After long protracted negotiations –when Quibi crashed and burnt in 2020— the mobile-first streaming service has finally sold the rights of its content library to Roku. There is still however no indication of how much this acquisition will cost. The Roku Channel is getting its first batch of Quibi shows on May 20th, Roku has announced.
There’ll be 30 so-called “Roku Originals” available to stream at the start, but Roku says it eventually plans to release all 75 of Quibi’s titles on its service. They’ll be available to watch free of charge in the US, Canada, and UK and you want to watch them locally, a VPN connection will also sort you out. There will also be ads inserted in between individual short-form episodes.
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The following Quibi content has been included in this first batch of shows are;
- Reno 911!
- The cooking documentary Shape of Pasta
- Chrissy’s Court (starring Chrissy Teigen),
- Kevin Hart’s Die Hart.
The Roku Channel is available on iOS, The Roku Channel mobile app for Android devices, select Samsung TVs, Amazon Fire TV devices, and the web, in addition to Roku’s own hardware.
Other than inserting ads, Roku says it hasn’t made any major tweaks to Quibi’s content. Of course, watching on your living room TV means there isn’t the option to view the shows in portrait like there was with the Quibi app, but Roku argues that the content was filmed in high enough quality that you shouldn’t be able to tell that they were originally made with phone screens in mind. All of the content will stream at 1080p resolution.
