**The Roku Ultra: A Power User's Dream Streamer**

In recent years, streaming devices have become an essential part of our entertainment setup. But have you ever felt like your current device is holding you back? For me, it was the basic Roku background that got old after a while. Luckily, my friend can change out the theme or wallpaper from the standard boring purple to any number of different things, but I feel like there's something missing - a more convenience-focused interface. I've been using Roku for a long time now, and while it's rock-solid, I want to see some updates to its user experience.

That being said, let's talk about the Roku Ultra box itself and the remote that comes with it. The Roku Ultra is an upgraded streaming device that costs $50 extra compared to the standard Roku model. What makes it worth the extra cost? Well, first of all, you get the convenience of the Roku app, which allows you to control your TV with your mobile device without having to pick up the remote. You can also use Remote Private Listening, where you can listen to content on your phone without having to keep the volume low or plug in headphones. The remote that comes with the Roku Ultra is compact and uses anywhere, so you don't have to be within line of sight to use it.

But what really sets the Roku Ultra apart is its availability of Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. These features are available on many streaming devices for around $50, but not all of them. So, if that's what you're looking for in a streaming device, the Roku Ultra is definitely worth considering. Now, I know some people might be thinking, "But isn't the Chromecast with Google TV also available at $50?" And to that, I say yes! However, there are several factors that make the Roku Ultra stand out from its competitors.

One of those factors is the user interface. The Roku Ultra has a simple and easy-to-use interface that's perfect for power users like myself. It's Dolby Vision-enabled, just like the Chromecast with Google TV, but also comes with a few extras. For example, it supports both HDR and SDR content, which is something you might not find on all streaming devices.

Another factor that sets the Roku Ultra apart is its remote control. While it may seem like a small thing, the fact that the Roku Ultra has a headphone jack and can be used with a separate device makes it a great option for people who want to customize their viewing experience. The remote also supports voice commands, which is something that many streaming devices lack.

But what really puts the Roku Ultra over the top is its availability of advanced features like HDMI-ARC (Audio Return Channel) and an Ethernet jack. These features allow you to connect your device to a TV with high-speed internet and get faster streaming speeds. While it may not be the most portable option, the Roku Ultra is definitely worth considering for power users who want the best streaming experience possible.

**Comparison Time**

So, let's compare the Roku Ultra to its competitors: the Amazon Fire TV Stick and the Google Chromecast with Google TV. The Amazon Fire TV Stick is a great option at $50, but it lacks some of the features that make the Roku Ultra stand out. For example, it doesn't have Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos support, and its user interface is not as customizable as the Roku Ultra.

On the other hand, the Google Chromecast with Google TV is a great option for anyone who wants to experience Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos without breaking the bank. The remote control is compact and portable, and it supports voice commands and headphone playback. But what really sets it apart is its recommendation engine, which suggests content based on your viewing history.

In conclusion, while all three streaming devices have their strengths and weaknesses, I think the Google Chromecast with Google TV is the clear winner at $50. Its remote control is compact and portable, its user interface is familiar and easy to use, and it supports both HDR and SDR content. Plus, you get Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support with some apps. It's a slam dunk if you ask me!

**Final Thoughts**

As always, I want to thank my readers for watching and engaging with the content on this channel. If you're in the market for a new streaming device, I highly recommend considering the Google Chromecast with Google TV. Its combination of features, user interface, and price make it an unbeatable option for anyone looking to upgrade their viewing experience.

