It’s almost 2 years since I began to stream on my HDMI enabled television with various dedicated streaming devices including Roku. During this time it was a period of both exploration and education from a wide variety of mostly online sources. While I did enjoy learning about the world of streaming from these mostly online sources, I think many people don’t have either the time or patience-or both-to do it in this manner.
When I visit my local Best Buy, Target, and Walmart stores (which already carries streaming devices like Roku), I noticed that it’s so easy to miss the little devices hidden away in a tiny corner of jammed mostly behind a locked glass case, & physically very far below eye-level shelving. Even the Roku televisions really don’t demonstrate what makes them unique to other televisions on display (not even the Roku Home Menu is displayed-they're simply always tuned to the same store ads even OTA and other TVs have), or just displaying a series of pretty screen saver photos, and/or worse of all, the staff doesn’t know much about them anyway.
My no frills basic local T-Mobile store is way ahead of this no real demonstration of the Roku products serious lacking by making sure potential customers don’t miss the television playing their own offerings which the T-Mobile device predominantly physically sits and plays where everyone not only can see it, they sure not to miss it. And the staff is very keen on explaining how the product works-don't worry, Roku is a superior all around price wise and feature wise product, except it's a poorly-not-even-demonstrated-at-all big secret. Too dependent on word-of-mouth and online research.
Why isn’t Roku doing the same thing? It’s nice enough you have a significant online presence. But When it comes down to it, most sitll visits brick & mortar stores sometimes just to browse and get to know technology better. So how about setting up even just a simple always streaming manned or unmanned Kiosks so the browsers can get to know Roku in real time?
