Roku TV's New Feature Adds Samsung Frame Style To Your Living Room Without The Price

One of the coolest things about Samsung's ultraexpensive and minimalist Frame lineup of TVs is that they look like, well, a TV, but even more like a blank canvas ready for a fine art piece. Of course, you had to buy those digital paintings, or pick up a subscription to the art store, but it looks stunning in person. Roku is now drawing some "inspiration" and bringing a dash of artistic serenity to its streaming platform, starting with Roku-branded TVs.

Roku is calling it Backdrops, a concept that will "transform your TV into a canvas." Backdrops will arrive as its standalone app, which is essentially a catalog of "famous classics, wide-ranging museum collections, abstract designs," among other art genres. Of course, if you deem the picture of your pooch adds more joy to your living room than a digital painting of a sun-kissed valley, Roku will let you cycle through your own gallery of pictures in the name of flexibility.

The idea is to save users the pain of seeing a blank screen or having it destroy the entire aesthetics of their living space. But what sets Roku's endeavor apart is the delivery model, which, as the company proudly advertises, "For Free." No purchase hassles, no subscription shenanigans. For anyone who's lived through the era of NFTs, they won't have to dismiss Roku's upcoming feature with the "Why do I pay for JPEG on my TV" argument.

Of course, with great digital art comes an even greater responsibility, and that is called functional flexibility. To that end, Roku will let users create their own collection of images and artwork. Moreover, they can dictate the time interval for how long each item is displayed on the TV screen before the next one slides into view. Roku customers will even be able to specify the brightness levels, if they are too picky about saturation levels and have a taste for understated colors.

However, folks who don't necessarily want to treat their smart TV as yet another computer, they always have the choice of picking a pre-curated gallery of artwork from an artist or museum of their choice. And to go with all that theme of user convenience, Roku will even let you skirt around the chore of pressing a few buttons and simply turn Backdrops on or off with a voice command. It's the year of chatty digital assistants, after all.

Backdrops will also be accessible from within the settings app, and will first arrive on Roku-branded TV sets over the coming weeks. This will be followed by Roku TV models offered by other OEMs, and finally, on TVs connected to Roku streaming hardware in the fall.