So, what do you think? Are you getting a new streaming device? Which one are you going to get? Let me know in the comments below! And if you're not already subscribed to this channel, be sure to hit that notification bell and visit digitaltrends.com for the latest tech news and reviews.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enamazon fire tv stick versus chromecast versus wait roku ultra welcome back everyone i'm caleb dennison and you might be wondering why are we comparing a 100 streaming box to a couple fifty dollar dongles well that is just one question that we need to answer here there are others too like what's each platform like may seem like streaming sticks and streaming boxes are fairly simple but there's actually a lot more to them so if you want to make the right choice i think you're going to want to see what's next now is the part where i would like to tell you that one of these devices is much easier to set up than the others but that's just not true with all three there's some different version of get an email click an activation code log in with your mobile device get a text message like there are a lot of steps to get these set up but once you do get them set up they're all three very easy to use just to have a little bit of patience now before we start covering the different platforms that are available here because that's a big part of the reason you might choose one device over the other why would you want to get a streaming stick or set-top box when you have a smart tv well i think two big reasons one is maybe you don't like what's built into the tv or maybe what's built into the tv doesn't give you access to certain apps let's say you have a roku tv and you want access to hbo max unfortunately hbo max is not available on roku so you might want to go with the chromecast in that case also these devices are highly portable so if you want to take it with you on a trip plug it into the hotel room tv or maybe the guest room tv wherever you're staying that's possible with these let's start talking platforms and with amazon fire tv stick you're talking about amazon fire tv now it used to be that amazon was very forward with its own content and prioritized it over anything else but they've really backed off of that strategy and now you see you get your popular apps right here you actually have to go into prime video to see the prime video stuff the recommendations up top are definitely driven by the fire tv platform but it's not so amazon heavy as it used to be another reason you might want to go with amazon fire tv is if you like to bundle your subscriptions maybe fold in hulu and showtime in with amazon fire tv they make that very easy it's just one bill to pay and it all wraps in with prime as well the final reason i think that you might want to use amazon fire tv is because you're a power user of the a word we all know who we're talking about here if you have a bunch of those devices like echo echo show in your home the fire tv stick is going to integrate with them perfectly so you could ask the a word to show you your video doorbell and it would pop up right here on the tv also with an echo device you could control the television you can ask it to start playing certain pieces of content you can have it scroll through for you you can have it adjust the volume there's a lot of power there now to be fair on the tv stick you get the microphone button right here on the remote but if you don't want to have to pick it up it's nice to have that kind of voice control also while we're on the topic there is a power control and volume control for your tv now with the new fire tv stick that wasn't there in the past and just as a note there is a tv stick light that doesn't have the power or volume buttons and also doesn't do hdr which leads me to my final fact with this particular stick it does hdr at 1080p a lot of people think you have to get 4k to get hdr and that's just not true so you're going to use a little less bandwidth you're going to use a little bit less data but you can still get a punchy hdr picture next up is the google chromecast with google tv which that google tv part is what differentiates this from the standard chromecast which does not come with this little remote you know what i gotta say i'm impressed so far part of it is i'm an android phone user and so i use my google account for almost everything so instant access to the stuff i like is kind of inbuilt into this experience so i'm going to say right now if you're an android user and you want simplicity it's definitely going to come at you from the new chromecast with google tv so the main difference between this chromecast and other ones aside from the remote is the on-screen interface that it controls and the main difference between this which looks a lot like android tv is this the for you section this is google's recommendation engine and the idea here is to put the content that you want to watch right here whether it's the next episode of whatever show you're binging or a movie that is related to a movie that you watched before it's going to pay attention to your viewing habits and make it so that you can get right to the stuff you want without having to navigate to an app you just click on the content and it plays and you don't have to worry about what app it's in but it does give you immediate access to your apps right here it's the very next thing down after the recommendation section i do want to pop up here and scroll across the top and point out there is a dedicated apps section but as long as the apps that i use most often are right here uh in the second row i'm actually good with that now in terms of speed this is not a lightning fast experience there is a little bit of lag here but let's remember we still have chromecast capability where you basically cast content from your mobile device or your laptop in a chrome browser tab but i like this way better this is what i've always felt was missing from the chromecast experience was that on-screen user interface with a remote so that you can click through stuff find what you want to watch real quick and then you're watching and also let's not forget that you get the google assistant so if you want to search by voice you want to get information through this that's just the same as it was with android tv so really it's all the best things about android tv with all the best things about chromecast and let's just throw youtube in there while we're at it like this is going to straight pull all of your youtube recommendations right into the chromecast so that you can watch them on your tv or your phone doesn't matter and in fact i imagine it's using a similar algorithm to fill this row up as you watch more and more now outside of the platform the ui and the remote to control it one of the things that excites me most here is the presence of dolby vision hdr also dolby atmos is along for the ride but with dolby vision hdr you get a remarkably good experience i mean even the ui is in dolby vision which looks really cool at first