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Roku Wants to Help Cord Cutters Find 4K Video

Users can search across multiple services to find their next 4K fix.
Image: Roku

Roku wants you to think of it as Switzerland in the ongoing streaming media battle between the likes of Amazon, Apple, and Google.

Pre-orders for the Roku 4, the company's latest streaming media player, are now open, with the company expecting to ship the $129 device to customers before the end of the month.

The device ticks all the boxes you'd expect from a streaming media player here in late 2015, including the latest generation of fast 802.11ac Wi-Fi (which routers have begun supporting over the last few years), voice control, and access to a wide variety of apps and streaming video services (including Amazon Video, Netflix, and Sling TV).

There's even support for 4K Ultra HD, which is still rare among streaming media players. Amazon's latest Fire TV supports the hi-res video standard (but only at 30 frames per second to Roku's 60 frames per second), but Apple's upcoming Apple TV does not. Consider it Roku's play for the hardest of the hardcore core cutters: for people who have no problem paying a premium for a 4K Ultra HD TV, but still want nothing to do with cable companies like Comcast. (And don't worry, there's a new startup that will help you there.)

Image: Roku

While 4K Ultra HD content is still somewhat rare (unless you're a sports fan in Canada), Roku has created a dedicated channel highlighting available 4K video content that's ready to be streamed across a variety of services. You'll need a reasonably speedy broadband connection (say, around 10-15 megabits per second down) to stream such content, but the company told Motherboard in a recent interview that this is becoming less of an issue as broadband speeds in the US creep (if ever so slowly) upward.

Roku has another advantage in that Amazon is still selling the thing. Last week, Amazon said it would no longer sell the Apple TV or Google Chromecast because it didn't want consumers to be "confused" about whether or not those devices support its own homegrown streaming video service, Amazon Video. (They don't.) Roku does, and it supports just about every other service under the sun (with the obvious exception of iTunes).