Posts Tagged: "US Patent No. 8938755"

Viewers stream 7 billion hours of content on Roku

Roku offers 5,000 streaming channels through its Channel Store and, to help consumers find interesting content more easily, it has developed a channel-targeting technology protected by U.S. Patent No. 8627388 titled Method and Apparatus for Channel Prioritization. This patent protects a method by which the maximum amount of channels that the client device can use are filled with available channels of targeted content, usually based on the most popular channels or those channels which are accessed most often by the client device. The increasingly large amount of data, video, audio, and gaming options that Roku users can choose from makes it harder for the user to find favored content from a desired content provider. The problem is exacerbated by the different ways a user can access content such as renting, buying or subscribing to content. The method this patent protects manages content in a streaming media environment and runs a preloaded channel in the background to reduce lag.