but it's actually kind of problematic see that means everything you watch will be in dolby vision and when you watch non-dolby vision content it doesn't look right so i want you to go into the display and sound settings click match content and then click match content dynamic range that means that you'll only get dolby vision or standard hdr when you're supposed to and dolby vision is available on a lot of different platforms netflix has got it and so does disney plus and there's more out there and more coming as well it's a really stunning experience if your tv supports dolby vision so keep that in mind 50 bucks for dolby vision that's never been done before now we come to roku which i know is a platform a lot of you are probably familiar with already might even be built into your tv that's part of how they got to have so many millions of users and i think the other reason is because it's really approachable and understandable it's got a very simple tile-based interface that you see here it's customizable to a certain point where you can put the apps where you want them where you can change out the theme or the wallpaper if you will from the basic boring purple roku background to any number of different things but then we start getting into some of the limitations of the roku or at least what i feel like is sort of a stale interface it's been this way for a really long time i've been using it for a really long time so maybe i'm a bit biased there but i do want to see some more convenience features something like it automatically logs me into apps and every time i set up a new roku it looks exactly the same as the last one i set up i've talked about that before i won't belabor the point it needs some updating but it's still rock solid but at the end of the day what we really need to talk about right now is the roku ultra box itself and the remote that comes along with it that's what you're paying an extra 50 bucks for believe it or not well that and the availability of dolby vision and dolby at most but again you already get that with the chromecast at 50 bucks so what else are you getting well there is the convenience of the roku app which allows you to control the tv with your mobile device and you don't have to pick up the remote at all you can also do remote private listening with your phone whether you want to use your phone speaker to keep it a little bit more quiet and personal or plug in some headphones or even use wireless headphones then you've got the remote that the roku comes with which does control the volume and mute and power of your tv it also has a little headphone jack here so that you can plug in your own headphones or the supplied buds that come with it also this is a use anywhere remote you don't have to have line of sight and it's compact and usable enough and then we look at the box itself which has a little find my lost remote locator that's a handy little tool just press the button and a little chime comes out of the remote and then there's the ethernet jack which gets you much higher bandwidth capabilities than you can get with a wireless device on the other hand it's a box and it's not as portable and it needs to find a place on your shelf or you got to like velcro it to the back of the tv or something it's not as convenient as something that just plugs directly into an hdmi port and hangs there like the other two devices so i guess the big question here is whether all those extra features those sort of power user centric features are worth the extra 50 bucks all right that was a lot let's do a quick little recap here starting with the amazon fire tv stick which comes in at fifty dollars very affordable it has an upgraded remote with power and volume buttons on there it does 1080p with hdr which is also new and it leans heavily on the amazon prime experience although not too heavily and of course that voice assistant that we know and love so well very much an amazon product moving on to the google chromecast with google tv this device surprised me not only do we now have a user interface on the screen along with a handy remote with power and volume keys on there we also get a new recommendation engine that might just work we'll have to see how that works out in the long term most notably though you're getting dolby vision and dolby atmos all from a 50 device i'm a big fan as you can probably tell and now let's move on to the roku ultra which we're describing as sort of the power user streamer when having something like an ethernet cable and a remote control with a headphone jack in it and a really handy app that lets you control the tv and also listen in are all important factors it also supports dolby vision and dolby atmos as i mentioned before its user interface is even in dolby vision very simple and easy to use interface with a lot of power behind it now i've got to pick a winner in this battle and with this lineup i got to call it for the google chromecast with google tv i mean this device at 50 bucks is rather remarkable i like the remote i like the dongle itself and how portable it is i also enjoy the user interface it's very familiar like android tv but better but my two favorite parts have to be the recommendation engine i mean youtube looks almost exactly like it is on my phone and then the fact that you get dolby vision even a dolby vision interface along with dolby atmos with some apps all at 50 bucks i mean that's just a slam dunk thanks as always for watching everyone what do you think are you getting a new streaming device and if so which one are you going to get leave me a comment down below like subscribe hit that notification bell and as always visit digitaltrends.com for the latest tech news and reviewsamazon fire tv stick versus chromecast versus wait roku ultra welcome back everyone i'm caleb dennison and you might be wondering why are we comparing a 100 streaming box to a couple fifty dollar dongles well that is just one question that we need to answer here there are others too like what's each platform like may seem like streaming sticks and streaming boxes are fairly simple but there's actually a lot more to them so if you want to make the right choice i think you're going to want to see what's next now is the part where i would like to tell you that one of these devices is much easier to set up than the others but that's just not true with all three there's some different version of get an email click an activation code log in with your mobile device get a text message like there are a lot of steps to get these set up but once you do get them set up they're all three very easy to use just to have a little bit of patience now before we start covering the different platforms that are available here because that's a big part of the reason you might choose one device over the other why would you want to get a streaming stick or set-top box when you have a smart tv well i think two big reasons one is maybe you don't like what's built into the tv or maybe what's built into the tv doesn't give you access to certain apps let's