If you have run out of things to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime Video and are also fed up with their ever increasing prices, a rival company has just launched a new streaming service that costs much less.
US streaming firm Roku has unveiled Howdy, a brand new video subscription service that aims to take the fight to its competitors by majorly undercutting them in price. Howdy is debuting bearing the tagline, “Almost everything you want to watch. Always ad-free.”
Howdy is now available in the US, Canada and Mexico for just $2.99 per month, with the added bonus that it won’t show you any ads whatsoever. This is $5 less than Netflix’s $7.99 Standard with ads plan.
Howdy launches boasting familiar titles such as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Blind Side,” “Weeds,” and “conic rom-coms, medical dramas, ‘90s comedy, feel-good classics, and more,” Roku said in a press release.
“Priced at less than a cup of coffee, Howdy is ad-free and designed to complement, not compete with, premium services,” said Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood. “We’re meeting a real need for consumers who want to unwind with their favorite movies and shows uninterrupted, and on their terms. Howdy is a natural step for us at Roku, extending our mission to make better TV for everyone, by making it affordable, accessible, and built for how people watch today.”
There’s no word yet on a UK launch for Howdy, but if it comes it would prove stiff competition for Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video, all of which see near-annual price rises and whose ad-supported options all cost more than ad-free Howdy.
Roku already has an ad-supported streaming service called the Roku Channel, which is free for anyone with a Roku TV or streaming stick.
Roku’s approach to limit its streaming channel and new subscription to its own hardware is different to Amazon, which sells its Fire TV Sticks to give access to Prime Video and other apps but also allows Prime Video to be available on other platforms, including Roku.
The main catch for now is that Howdy is only available via Roku-branded hardware such as Roku TVs or Roku streaming sticks – it’s not an app you’ll be able to download and use on your Fire TV Stick, Apple TV or other smart TV.
Whether or not Howdy is a good service to spend $2.99 will depend on what content it offers. The press release is very light on mentioning titles, while the company says it has “nearly 10,000 hours” of shows and films from “partners, Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles”.
If you have a Roku streaming stick hooked up to your TV in the UK, watch this space (or indeed your TV) to see if Howdy makes its way across the pond to these shores any time soon.