The history of Roku and the fight over CarPlay
Before Roku was a leading player in the streaming wars, with that ubiquitous purple screensaver and a library of original content and practically every streaming app you could possibly imagine, it was a Netflix gadget — the first Netflix gadget, for that matter, and the one that helped start a streaming revolution. But the Roku story was almost very different.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we try out a couple of show formats we’ve been planning for a while. First, we debut our tech-rewatch segment, in the vein of some of our favorite rewatch shows like Office Ladies, The West Wing Weekly, and The Rewatchables. We’re calling it Version History, at least for now. For this first segment, we tell the story of the Roku Netflix Player,...