Well, it looks like Roku has had a good year. They just announced that they’ve hit a pretty significant milestone; over 1 billion streams served to TVs. This means that they’re competing with the cable companies, and gaining quite a bit of viewing time.
In fact, Roku is starting to eat into that biggest number, the “average of 36 hours” of television watched by most americans. In fact, the average Roku box owner watches a total of 11 hours of content. That’s a whole lot of Netflix and MLB.TV. Of course, keep in mind that the basic Roku box starts at $59.99, making it one of the cheapest methods of streaming Netflix to your TV out there.
From the press release:
Roku streaming players continue to grow in popularity and usage as Roku makes more streaming apps, or “channels,” available. In December 2010, Roku players averaged over 11 hours of playing time per week – a significant amount of TV viewing for Roku customers when compared to the national average of 36 hours per week.
“A billion streams is pretty amazing and shows just how engaged our customers are with their Roku players,” said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, Inc. “If you think about it, our active user base now matches that of a top 10 US cable company. Our core values of simplicity, great content and affordability clearly resonate with mainstream customers.”
Starting at $59.99, Roku players now feature over 100,000 movies and TV shows from Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Video On Demand and Hulu Plus; live and on demand sports and highlights from MLB.TV, NHL GameCenter Live and NBA GameTime; music from Pandora, MP3tunes, MOG, and TuneIn Radio; photo and video sharing from Flickr and Facebook; plus news and entertainment from thousands of sources around the world. The Roku platform has become the platform of choice for top content partners looking to reach TV viewers via instant and live streaming.