Watching TV is not supposed to be hard. It should be pleasurable, but the industry has tied itself in knots as content and platforms fragment then coalesce in the shift to streaming.
“It's easy to overstate the problems that consumers face,” says Tom Price, Director of Content Distribution at Roku. “A lot of the work we’ve done in surveys and focus groups tell us that consumers feel they've never had it so good. They've got access to all of this great content, from extremely high production value drama series to niche creator videos that they can watch on whatever device they want whenever they want.
“They've also got increasingly sophisticated televisions. It's not like they’re having to jerry-rig cables, screens and devices as before. It's all starting to merge. With that said, it’s not quite working together properly yet. It still can be a little clunky to find the show you want and there's that paradox of choice where the sheer amount of possible things to watch can be overwhelming.
“These are challenges that Roku is working on. How do you offer consumers vast choice but simplify it and help them find the right content?”
You are not signed in
Only registered users can read the rest of this article.

Premium content: HbbTV formalises integration of popular DRM systems
Vincent Grivet, Chairman of the HbbTV Association, reveals how a new digital rights management (DRM) specification will enable the reliable and secure delivery of premium content via HbbTV-based services, especially for applications approaching the complexity and content protection demands of video-on-demand (VOD) platforms.
IBC Incubator 2025: Changing the Game Again
The all-new IBC Incubator 2025: Changing the Game Again levels up in multiple different ways. The core concept is a wide-ranging extension of the 2024 Accelerator ‘AI Media Production Labs’, retaining several of the veteran Champions and Participants, but also widening industry engagement.

On the box: Harnessing sustainable set technology for Treehouse
RD Studios’ new live-action children’s TV series – which itself has a sustainability theme – has been made using 100% recyclable sets, writes David Davies.

From crowd to cloud: Esports broadcasting in 2025
The recent Global Esports Industry Week (GEIW) and BLAST.tv Austin Major provided a real-world insight into the relationship between esports content production and high-end broadcast. Ivan Simic reports.

IBC Accelerators: Master Control Cloud
The Master Control Cloud project, part of the 2025 IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme, aims to build a proof-of-concept system that reimagines the traditional broadcast master control room as a scalable, cloud-native service.