Roku is expanding its product offerings with a new line of wireless speakers. Best known for designing streaming media players and smart TVs, this will be the first pair of speakers made by the company and they are designed only to work with Roku TVs.
According to Business Wire, Anthony Wood, the CEO, says that Roku is “able to offer our customers a simple and affordable way to further immerse themselves into the TV, movies, and music they love while providing them with a better whole home entertainment experience.”
Home theater enthusiasts tend to agree that a well-engineered speaker system greatly adds to the overall entertainment value of TV shows, movies, and music.
These new wireless speakers are designed to seamlessly integrate into any existing Roku TV setup. Since the software for their TVs and speakers is developed in-house, Roku implies that initial setup, optimization, and syncing will involve less frustration than using third-party products.
Going further, deeply embedded within Roku’s wireless speaker system is a wealth of intelligent technology that further heightens the overall movie and TV watching experience. For example, the speakers offer sophisticated Automatic Volume Leveling that cleverly controls the sound to lower the volume on loud scenes and boost the volume on quieter ones. In addition, there’s also Dialog Enhancement functionality to elucidate muddied dialog. That last feature, if it proves to be true, makes this speaker system a potential game changer, especially at such a reasonable price point.
Each system comes with a voice remote, a more advanced tabletop remote, and two speakers. At present, the speakers are designed to pair exclusively with other Roku TVs, however, they do support limited third-party connections via Bluetooth.
The wireless speaker bundle will retail for $199, however, the company is currently accepting $149.99 pre-orders through July 23, 2018. Roku hopes to start shipping by late October.