Roku UK Channel Store - Weekly RoundUp #63

Hi, everyone !!



There were TWO MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS concerning Roku-related news specific to the UK, both of which were published during the past week, that I consider worthy of a 2nd mention in this 'Weekly RoundUp'. The first came early on Thursday morning when I broke the news through the companion Twitter Feed to this blog: @ukrokuchannels that a 'BBC Sport' channel for Roku had been added to Roku models in the UK that, perhaps most significantly, will enable UK Roku owners to watch LIVE MATCHES from the World Cup 2014 in Brazil next month. Official confirmation and further details came later that day, VIA THIS POST, when information about the channel (complete with screenshots) was published on the "Official" Roku Blog. Being of the opinion that this was (perhaps) the most significant UK-specific Roku channel to be released since '4oD', late last year, I didn't want it to get lost in the long list of new channel additions this week so, to celebrate it's release, I'm including the channel icon as part of my introduction as well as in the main listings:-

As of the date of this post, there is no sign of the 'BBC Sport' channel on NowTV Boxes which might, or might not, be down to NowTV / Sky deciding that a BBC channel offering FREE SPORT may not do much for the sales of their NowTV 'Sports Day Pass' at £9.99 per day. Until I hear otherwise, let's assume this will mean Roku owners in the UK will get to take their pick of the BBC's coverage of the World Cup 2014 and WATCH FREE LIVE STREAMS of those matches, while owners of NowTV Box won't get a look-in unless they stump up £9.99 per day for whatever they can watch on the streaming media player from NowTV. In an ideal world, if the rumours are true, we might even see an 'ITV Player' in time for the World Cup should they decide to tie it in with the launch of 'ITV Encore' which, according to recent reports, is due on Monday 9th June 2014. Something tells me this is highly unlikely to happen, given how long they have been dragging their heels over developing a Roku channel for NowTV Box / UK Roku players, but... you never know your luck !! Meanwhile... UK Roku owners can start planning which matches they wish to view, courtesy of the new 'BBC Sport' channel for Roku UK, using a handy list, FOUND HERE, published through Live-FootballOnTV.


Moving on, the second major announcement came shortly afterwards (again, courtesy of the companion Twitter Feed to this blog) when it was discovered that the current batch of new channels had taken the Roku UK channel count past a very important milestone, as the following screenshot reveals:-

Yes folks, while the packaging of the new Roku Streaming Stick (HDMI Version) modestly informs purchasers of "500+ channels", we are proud to announce THERE ARE NOW 1,000+ CHANNELS in the "Official" Roku UK Channel Store meaning there's PLENTY TO CHOOSE FROM !!!! So, for those of you with a NowTV Box who are growing tired of the meagre selection of channels available on the streaming media player from NowTV, there has never been a better time than now for you to UPGRADE TO A GENUINE ORIGINAL ROKU UK PLAYER which, unlike the NowTV Box, will genuinely offer you a constant stream of new channel additions, as illustrated on this blog !!

Anyway, let's now press on with the details for the current 'Weekly RoundUp' of NEW ADDITIONS to the "Official" Roku UK Channel Store. This time, there are TWENTY-EIGHT NEW CHANNELS which have been added during the past seven days. These latest additions to the channel line-up have provided us with FRESH CONTENT in the Film & TV, News, Weather, Sport, Music, Internet TV, International, Food, Special Interest, plus Religion & Spirituality genres (i.e. categories).

In keeping with previous installments from the 'Weekly RoundUp' series, details of these new channels have all been listed below, together with links to obtain further information {by clicking on the channel name(s) beneath the respective channel icon(s) as pictured} and to read a 'Roku Guide' review (where available) with an independent (slightly more expansive) assessment of each one:-

THE MALDIVES CHANNEL............................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

NEWS BY FAWESOME.TV..............................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

KIDS LEARN HINDI..........................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

JSTU STUDIOS...................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

BETTY'S KITCHEN...........................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

TEA TIME WITH TAYLA.................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

UNLOCK TV.......................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

THE ESCAPE' DRIVE-IN CHANNEL..............................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

THE SAINTS NETWORK TV...........................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

WLJC....................................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

