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Lovers of “Celebrity Juice” and “Coronation Street” rejoice: from today you can stream your favourite telly programmes for free with the launch of ITV Player on Roku boxes and the Now TV Box , which is made by Roku.
Roku sells a variety of streaming devices, including its Streaming Stick and Roku 3 , which are known for ease of use and a wide selection of channels. In the UK, that includes TV from Channels 4 and 5 alongside the BBC, plus support for Netflix and Now TV.
Historically, Roku boxes in Britain have been missing telly from ITV and Amazon — today’s releases solves one of those two problems.
ITV Player includes a selection of shows from the last 30 days of programmes across five ITV channels. Roku says ITV will include the matches it has the rights to show from this summer’s World Cup. It’s free to watch, although the trade-off is that you have to suffer regular ad breaks.
The arrival of ITV leaves Roku with one big gap — Amazon Instant Video. Although this is available on Roku’s US boxes, there is no support for the service in the UK. On when that might change, Roku said in a statement to CNET, “We are always working to bring more entertainment to our customers. Amazon is a strong partner for us and is amongst the most popular channels on Roku in the US. We would like to bring it to our customers in the UK. However we can’t comment on specific timing.”
The ITV Player channel can be downloaded from the Roku Channel Store today and it will work on the Roku LT , Roku 1 , Roku 2 , Roku 3 and Streaming Stick boxes. It’ll also run on Sky’s Now TV Box , as it’s a cut-down Roku anyway.
