Senior Software Engineer - UI

Battle of the Streaming Stars series coming to Roku. Roku today announced Battle of the Streaming Stars, a new competition series from Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions, with Terry Crews set to host and executive produce. Roku has ordered two specials, the first launching on October 23 and the second in early 2027 exclusively on The Roku Channel. Nearly five decades after IMG's Battle of the Network Stars first brought television's biggest personalities together for an unforgettable clash of networks, Battle of the Streaming Stars brings the format into the streaming era. Comedians, actors, reality stars, and creators from audiences' favorite shows will trade the couch for the field, going head-to-head in larger-than-life challenges inspired by the shows and movies people love. In each hour-long special, three teams of four battle it out over several rounds for a single prize: the Golden Roku Remote. Kay Adams will join the competition from the sidelines, bringing her sports expertise and on-camera energy to the action while capturing the strategy and smack talk. Yvette Nicole Brown will serve as the competition's referee, keeping the stars - and their rivalries - in check. Competitors will be announced in the coming weeks. "'Battle of the Network Stars' was an iconic celebration of television, bringing together the personalities audiences loved," said Brian Tannenbaum, Head of Roku Originals, Roku Media. "With 'Battle of the Streaming Stars,' Vital Thrills is taking that spirit and reinventing it for how audiences stream entertainment today. "Together with Peyton Manning and Omaha Productions, Terry Crews, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Kay Adams, we're bringing some of streaming's most entertaining personalities off the screen and onto the field for a competition that's big, funny, unexpected, and uniquely Roku." "Battle of the Network Stars' was must-watch TV in the 80s. We're excited to team up with Roku to bring that same concept back for the streaming era," said Peyton Manning, Co-Founder, Omaha Productions. "Terry, Yvette, and Kay are great, and you won't want to miss the stars battling it out for the Golden Remote." "'In the same spirit as the original series, anything can happen in Battle of the Streaming Stars. Some of the funniest, most competitive people in entertainment finally get to prove who's the best athlete in the room, and trust me, egos are going to get tested," said Terry Crews. "Coming together with Yvette, Kay, and the teams at Roku and Omaha Productions to create this show has been incredible, and I can't wait for people to see who takes home that Golden Remote." Battle of the Streaming Stars is produced by Omaha Productions with Peyton Manning, Jamie Horowitz, Colin Campbell, and Dan Gati executive producing. The project is overseen by Sean Boyle and Louisa L. Friedman on behalf of Roku Originals. Keith Geller serves as the showrunner.

This $1,200 Roku TV is faster for gaming than a $3,400 Samsung. No, seriously. I've tested hundreds of TVs, and I didn't expect the Roku Pro Series OLED to steal the gaming crown from one of the industry's most expensive flagships and deliver the lowest input lag I've ever measured. Principal Writer, Consumer Electronics OUR EXPERT Will is a seasoned reviewer and certified TV calibrator with 20 years of experience, specializing in home theater, VR, smart glasses, and gaming. Edited By: September 28, 2026 (Credit: Jeffrey Hazelwood/Roku) Having tested hundreds of TVs over the years, I know firsthand how devastating bad input lag can be when timing a parry or dodging an attack. Back in May, the Samsung S95H ($3,399.99 for 65 inches) earned its first PCMag Lab Award for lowest input lag. Since then, two far more affordable contenders have stepped into the ring: the Hisense U6SF Pro ($1,099 for 65 inches) and the Roku Pro Series OLED ($1,199.99 for 65 inches). After testing both side by side in PC Labs, the Roku came out on top by a fraction of a millisecond, making it its new undisputed speed champion for gaming and the latest recipient of its Lab Award. Why input lag is the ultimate make-or-break gaming metric. Input lag is the amount of time between a signal being sent to a screen and the screen updating. It's a vital metric to consider for gaming because latency can make play feel sluggish and throw off your timing enough to make attacking, dodging, and parrying nearly impossible. You want the lowest lag possible, especially for fighting games, character action games, and any other type of game where every moment counts.

Roku starts testing Roku OS 16 with new features & better-looking apps. September 24, 2026 Roku has begun rolling a new version of its TV software, called Roku OS 16.0, to the people who build streaming channels. Selected developers received the software for private testing. The point of this release is to give channel builders better-looking menus, faster live data, and fewer hidden bugs before the software reaches living rooms. Think of a Roku channel as a magazine laid out on your television. Until now, making a poster look modern often meant cutting extra images by hand: one with square corners, one with round corners, one with a border. OS 16.0 adds a built-in effects layer that the TV graphics chip can apply to pictures and colored boxes. Developers can round corners, draw a border, or fade one color into another. If a particular Roku box is too old for that graphics work, the extra layer is ignored and the picture still appears. A simple yes-or-no setting tells the app whether the effect will work on that device. The highlight that follows your remote around a row of shows can now use the same treatment, so a rounded tile and the glow around it finally match. Soft motion is easier too. Corner sizes and color fades can slide from one look to another without extra code running on every frame. Apps can also stay in closer contact with the internet. Many channels used to keep asking a server, Are there any updates? The new software can listen to a live stream of events, the same idea as a sports ticker that pushes scores as they happen. A second tool opens a two-way pipe called a WebSocket, useful for chat, live polls, or anything that needs to send and receive small messages without starting a fresh request each time. Stores can also request a unique customer identifier even if the person has not bought anything yet, which helps keep a purchase and a later billing notice tied to the same account. Most Netflix-style apps do not draw pixels themselves. A smaller group does: games, screensavers, music visualizers, and custom renderers that paint dots, lines, and rectangles directly on the screen. For those apps, several drawing commands now report whether they succeeded instead of staying silent. Pictures loaded as textures can be marked drawable or not. Shared, read-only pictures can sit once in memory; pictures the app plans to paint on get their own copy. If an app edits a picture after it has already been shown but before the next frame flip, the draw still works in 16.0, and the debug log prints a warning. Roku says that habit is expected to fail in a later release, no sooner than OS 16.3. The company also notes that most channels need no change at all. Only teams that use the older direct-draw path should review their code. Smaller housekeeping items round out the package. If a programmer forgets to flip an on-or-off switch at build time, the system now treats the missing switch as off instead of refusing to build. Programs can nest function calls more deeply than before. Two old settings are being retired. One animation option only mattered on devices Roku no longer supports. A certificate function already triggers a warning in Roku's store checks and will block publishing starting April 1, 2027. The replacement is a cloud-signed token that a server can use to confirm a request came from a real Roku device. For now, that is all Cord Cutters News know, but more features are likely to be announced once the update starts fully rolling out. For families, the takeaway is simple. Your Roku remote will feel familiar. Over the coming months, as this software lands on TVs and streaming sticks, individual channels may look a little cleaner and update scores or chat without a manual refresh. For the people writing those channels, OS 16.0 is a toolkit update: prettier tiles without extra artwork, live connections without homemade workarounds, and clearer error messages when something goes wrong on screen. Please add Cord Cutters News as a source for your Google News feed HERE. Please follow Cord Cutters News on Facebook and X for more news, tips, and reviews. Need cord cutting tech support? Join its Cord Cutting Tech Support Facebook Group for help. Disclaimer: To address the growing use of ad blockers Cord Cutters News now use affiliate links to sites like http://Amazon.com, streaming services, and others. Affiliate links help sites like Cord Cutters News, stay open. Affiliate links cost you nothing but help me support my family. Cord Cutters News do not allow paid reviews on this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.