Roku is officially working on original content. The manufacturer of set-top box announced Roku Originals, a new brand, in a press release today. Roku says it will debut more than 75 original series and movies this year on its free, ad-supported network, The Roku Channel. Quite a few of these original new shows come from the Quibi content library that Roku got in a fire sale in January 2021.
Earlier this year, Protocol saw a mailing list suggesting that Roku would invest in original content outside of the Quibi property he now owns. Free, ad-supported content is still a relatively new but growing area in streaming. Peacock, Paramount Plus and even Plex have all had success with viewers with completely free stuff they can watch on their set-top boxes and smart TVs. It makes sense that Roku, a company that already earns most of its money from advertising, would follow suit.
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There is no word on what content will be released first or when it will start broadcasting, but most likely the old Quibi content will be seen before any of the other original Roku shows. The content is full of big names like Anna Kendrick, Idris Elba and Liam Hemsworth.
What will be interesting is how the Quibi content is broadcast. Quibi’s gimmick (which was absolutely bizarre, but also its time completely advanced) was that the content would change depending on how your phone held up, with separate and sometimes completely different streams for portrait and landscape mode. For example in the short film NestHolding the phone in landscape mode shows you the point of view of the main character, while holding it in portrait mode shows you the point of view of the Nest security cameras in the house where the character is.
Presumably, Roku will offer only one stream: the landscape. In some cases, it may affect how the story is presented, or even remove an important context from a scene that is meant to be viewed in portrait mode on your phone.
All the new Roku Originals will be broadcast on The Roku Channel along with old episodes of The Roku Channel This old house and more than 40,000 free movies and TV shows that Roku paid to license. In addition to being playable on Roku devices, you can also set it up on your browser, iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV and some Samsung smart TVs.