The biggest news of the show so far from a smart TV perspective is the Roku/Time Warner announcement of the Time Warner app, which will essentially brings a full cable TV subscription package to any authenticated Time Warner subscriber with a Roku powered TV.
If this idea sounds familiar, it is. It's basically what the entire cable industry wanted to achieve with Tru2way (and before that OpenCable), where consumers could buy Tru2way equipment at retail and then have cable services delivered to them at home. It was, in a sense, the cable industry's plan to get rid of the set top box.
The only problem with Tru2way? It was pretty much an unmitigated disaster, with a few announcements now and then but very few products and even fewer consumers using it.
And while we knew Tru2way was essentially dead, this announcement by Roku shows the cable industry itself has moved on as well. With a Roku stick plugged into a smart TV, a consumer will be able to, without the complicated set up of Cablecard or anything like that, subscribe to a full 300 channels of cable service.
RIP Tru2way.
If you're interested in hearing Anthony Wood talk about the Roku stick, take a listen to this conversation I had with him in November.