CALVARY CHAPEL SONORA........................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

GEMPORIA TV...................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

MEDIA BROWSER PLUS PLUS LIGHT.........................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

MIMI - ARTIST & MODEL...............................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

BBC SPORT........................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

PTA - PLANES TRAINS + AUTOMOBILES...................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

ALTERNATIVE..................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

THE SEYCHELLES CHANNEL.......................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

THE GRENADINES CHANNEL......................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

U.S. WEED CHANNEL......................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

RECON.........................................................COST: £0.69 (MONTHLY) [Roku Guide Review]

SMO TV POSITIVE CHANNEL.......................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

N.B. Since this channel does not currently feature in the Roku (USA) Channel Store, the link above is for the Official Website of the 'SMO TV Positive Channel'. It may further interest you to know that the "SMO TV Positive Channel" is a LIVE-STREAMING CHANNEL, which is run as a non-profit media communications outlet, with much of it's content geared towards the promotion of family values in accordance with the Christian principles of the people involved. The "SMO TV Positive Channel" is a Spanish-language channel which originates (as far as I can tell) from Costa Rica.

Needless to say, if you happen to be of that particular religious persuasion (as well as fluent in Spanish), there is an abundance of content on offer here. Perhaps best of all, the "SMO TV Positive Channel" is both FREE-TO-ADD and FREE-TO-VIEW on Roku player. You (once again) have developer Pedro Santiago to thank for that, not forgetting the content providers, of course !!

If you would like to connect with the "SMO TV Positive Channel", you can easily get social with them via their Facebook Page: SMO TV (Facebook). Those of you who are fluent in Spanish can read more in the 'About Us' section of their website, FOUND HERE, and there are further details of their content partners, plus others who collaborate with the "SMO TV Positive Channel", VIA THIS LINK. Should you find yourself away from your Roku, and wanting to watch the "SMO TV Positive Channel" then I recommend making use of their 'Livestream' channel which you can again ACCESS ONLINE.

Lastly, and no doubt due (again) to the fact that the "SMO TV Positive Channel" has not yet been added to the "Official" Roku USA Channel Store, there is no Roku Guide Review available. If & when this situation changes, I will add a link to this post.

MARANATHA....................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

EIFM.....................................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

MY GUN TV........................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

RINGSCOOPS.COM...........................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

RENDEROSITY..................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

WHEC NEWS......................................................................COST: FREE [Roku Guide Review]

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Anyway, like it or not, that is your lot for this week and, whilst it doesn't quite the match-up to the thirty-two channels which made it into the "Official" Roku USA Channel Store during the same time-frame, I always think it's better to have SOME NEW CHOICES than none at all, don't you ?!!

Still, hopefully everyone in the UK with a Roku player managed to find something they like within the twenty-eight channels outlined above. If not, then you'll just have to pay us a visit another time when, with any luck, there will be something more to your liking. Afterall, there's no point installing every channel because, as I've said before, when it comes to adding new channels to your Roku player, IT'S YOUR CHOICE and, as with all things Roku... THE CHOICE IS ALWAYS YOURS !!

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In the meantime, for my last forty-one 'Weekly RoundUp' posts, I have been suggesting we spare a thought for all the poor folk who handed over their hard-earned cash for one of those NowTV Boxes [Powered by Sky] which, as I keep saying, have (so far) totally failed to live up to their full potential. Likewise, the original promise from NowTV of "more apps being continually added", is yet to be adhered to, since there has been ONLY ONE NEW CHANNEL ADDED to the Roku Channel Store on the NowTV Box SINCE THE PRODUCT LAUNCHED. Given the continued failure by the so-called "developers" at NowTV to add any new channels to the NowTV Box, I thought they might find the following image to be (err...) ILLUMINATING (ahem!) so, here's hoping they "see the light" and come up with something (anything!) to "brighten" our day(s) in the coming week(s) !!

HINT: Click on the above image to ENLARGE IT for easier viewing !!

