Roku Channel adds live ABC News feed

Roku has expanded its free Roku Channel with a News section featuring four new feeds plus some interface enhancements.

Ty Pendlebury Editor

TV and home video editor Ty Pendlebury joined CNET Australia in 2006, and moved to New York City to be a part of CNET in 2011. He tests, reviews and writes about the latest TVs and audio equipment. When he's not playing Call of Duty he's eating whatever cuisine he can get his hands on. He has a cat named after one of the best TVs ever made.

Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials

Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.

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Ty Pendlebury

April 24, 2018 6:00 a.m. PT

Roku has unveiled additions to its free Roku Channel with a News category, a Continue Watching feature and expanded Genre options.

Roku has partnered with ABC News, Cheddar, PeopleTV and Newsy for on-demand and live coverage as part of the News section. The updates are expected to go live on Roku streaming sticks, boxes and smart TVs in May.

Roku representatives said the ABC News channel in particular will be "unfiltered, raw and authentic" with a single or multiscreen feed showing developing news without a news anchor. The ABC News app within Roku will also broadcast the live feed.

The Roku Channel went live in September 2017 as a place where any Roku user could access free movies and TV shows. It now has over a thousand titles on its roster, which run with "relevant and nonrepetitive" ads interspersed.

The addition of Continue Watching allows users to pick up where they left off in a program, just like on Netflix and many other apps, and expanded genre options are more-specific permutations of "action," "comedy," etc., which again, is very similar to Netflix.

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