Roku Announces Purple Roku LT and HBO Go Channel
HBO Go has been on the go lately, hopping on new devices left and right. The latest device to receive HBO Go support is the Roku. Roku announced today that the HBO Go channel should be available to all Roku owners by the end of October, though it still requires a user be a standard HBO subscriber before unlocking its wealth of video goodness. Roku also announced the latest addition to its stable of media streamers, the Roku LT. Priced at only $50, the very purple streamer is definitely an entry-level model. It only streams at 720p and drops the MicroSD card and Bluetooth support, which also means that the Roku LT will not support the Roku motion sensing remote control and thus not be useful with the new game channels. I wouldn’t mind seeing a purple Roku that drops the MicroSD and Bluetooth and keeps 1080p and the Ethernet port, but I’m guessing that it wouldn’t hit the $50 mark.
No matter which model is selected, starting next month viewers will be able to watch HBO Go streaming content on the Roku family of hardware. Cord cutters that have dropped pay TV entirely still don’t have access, but Roku CEO Anthony Wood reports around 80 percent of Roku owners still have cable or satellite, so after adding Epix and being namechecked by Comcast to the FCC and at conferences, it’s not surprising to see the TV Everywhere movement trying to co-opt the box for its own ends.