There's no denying that video on demand (VOD) through over-the-top devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV have transformed the way we watch television. But sometimes it's nice to just turn on a channel and watch whatever is being broadcast without wading through thousands of choices to pick a single video. If you're looking for a traditional TV viewing experience, one where you can channel surf and don't have to select from thousands of video-on-demand options, Pluto TV, recently launched on Roku, may be what you need.
Pluto TV works a lot like cable TV. Turn it on and it will start playing the last channel you watched. A guide at the bottom lists all the channels and what's currently playing, along with upcoming shows, as a cable box would provide. Scroll through the guide to select a channel, or close the guide and do some old-fashioned channel surfing, running up and down the dial to see what's on.
A lot of Pluto TV content may be a conglomeration of videos from YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, and their mass-audience brethren, but the videos are said to be selected by in-house curators. This means you should find a higher-quality selection than you would expect from a playlist of randomly selected videos. Also, Pluto TV has been working hard to set up agreements with popular broadcasters. In the news category alone you'll find live broadcasts from Sky News, RT America, NewsmaxTV, and Newsy, along with programming from NBC News, MSNBC, and others.
Other name brands include Cracked, The Onion, Shout! Factory TV, and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Many other channels offer the previously-mentioned curated streams, like Classic TV, Classic Movies, and Classic Toons in the Movies & TV category, and Xtreme Sports, The Surf Channel, Snow, and Skate in the Sports category.
If there is a drawback to the new Pluto TV channel on Roku, it's that it has only 40-something channels rather than the 100+ that are found on the Pluto TV website. Pluto also struck a deal with Hulu a few months, allowing Pluto to broadcast all the shows that Hulu offers for free on their website. Unfortunately, that deal restricts Hulu content to Pluto's website - you won't find those shows on the Roku channel. You also won't find on Roku the nearly four dozen music channels found on the Pluto website. Also noticeably absent are the sports channels covering football, baseball, basketball, soccer, and hockey.
In spite of what's not on the Roku version, Pluto TV offers an excellent viewing experience for those times we want to go into lean back mode and not give too much thought to what we're watching.
For more information, including a complete list of available channels, visit our Pluto TV Roku channel page.
