Roku Reveals Plans For Third-Party Themes

Those with a Roku player were graced with a new homescreen for a while over the winter holidays, shaking of the typical purple homescreen with a bit of snow-themed color. If that temporary change served to remind you about how nice it would be to have a bunch of themes to choose from, you're in luck.

Roku's Senior Vice President of Product Management, Jim Funk, said at the Appsworld event in San Francisco today that homescreen themes developed by third-party developers is the company's latest ambition. Even better, the new themes are set to arrive any time now.

The basic Roku homescreen structure will not be changed, meaning the right-side preview and app tiles, as well as the left-side system menu, will stay where they are. The graphical portions of the homescreen, however, will be open for developers to tinker with, giving users different options to brighten up their television screens.

The third-party themes will be available in Roku's app store, where the developers can charge a fee for them (it isn't clear whether any will be available for free). There's no precise date on when the new themes will launch, only that it could happen later today or any time in the coming days.

SOURCE: GigaOm