Roku has announced a number of new platform improvements today, including an upgrade to the Roku Voice and Search tools. These improvements are designed to make it easier for Roku users to discover content to watch, regardless of whether searching by voice or text.
Key Takeaways
- Roku Voice will support more natural, conversational queries, including general and follow-up questions like “What’s Barbie about?” or “Which one is best?”.
- Roku is adding “where to stream” details and links to titles and trailers, allowing users to see available platforms and start streaming.
- Roku is expanding search support to the Live TV Zone with plans to also expand search support to the Live Channel Guide soon.
While Roku Voice was already capable of returning recommendations based on questions, it is now becoming a lot smarter. Specifically, better at understanding more varied questions and engaging in more conversation-based queries.
Roku users will soon be able to use voice commands to ask more general questions about the movies and shows they are considering watching. This is in addition to general questions about characters and more.
Some examples of questions Roku Voice is now able to answer include:
- What’s Barbie about?
- How scary is The Shining?
- What kind of fish is Nemo?
In addition to these more general questions, Roku Voice is also now capable of understanding follow up questions, making it better at maintaining more natural conversations with the user.
As an example, after asking for recommendations for a specific type of movie, Roku users will be able to ask follow up questions like which one is best?
Roku Voice will now understand the second question directly relates to the answers given to the first question, and answer accordingly.
Regardless of whether asking a general or follow up question, Roku Voice responds directly on the screen and provides quick launch options for relevant content.
Other Search And Navigation Improvements
While Roku Voice is making it easier to find content using a voice command, Roku is also improving the use of text and other navigation features for content discovery.
One of the most notable is that Roku is added ‘where to stream‘ support to each title. With this upgrade, Roku users will begin seeing the streaming services and platforms where a title is available to watch and have the ability to click through to start streaming the title.
According to Roku, up to two streaming apps will be highlighted under each title, with the highlighted apps prioritized based on the user’s active subscriptions. Additional ways to watch can also be found by clicking on the title.
A similar feature is also becoming available for trailers too. If, for example, you’re watching a trailer, you can now click on a new Ways to Watch button to see where the title is available to stream.
Users will then also be able to click through one of the options to begin watching, and all directly without having to leave the preview.
For those that prefer streaming live TV through The Roku Channel, Roku is also now bringing Search to the Live TV Zone, making it possible to search by titles, categories or keywords.
Roku has also confirmed that Search will be coming to the Live TV Channel Guide in the coming months, offering the same level of search-based benefits.
While Roku hasn’t specified exactly when users can expect to gain access to these new features, the company did confirm they are coming soon.
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