Roku Hits 5 Million Players Shipped Milestone

Roku, the nifty streaming video device that brings a variety of easily-accessible content to your television, just reached its newest milestone: the shipment of its 5 millionth device in the United States. The massively popular device is used to stream what has amounted to billions of hours of TV shows and movies, among other content. As part of its celebration, the company has released an infograph on the evolution of streamed television.

Roku has bragging rights as having offered the first video streaming device for televisions back in the early summer of 2008, with the device first being called the Netflix Player (due to Netflix being the only content platform available at the time). Following this, it was eventually renamed to Roku, gaining both additional content services and, years later, gaming via the addition of Angry Birds.

In addition to Netflix, users now have access to content from Amazon, VUDU, and others, as well as streaming music via Pandora and more. Several different models are available, with one of the device's elements helping drive sales (besides being awesome) is its low price, starting at only $49.99 for the purple LT version, with more expensive models offering better and additional features.

All of these things have helped propel the small device, which has a diameter a tad larger than the size of your palm, to 5 million shipments in the US. To mark the occasion, Roku has released an infograph that contains the evolution of streaming television as seen from the perspective of its streaming device, starting in 2008 when it was launched to 2013 and its 5 millionth sale.

[via Roku]