In this day and age, everyone has a TV and uses it for entertainment purposes. Whether it is to watch the news or TV series or movies. However, not every cable contains or provides you with the specific channels you would want. If you’re looking for a specific package of channels and TV shows to stream, Roku streaming players and sticks are great for your use.
What Are Roku Streaming Players ?
Roku is actually the company which manufactures these streaming players and sticks. These are digital media players which provide you with data when they are connected to the Wi-Fi or even a cable internet router. These streaming devices output their data via audio or video cables which are connected to your television. With an undisturbed Wi-Fi, you can watch from the number of channels and subscriptions which a Roku streaming player offers. An alternative to Roku streaming is the streaming of movies on 123movies.
Types of Roku Streaming Players
From the first generation to the sixth generation, the Roku company kept on revamping the design and features of their streaming players.
The first generation of the Roku Streaming players include 3 types of Roku DVP. These players were the first players to provide an internet connected Netflix streaming. The Roku SD only streams videos in standard definition whereas the Roku HD streams high and standard definition videos. The third Roku DVP is the HD-XD which streams SD and HD content and also has a USB support in the back with a built in dual band Wi-Fi Support. These devices basically have a memory storage of 258MB with a channel storage of 64MB. All of them are analog devices with an Ethernet connection till 720p streaming resolution.
With the Second generation of Roku players, the Roku search engine was added. This has the added help that people can look up a particular actor or a movie from multiple services such as Netflix, Amazon Video and HBO GO. In this generation, all of the devices have a storage capacity of 256MB. Whereas the streaming sticks have a capacity of 512MB. These are analog with no Ethernet connection option.
The third generation included the launch of Roku 3 which has a Wi-Fi direct remote, a Bluetooth and a headphone jack for personal uses. It even has a microphone for voice search. You can easily search for the desired movies and channels by speaking clearly into the microphone.
The fourth generation Roku device is the Roku 4 which has an updated Roku software, a 4k video streaming ability, a remote control finder and hardware that supports Wi-Fi 802.11 ac.
In the fifth generation, Roku introduced 5 new devices: the Roku express, Roku express+, Roku premiere, Roku premiere+ and Roku Ultra.
With the sixth generation, the updated products include new processors for the Roku streaming stick, Roku express and Roku express+. The 5th and 6th generation devices and updates have the highest memory capacity, of about 1GB. They even have Netflix with profiles and a few of them, like the streaming stick+ and Ultra have 4k video streaming.
The benefit of all Roku devices is that multiple TV channels can be streamed, from wrestling, to news channels to movie channels. Even Spotify and Pandora.