Roku, a major player in the set top box sector, has a product update. Playon, a content streaming solution, is now a supported channel on Roku. You can view the details of the offering here. This new Roku feature is sure to be welcomed in the midst of Internet TV popularity and cable TV decline.

Roku writes,

The Roku now supports PlayOn Premium. So you can now watch all your favorite shows, movies, and music on your Roku. Hulu (no Hulu Plus subscription required), Comedy Central, TBS, BET, PBS, PBS Kids, Nick, ESPN, Fox News, Spike and more can now all stream to your Roku. It takes 5 minutes to set up. Follow the link above to learn more.

By adding Playon compatibility, Roku has empowered the consumers. Now, they have an even wider array of choices when watching TV.  The new partnership also extends PlayOn’s network of partners.  The service is also available on game consoles, such as its Xbox 360 plugin.  Mark’s shared the pros and cons of PlayOn’s integration, and offers insight for digital platforms like Roku, willing to consider third party tools a little more, saying,

“While Xbox has done a bang up job getting their devices to coexist within the rest of a home network ecosystem, playon truly acts as a newbie friendly lynchpin in not only getting personal media onto your various entertainment consumption devices, but fills in almost all gaps that the various digital rights battles seem to leave on the table.

“In the case of the Xbox, this means Hulu works, as does live streaming from Flash-based sites. In the case of PlayOn, it means that a much cheaper device can play all your stored media.  In practice, of course, it means that its easier to cut the cord completely, and that content producers end up with a larger portion of their earnings, since there are less distributor middlemen taking a share of ad revenues.”

This has implications for the personal cloud, remote tools that will be able to gain the most consumer appeal, and ways in which the most effective format will be for this to take place.  There’s a lot at stake for cloud companies as well as media publishers, and a number of products will get sifted out over the next couple of years.