You can now enjoy Roku’s free channel on your iOS devices

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Roku
A new way to watch free movies.
Photo: Roku

Want to give the Roku experience a go, but don’t own a Roku TV streaming device? Today may be your lucky day, since Roku has announced that its free, ad-supported streaming service, the Roku Channel, is now available for people to watch, via the internet, on your smartphone, tablet, or personal computer.

To access the content — which includes plenty of good, albeit slightly older movies like The Matrix trilogy, in addition to other content — you’ll simply need to create a Roku account.

Creating an account can be done at TheRokuChannel.com. After that, you’ll be able to launch straight into streaming via the Roku Channel. The “Featured Free” section started rolling out to U.S. yesterday, and should arrive with all customers in the coming days and weeks.

“Roku is the leading platform for free entertainment and our users love it. We’re delighted to deliver even more value to our customers without subscriptions, complicated logins or fees,” said Rob Holmes, Roku’s vice president of Programming and Engagement, in a statement. “By expanding The Roku Channel to the Web, we’re broadening the access points to high-quality, free streaming entertainment. With Featured Free, we’re making it easy for our customers to see the great, free content already available on the Roku platform in one place, while creating value for our content providers by connecting them with Roku’s growing audience.”

Given that the Roku Channel is funded through advertising, this is a smart way for Roku to grow that part of its business. Folks like free things, and this is a good way of letting people to sample what Roku offers without making them shell out any cash to do so.

And, hey, from a user perspective, any time you get to watch The Matrix for free (the original one, at least), that’s not a bad trade for signing up to a new service!

Source: TechCrunch

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