PHOTO SOURCE: folklifestyle.com

Meanwhile, it's likely to be of no surprise to any of you that (as with EVERY WEEK BAR ONE since launch) there has (once more) been literally NO ACTION in terms of NEW ADDITIONS to the Roku Channel Store selection on the NowTV Box. What this means is that, over the course of the past week, NowTV have (again) produced a (NOT SO) GRAND TOTAL of ZERO NEW CHANNELS to add to their (already SEVERELY REDUCED) version of the Roku Channel Store as included on their NowTV Box. Meanwhile, the "Official" Roku Channel Store that features on all UK Roku players has added a further TWENTY-EIGHT EXTRA CHANNELS during that same period of time. To keep things firmly in perspective, in the forty-three weeks since the launch of the NowTV Box, there has been a total of FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT EXTRA CHANNELS added to the Roku Channel Store on UK Roku players, as compared with ONE EXTRA CHANNEL being added to the Roku Channel Store on the NowTV Box. That, surely, must tell you something ?!!!

Like I've said in previous weeks, it seems to be a case of one step forward and two steps back when it comes to the meagre selection of channels available in the Roku Channel Store which features on the streaming media player from NowTV. To illustrate my point... from the moment that the NowTV Box was launched, they have managed to completely lose 'WatchIndia' and 'USTV Now', with '4oD' being  the one & only channel added to the Roku Channel Store on the NowTV Box since it launched !! A fortnight ago it was the turn of the '4oD' channel which, like 'Flixster' before it, decided to up-sticks and leave it's original home in the "Film & TV" category to hide-out in the "Most Popular" channels, presumably (also) preferring the (relative) obscurity of a twenty-five channel lineup to the company of just six other channels with which it had shared the genre since the 'Flixster' channel went into hiding. Perhaps worse still was the loss of 'MLB.TV' from the "News, Weather, Sport" category which, unless you added it previously (in which case you'll find it under 'My Channels' in the menu), you will not (currently) be able to add to the channel selection on your NowTV Box. In fact, as far as the channel selection on the NowTV Box goes, the best I can say is that at least the 'Havoc Television' and the 'VEVO' channels (which had both been missing an "official" Roku Channel Store category on the NowTV Box for a very long time) have managed to stay put for the past eleven weeks, having found their way back into the 'Music' genre (i.e. category) of the Roku Channel Store on the NowTV Box. Likewise... the other channel lacking an "official" Roku Channel Store category on the NowTV Box for quite some time, namely 'HooplaKidz Rhymes', remains part of "Internet TV".

Sadly, this means there are still just 47 CHANNELS to be found in the NowTV Box version of the Roku Channel Store PLUS the 'NOW TV' and 'Sky Store' channels which (unfortunately) means the overall total remains at only forty-nine channels (even less than there were when the product was launched in July 2013). Plus, let's not forget, those last two are only there by default and not included with the apps (i.e. channels) in the Roku Channel Store on the NowTV Box. If we then leave aside the "Most Popular" channels and any additional ones listed in "My Channels" (as I do with my channel count for the Roku player), when it comes to the actual Roku Channel Store categories on the NowTV Box, there remains no more than a paltry 45 channels in total compared with 1,000+ in the channel store on UK Roku players !!!

Bearing this in mind... whilst the NowTV Box won't exactly leave you out-of-pocket, if you are after a streaming media player which can genuinely boast of "more apps being continually added" and is a lot less likely to leave you wanting by the time the summer holiday period begins, then I strongly advise you to do yourselves a BIG FAVOUR and spend the extra twenty quid or so to get a genuine original Roku LT streaming media player that will allow you to ACCESS NETFLIX plus many other film & tv channels (incl. NowTV) as well as having both the 'Plex' and 'YouTube' channels readily available via the channel store and will give you more than 950 EXTRA CHANNELS TO CHOOSE FROM when compared with the selection (currently) found on a NowTV Box.

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Still, whether you happen to own a Roku player, a NowTV Box, OR BOTH, as I do... be sure to come back in seven days' time for my next 'Weekly RoundUp' and, if you can't wait that long, remember you can always keep up with all the UK Roku action (as it happens) throughout the coming week, by following the companion Twitter Feed: @ukrokuchannels where up-to-the-minute info on all things Roku-related (here in the UK) is posted on a daily basis (well, almost).

Until the next time, then...

That's all folks !!