Quibi content will live on thanks to Roku

Quibi will no doubt go down as one of biggest entertainment failures of all time, but the content that was created for the ill-fated platform won't just disappear into the aether. Following Quibi's shutdown at the beginning of December, Roku has announced that it will be the new home of Quibi's various shows, with this content being added to The Roku Channel at some point later this year.

Details are fairly slim at the moment – for instance, we're not sure if all of Quibi's content will be making the jump to The Roku Channel or if it'll just be select shows. Roku has confirmed that more than 75 shows – including #FreeRayshawn, Chrissy's Court, Die Hart, Dummy, Flipped, Most Dangerous Game, Punk'd, Reno 911!, and Survive – will be available on The Roku Channel, with "hundreds of hours of new content" on tap.

Roku has also confirmed that all of this content will be available for free, which is a nice announcement for Roku users. Unknown at the moment is whether or not Roku will continue production on these shows, but for now, it sounds like the plan is just to publish Quibi's existing library and leave it at that.

In other Roku news, the company announced in a separate blog post that, based on data from the NPD group, Roku OS is now the number #1 smart TV OS sold in the US and Canada, where it holds 38% and 31% market share, respectively. Indeed, Roku TVs have proven to be quite popular, as Roku OS is often the choice of TV manufacturers who don't have a smart TV OS of their own to push (or those who opt not to use something like Android TV).

The company also confirmed that it's expanding the Roku TV Ready slate of devices further by creating a wireless soundbar reference design that its partners can build. The first Roku TV Ready wireless soundbar is expected to be announced at TCL's CES 2021 event on January 12th, so we'll look out for more information on that.

Element will also be joining Roku's TV Ready program here in the US, with plans to launch a TV Ready soundbar of its own and a 2.1 Roku TV Ready Soundbar + Subwoofer this month. We'll let you know more details when those are shared, particularly when it comes to the arrival of Quibi content on The Roku Channel, so stay tuned.