Back in 2010, the idea of plugging a little box into your television to make it smarter felt genuinely futuristic. TechViewz covered that era in Boxee Box At Your Home, when devices like Boxee were trying to turn the TV into something closer to a computer.
Fifteen years later, Boxee is long gone.
Roku is not.
That is slightly surprising because smart TVs were supposed to make streaming boxes unnecessary. If Netflix, YouTube and every other service are already built into the television, why would anyone still buy another device?
The answer is that TVs age differently from streaming platforms.
A good screen can stay perfectly usable for years. The processor, apps and software inside it may not. Interfaces get slow, manufacturers stop updating older models, and streaming apps eventually expect more capable hardware.
Roku basically turned that problem into a business.
Its current lineup still includes simple streaming sticks, but it also has the Roku Ultra with 4K, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, Wi-Fi 6 and a rechargeable voice remote. Roku also continues to sell and license its software for full televisions.
The bigger change, though, is happening in the software.
Roku redesigned its home screen in 2026 with personalised recommendations, Live TV, sports, subscriptions and AI-assisted content discovery. The company says the redesign is its first major home-screen change in more than a decade.
It is also experimenting with something called Roku Labs, where users can try apps for weather, stocks and even games directly on the television. That starts to make Roku feel less like a streaming menu and more like a lightweight computing platform for the biggest screen in the house.
That is probably why people are still searching for Roku.
The streaming-box idea never really died.
It evolved.
Boxee imagined a future where the television became connected, app-driven and more interactive.
Roku survived long enough to actually live in that future.
And maybe the strange part is that the little box behind the TV is still useful precisely because the TV itself keeps getting old.