen,” JVC’s chief technology officer, John Araki, said in a statement. “We are looking forward to marrying our longstanding history of innovation with Roku’s popular smart TV platform as we aim to improve our customers’ everyday life with smartly designed products making life a little more fun.”
The Roku platform offers more than 5,000 apps (which Roku refers to as “channels”) and access to more than 500,000 movies and TV episodes. Earlier this month, Roku took its Roku Channel, which offers a selection of free TV episodes and movies, online, offering it to anyone with a Roku account — no hardware required.
There is little information in the announcement about exactly what type of TVs we’ll see JVC selling with the Roku platform built-in. One hint is that the “first HD JVC Roku TVs” are expected to ship this year. If 4K was on the table, it would likely be mentioned. That said, while TCL’s biggest success with Roku TVs might be its 4K models, the company also sells its fair share of lower-spec models, and JVC may be planning to do the same.
