Advanced Television

Roku updates OS

April 12, 2017

Streaming platform Roku is introducing what it describes as “exciting new features” included in Roku OS 7.6, the latest version of its operating system for all Roku devices, designed to make it easier to discover and watch the entertainment you love.

“In the spirit of making it easier for you to find great content, we now have 300+ channels in Roku Search across all Roku devices. With Roku Search, it’s easy to find where movies and shows are available for free, or see unbiased results ranked by price across top channels,” said Roku in a Blog Post.

Roku OS 7.6 will roll out over the next few weeks and is expected to be complete before June.

Among the new Roku OS 7.6 Features:

  • More Ways to Watch for Roku TVs (US only) – This feature provides an enhanced viewing experience based on what you watch on cable or satellite boxes, or broadcast antennas, connected to your HD Roku TV. You’ll be required to enable the feature via an opt-in prompt on your Roku TV once the feature is available or when setting up a new Roku TV. More Ways to Watch can recognize the show or movie you’re watching on these boxes and antennas using Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology and suggest additional viewing options via streaming to enhance your experience. Additional viewing options may include the ability to watch from the beginning, watch more episodes of the same show and/or view suggestions for similar entertainment available to stream.
  • More Ways to Watch can be turned on or off at any time in the Roku TV settings menu. If you choose to turn off More Ways to Watch after it was first enabled, viewing information collected prior to the feature being turned off will not be deleted.
  • Updates to Live TV Pause for Roku TV – When using the Live TV Pause feature on your Roku TV, you’ll now see thumbnail images displayed on the screen while pausing, rewinding, or fast forwarding. This makes it easier to identify where you are in the movie or show to resume playing at the moment you want to watch. In addition, Live TV Pause now supports our Closed Caption on Replay feature. When this option is turned on, you can use the replay button on your Roku TV remote to go back a few moments in the movie or show you’re watching to view closed captions for dialogue you may have missed.
  • Favourite channels list for Roku TV tuner –You can now create a list of your favourite broadcast channels when you have a broadcast antenna connected to your Roku TV. To create your own favourite channels list, simply press the left button when watching over-the-air TV on your Roku TV to bring up the list of available channels. Press the options button “*” on your Roku TV remote to add individual channels to your favourites list. Once created, the favourites list will allow you to browse only the tuner channels you’ve added to that list. You can switch back to the all-channels list to view all available tuner channels at any time.
  • Custom input naming for Roku TV – In an effort to give Roku TV customers even more ways to customise their experience, you now have the ability to assign custom names to your inputs icons. To name an input, just highlight the input tile on your Roku TV home screen and press the options button “*” on your Roku TV remote. Scroll through the list of pre-populated input names until you reach “set custom name and icon” and press OK. Now you can enter any name you’d like (up to 15 characters) for the input device for easier identification on Roku TV home screen.
  • Faster resume from standby for some Roku TV models – HD Roku TV models will now resume from standby mode a few seconds faster than before the Roku OS 7.6 update so you can get to the entertainment you love more quickly.

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