Roku teams up with Best Buy & Haier for new Roku-powered smart TVs

A slew of new Roku-powered smart television sets are heading to market in 2015, Roku announced today ahead of this week’s CES event in Las Vegas.

Roku TVs are smart TVs that are powered by Roku’s super simple operating system featured on the company’s line of set-top boxes, which means you don’t need additional gadgets to access Netflix, Hulu, Pandora and other streaming services. The first wave of Roku TVs was first announced at last year’s CES, with the set-top box maker initially partnering with television manufacturers HiSense and TCL. Judging from today’s announcement, I’m guessing that Roku was pleased with this strategy (as were its partners) because TCL is planning to launch 12 new Roku TV sets in the new year.

In addition to the added TCL products, Roku also announced that Best Buy’s private label TV brand Insignia and TV maker Haier will also be offering Roku-powered smart TVs in retail stores for 2015.

Both of the aforementioned TV makers are known for producing products that fall on the lower end of the pricing spectrum. That means there could be plenty of consumers looking for a low-cost smart TV that have never encountered Roku — which, in turn, could translate to new customers for Roku (via on-demand video rental partnerships or further into the future).