“Set-top box” is one of those puzzling anachronisms, like “record industry,” that seems to persist for no clear reason. Perching a cable tuner, TiVo or Apple TV on top one of today’s slim television sets would require either amazing balancing skills, very strong adhesive or a bit of both.
For the last several years, Roku has been one of the companies selling devices that let users stream Internet video to their televisions from a big lineup of programming sources, including Netflix and Hulu Plus. Even though you can’t balance them on top of a modern television set, the Roku boxes are tiny things, roughly the size of a hockey puck.
Roku is announcing a plan on Wednesday to get rid of the box entirely.
The company is developing a product called the Roku Streaming Stick, a device that will be about the size of one of those miniature thumb drives you plug into a PC to back up documents and other files. The stick, which slips unobtrusively into an HDMI jack on the back of a TV, provides all of the same access to Roku’s video programming partners that one can get from a Roku box but without an extra piece of hardware dangling from the set by an umbilicus.
In an interview, Anthony Wood, Roku’s chief executive and founder, said the product was an outgrowth of the early consumer research Roku did as it was preparing to make its first Internet boxes. “What we found is that one of the biggest objections to the box was that it was there,” Mr. Wood said.
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