Whole-home broadcast and streaming television solution FreeCast has brought its connected TV app to Roku devices, the company announced this week.
Now available in the Roku Channel Store as a free download, the FreeCast app unlocks more than 500 streaming TV channels, and a forthcoming update will bring over 500,000 TV episodes and films from FreeCast’s video on-demand catalog.
When paired with SiliconDust’s HD Home Run tuner, the FreeCast app also unifies free broadcast TV channels within the same app as its FAST content streams.
The app integrates with Roku’s Ad Manager, which provides advanced advertising capabilities within its hundreds of linear content streams and forthcoming video on-demand library.
“Roku is unique — they were one of the first to foresee the shift to streaming, and build technology to support that, rather than just throw Android on a set-top box,” William Mobley, the founder and CEO of FreeCast, said in a statement. “In that way, they’re a lot like FreeCast: We’re not just launching another VOD app, we’re building a complete media experience for consumers and solution for the media industry — so we’ve had to be thoughtful in how we approach this platform. Now we’re ready to launch the first piece of that experience on Roku devices, with a roadmap for bringing our full offering there.”
The FreeCast platform also includes a content catalog that links out to third party apps like Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus, as well as a subscription management platform called YouBundle — no relation to MyBundle — that allows streamers to start, pause and cancel their premium video plans by utilizing a unique virtual debit card.
In addition to Roku, FreeCast offers apps for Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV and Android TV (Google TV), and is compatible with TVs made by Hisense, LG, Walmart’s Onn, Philips, Samsung, TCL and Toshiba. Smartphone adn tablet apps are also available, and an app for Vizio smart TVs is in the works.
