After selling its streaming media players primarily online for the last three years, Roku will now start selling its set-top boxes in Best Buy stores. This is Roku’s largest retail partnership; it also sells its models through smaller chains BJ’s Wholesale Club, Fry’s Electronics and RadioShack. The deal demonstrates the…

Roku is maturing fast this week: First came news of its first cable-channel partner, WealthTV, and now a deal with mDialog that will allow for dynamic midstream ad insertion in its programming. While WealthTV might seem the bigger deal, the latter has bigger implications.

Roku is expected to announce Tuesday an unlikely addition to its programming lineup: WealthTV. This will mark the first time a cable channel has joined the streaming device, which begs an obvious question: How is this even possible?

A Florida church has set up its own Roku channel for live services—and is buying set tops for some congregants. Northland calls itself “a church distributed,” emphasizing worship in a variety of settings, including house churches, and ways, including iPhone, Android and Blackberry apps. apps. Why Roku? In part, the…

Hulu Plus is gaining two more ways to connect with potential subscribers: TiVo (NSDQ: TIVO) and Roku are adding access to Hulu Plus through their devices. But Hulu Plus still needs an agreement with CBS (NYSE: CBS) and more current cable content for consumers to see as it a TV…

Roku, which is facing renewed competition from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) TV and (soon) Google (NSDQ: GOOG) TV, is updating its product line-up. The company is still offering three devices at three different price points, but each comes with additional features. The new mid-end Roku XD and high-end Roku XDS, for…

Video service Roku cut prices by 23 to 30 percent across its WiFi set tops today, taking its most expensive device below $100 in the hopes of being perceived as the best value heading into the fall sales season. An e-mail describing the move referred to competitive products “both current…

Roku’s 500,000-plus customers already have access to Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), MLB.TV, Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) VOD and MMA’s Midwest Cage Championship, among other channels. Now the streaming-video player, which has talked of a 2011 IPO, is adding the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which airs on Spike TV and Versus in the U.S.…

Buried in Netflix’s earnings call Wednesday were some details about the company’s sale of its stake in set-top maker Roku to Menlo Ventures. Asked about the sale, CEO Reed Hastings said the company “booked a gain pre-tax of about $1.7 million—after tax that translates to $1.035 million” on the deal.…

Set-top maker Roku is still raising venture capital cash but it is already talking about an IPO. CEO Anthony Wood tells Bloomberg that the company may go public as soon as 2011. In the meantime, it is in the process of raising a $30 million round from investors, including existing…

Roku is cracking open access to its Internet set-top device to third-party content providers—adding 10 partners to its “Channel Store” this week—as the company takes a page from Apple’s iPhone App Store. The Roku player, launched in May 2008, initially provided access only to Netflix’s streaming-video service. Since then it…

Netflix-backed Roku is selling new versions of its set-top box. Earlier this year, the company offered a software upgrade that gave its standard definition player the ability to play HD content, as part of its deal to stream video from *Amazon* VOD; now users can get HD quality from the…

Pretty soon, it will be easier to write about which devices and services aren’t carrying MLB.TV. The latest to go major league is Roku, the $99 HD set-top box. Over the next few days, Roku users who also subscribe to MLB.TV Premium will be able to use the device to…

Set-top box-maker Roku has raised nearly $8.4 million in funding from Menlo Ventures as part of a fourth round. Contentinople first reported the raise, citing a regulatory filing. This follows a third round of funding from Menlo late last year (Another filing shows it totaled $10 million).

Roku, the digital media device player company and maker of the cute little Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) Player by Roku, has closed its third round of funding, from Menlo Ventures. The amount was not disclosed. This round follows a second round investment from Netflix that closed in January of this year…Netflix…

Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) announced its first direct-to-TV movie partnership with LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) early this year, but was short on details then. Since then, it launched through a low-cost Roku box. Earlier this month it also announced the Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) XBox360 streaming deal. And now, it has announced…

The Roku-Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) movie delivery box, which went out of stock soon after it was launched, has apparently sold close to 100K units since its launch in May, a seemingly high number considering its limited application and selection of Netflix movies for now..that number comes from Dan Rayburn on…

After its Roku box integration, which received critical acclaim for ease of use, Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) is continuing on its digital service integration within others: it has just announced a deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), where Xbox 360 will be able to stream thousands (well 10K, compared to its DVD…

So funny this: Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) decides to build a streaming movie box for TV viewing sometime last year, and last spring hires Anthony Wood, the founder of ReplayTV and Roku box. Then, as is customary with the company by now, changes its mind late last year…Wood decides to leave…