Your Google TV just got a big, free Roku Channel upgrade – here’s what’s new

• The Roku Channel is becoming tightly integrated with Google TV
• Roku’s 500-plus free channels will be searchable and easily accessible
• Home screen integration for recommendations and currently watched titles

The Roku Channel is about to get a whole lot better on Google TV and Android TV. Over the next few weeks, Roku and Google will be improving the Roku Channel experience to make it much easier to find things you’ll want to watch, while significantly upgrading your Google TV experience.

Starting today, Google TV will be rolling out Roku Channel integration that’ll add the channel to the Google TV search feature. It’ll also bring Roku’s 500-plus FAST (Free, Ad-Supported TV) channels into Google TV’s Live tab, the free hub for live TV.

On paper, this looks like a win-win: Google TV users get improved viewing options and Roku gets more visibility, which no doubt will mean more viewers.

The Roku Channel is free and currently offers more than 80,000 ad-supported titles – movies as well as shows – as well as channels such as ABC News. So Google TV fans certainly won’t be short of choice during the holidays this year.

Are you ready to Roku?

This integration also means that you’ll be able to jump straight back in to Roku Channel shows, while Google TV will now show selected Roku Channel content in new home screen rows such as ‘featured on the Roku channel’ as well as the Free Live TV row.

Although this specific integration is with Google TV, those aren’t the only Android-powered platforms The Roku Channel is available on. You can also get it on compatible Fire TV and Samsung devices. And of course The Roku Channel is also available online and via the Roku Mobile app.

We currently rate The Roku Channel as the best free streaming service for Roku devices, thanks to that big library of movies and TV shows, plus its 350 live TV channels in the US.

And our main gripe, that you need Roku hardware for the best experience, is slowly being eased by its improved availability on other devices, including Google TV.