Roku Announces the Roku OS 7.6 Update with New Cord Cutting-Friendly Features


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Roku announced the details behind its 7.6 Roku OS update. Along with a host of fixes and improvements under the hood, cord cutters will find several new features they will love.

The Roku OS 7.6 roll out starts as Roku sets new records for both market share and active users. According to Roku, at the end of 2016 Roku made up about half of all streaming media players sold in the United States. To top this off, Roku also has 14 million active accounts as of March 31, 2017. (One account can represent multiple devices.)

To keep building off of its success, Roku has announced several new features coming with the Roku OS 7.6 update.

More Ways to Watch

The big update is the More Ways to Watch feature for Roku TVs. This feature is an opt-in system that will let cord cutters watching TV with their antenna find new ways to watch a show. Now Roku will automatically search over 300 Roku Channels to see if that movie or TV show is available, which will allow you to restart the movie or even find the next episode of a show you are watching.

Roku says this new feature is being rolled out on HD and FHD Roku TVs and new 2017 4K Roku TV models and will move to 2016 4K Roku TV models this summer.

More Ways to Watch will use an automatic content recognition system to determine what you are watching. This means if you decided you want to restart the show, watch it commercial free, or see what is like this show you don’t have to do anything. Roku will do all the work for you and show you the options you have.

More Over-the-Air TV Improvements

Roku TVs are also getting two new features to make over-the-air TV even better. First you can create a favorites list of over-the-air TV stations. You can view all the channels you get with your antenna or browse a list of favorites. All you have to do is press the “*” on your Roku to switch between the two different lists.

You can also now see a thumb nail when fast forwarding live TV you have paused. Allowing you to easily find the end of commercials.

Roku is also bringing the auto closed captioning on rewind to your antenna. Not sure what was just said? Hit the reply button and Roku will turn on the closed captions until you return to the point you just watched. This feature has been available for streaming players but not for antennas until now. You will have to turn it on in the Settings.

Customer Inputs

Own an Xbox One or an Xbox 360? Now you can create custom input names for your Roku TVs. No longer will you be limited to just a list of pre-created options.

Update: Yes all Roku boxes made from 2011 and forward will get the new 7.6 update. So all Roku 1, 2, 3, and 4 models. Along with all Roku Sticks and the new line of Roku Express, Premiere, and Ultra.

So those are the upfront changes you will notice in the Roku OS 7.6 update.  There are many back-end improvements you won’t notice, but the front-end changes seem to be for Roku TVs. With Roku now making up 13% of all Smart TV sales in the United States in 2016 and growing it seems Roku is doubling down on smart TVs.

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