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Scott Hart

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Roku Has 38.9M Users, Leading the Industry of Connected TV’s
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Roku has around 38.9 million users, as of July 2017, which is more than Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV, according to the latest report from eMarketer. The graph which eMarketer has created depicting the numbers, shows that the top three are relatively close to each other, with the Apple TV far behind. Roku has 38.9 million users, Chromecast with 36.9 million and Amazon Fire TV with 35.8 million. Now it’s likely that these three platforms are far ahead of Apple TV due to its pricing and the availability. Only Apple devices will work with Apple TV, meanwhile, Android and iOS devices work with Roku, Chromecast and Amazon’s Fire TV.

These numbers also note that there are around 168 connected TV’s out there, around half of them – 81.2 million – are smart TV’s. Something like LG’s webOS-powered TV’s, versus a regular TV that has a HDMI dongle plugged into it. That is up 10% year-over-year, which is pretty impressive that the number is still growing in double digit percentages. Now for Smart TV’s, that’s a 30.8% increase year-over-year, which is very impressive. Growing by nearly a third. Now Roku’s numbers are only up 19.3%, which eMarketer believes that this is due to the fact that more people are buying a smart TV and thus don’t need a connected device like an Amazon Fire TV or a Chromecast.

Roku, surprisingly is the top dog, despite not offering any of its own content like Google, Amazon and Apple all do. But what Roku has done to set itself apart from its competitors is offering a few different models. There are a slew of different models from Roku, with some as cheap as $40 (still more than the Google Chromecast), which is the Roku Stick and offers very little compared to something like the Roku Premiere+ which offers 4K and HDR support. This is a big deal for Roku, and so has the special offers its been doing with streaming TV companies like Sling TV and DIRECTV NOW, where it has been offering a free Roku, if you pre-pay for a certain amount of months. Or even offering the Roku Premiere+ for half off of its regular price. Which has enticed more people to buy one than normally would.
 

Alf S

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We are Roku fans. Have 4 Roku TV's and they are SO family/use friendly. We just love the ease of use, all the features offered etc. I use Chromecast too for some streaming, but Roku is our daily driver.
 

Alf S

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Seems Apple TV is falling farther behind in this arena.
 

Scott Merryfield

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I punted on this gen of Roku's, they suck.

I have an Ultra, a Premiere and an Express from this generation's models. My only issue has been a random chirping noise with the Ultra when watching movies on Vudu and Amazon -- oddly it doesn't happen when we watch episodes of the old Frasier show on Amazon. Roku recently issued a firmware update that supposedly addresses the issue. I have not been able to verify this yet, as we were on vacation when the firmware became available and I have not watched a film on the Ultra since updating the device.

FYI, the Ultra is the only model I have connected to a sound system -- it's connected to the Denon X3300 in my main HT. The Premiere and Express units are connected directly to 720p displays in our master bedroom and my wife's office.
 

Bradskey

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I'm not a 4K person. I had a Roku 3 which has been wonderful, and I had an older Roku streaming stick which was always slow. It got to where the old streaming stick was so slow it really couldn't run Youtube at all, at least not without massive frustration. I ordered the newest model streaming stick to replace it. The first one that came was defective. The screen kept flickering, videos glitched and crashed and it rebooted a few times. I got a replacement that seemed more stable but the remote kept un-pairing and would not reconnect. I resolved this by keeping the remote from the defective stick which actually worked fine. The replacement stick is better, but still has randomly rebooted a few times. So overall I'm not impressed with the stability and quality control here. My old slow stick was underpowered by always stable.

But then I suddenly noticed a few video glitches and freezes on my Roku 3 which I had not experienced before, so maybe there are also recent software updates that are very buggy. My parents got a Roku TV set last year and it has been wonderful compared to earlier excuses for "smart" TVs, so easy even they can use it.
 

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