Airplay 2 and HomeKit Coming to Roku
It would seem that the new icons discovered in iOS14 betas a few months back are going to come in use before the end of 2020, with the news that Roku are planning on adding both Airplay 2 and HomeKit support to many of their devices. This will include streaming boxes and even TVs with the Roku functionality built in.
As reported by Chris Welch at The Verge, Roku made the announcement today, stating that both Airplay 2 and HomeKit will come to many of their 4K-ready products by the end of this year, although older Roku products that only support 1080p will miss out on these upgrades.
Whilst Airplay 2 will allow Apple users who don’t already own an Apple TV to stream both audio, video, photos and screen mirroring options from their Apple devices to their TV via the updated Roku streaming boxes and TV Sticks, the possibly more exciting addition of HomeKit support, may well allow more advance control of your Roku products via Siri, or via the Home app. This would be great if you were able to include control of these within HomeKit automations, but considering how little you can currently achieve with Apple’s own Apple TV boxes, then don’t hold your breath for anything too groundbreaking.
Aside from Roku functionality on third party TVs, the company currently offer four products that are likely to get the upgrade, given that they’re all capable of 4K. These are;
- Roku Premiere – streaming box
- Roku Streaming Stick – USB streaming ‘stick’
- Roku Streambar – a combined sound bar and streaming box (due for release mid-October)
- Roku Ultra – streaming box with JBL headphones (new 2020 model coming mid-October)
the only product left out of the update is the Roku Express, which is only capable of 1080p HD.