say you have a roku tv and you want access to hbo max unfortunately hbo max is not available on roku so you might want to go with the chromecast in that case also these devices are highly portable so if you want to take it with you on a trip plug it into the hotel room tv or maybe the guest room tv wherever you're staying that's possible with these let's start talking platforms and with amazon fire tv stick you're talking about amazon fire tv now it used to be that amazon was very forward with its own content and prioritized it over anything else but they've really backed off of that strategy and now you see you get your popular apps right here you actually have to go into prime video to see the prime video stuff the recommendations up top are definitely driven by the fire tv platform but it's not so amazon heavy as it used to be another reason you might want to go with amazon fire tv is if you like to bundle your subscriptions maybe fold in hulu and showtime in with amazon fire tv they make that very easy it's just one bill to pay and it all wraps in with prime as well the final reason i think that you might want to use amazon fire tv is because you're a power user of the a word we all know who we're talking about here if you have a bunch of those devices like echo echo show in your home the fire tv stick is going to integrate with them perfectly so you could ask the a word to show you your video doorbell and it would pop up right here on the tv also with an echo device you could control the television you can ask it to start playing certain pieces of content you can have it scroll through for you you can have it adjust the volume there's a lot of power there now to be fair on the tv stick you get the microphone button right here on the remote but if you don't want to have to pick it up it's nice to have that kind of voice control also while we're on the topic there is a power control and volume control for your tv now with the new fire tv stick that wasn't there in the past and just as a note there is a tv stick light that doesn't have the power or volume buttons and also doesn't do hdr which leads me to my final fact with this particular stick it does hdr at 1080p a lot of people think you have to get 4k to get hdr and that's just not true so you're going to use a little less bandwidth you're going to use a little bit less data but you can still get a punchy hdr picture next up is the google chromecast with google tv which that google tv part is what differentiates this from the standard chromecast which does not come with this little remote you know what i gotta say i'm impressed so far part of it is i'm an android phone user and so i use my google account for almost everything so instant access to the stuff i like is kind of inbuilt into this experience so i'm going to say right now if you're an android user and you want simplicity it's definitely going to come at you from the new chromecast with google tv so the main difference between this chromecast and other ones aside from the remote is the on-screen interface that it controls and the main difference between this which looks a lot like android tv is this the for you section this is google's recommendation engine and the idea here is to put the content that you want to watch right here whether it's the next episode of whatever show you're binging or a movie that is related to a movie that you watched before it's going to pay attention to your viewing habits and make it so that you can get right to the stuff you want without having to navigate to an app you just click on the content and it plays and you don't have to worry about what app it's in but it does give you immediate access to your apps right here it's the very next thing down after the recommendation section i do want to pop up here and scroll across the top and point out there is a dedicated apps section but as long as the apps that i use most often are right here uh in the second row i'm actually good with that now in terms of speed this is not a lightning fast experience there is a little bit of lag here but let's remember we still have chromecast capability where you basically cast content from your mobile device or your laptop in a chrome browser tab but i like this way better this is what i've always felt was missing from the chromecast experience was that on-screen user interface with a remote so that you can click through stuff find what you want to watch real quick and then you're watching and also let's not forget that you get the google assistant so if you want to search by voice you want to get information through this that's just the same as it was with android tv so really it's all the best things about android tv with all the best things about chromecast and let's just throw youtube in there while we're at it like this is going to straight pull all of your youtube recommendations right into the chromecast so that you can watch them on your tv or your phone doesn't matter and in fact i imagine it's using a similar algorithm to fill this row up as you watch more and more now outside of the platform the ui and the remote to control it one of the things that excites me most here is the presence of dolby vision hdr also dolby atmos is along for the ride but with dolby vision hdr you get a remarkably good experience i mean even the ui is in dolby vision which looks really cool at first but it's actually kind of problematic see that means everything you watch will be in dolby vision and when you watch non-dolby vision content it doesn't look right so i want you to go into the display and sound settings click match content and then click match content dynamic range that means that you'll only get dolby vision or standard hdr when you're supposed to and dolby vision is available on a lot of different platforms netflix has got it and so does disney plus and there's more out there and more coming as well it's a really stunning experience if your tv supports dolby vision so keep that in mind 50 bucks for dolby vision that's never been done before now we come to roku which i know is a platform a lot of you are probably familiar with already might even be built into your tv that's part of how they got to have so many millions of users and i think the other reason is because it's really approachable and understandable it's got a very simple tile-based interface that you see here it's customizable to a certain point where you can put the apps where you want them where you can change out the theme or the wallpaper if you will from the basic boring purple roku background to any number of different things but then we start getting into some of the limitations of the roku or at least what i feel like is sort of a stale interface it's been this way for a really long time i've been using it for a really long time so maybe i'm a bit biased there but i do want to see some more convenience features something like it automatically logs me into apps and every time i set up a new roku it looks exactly the same as the last one i set up i've talked about that before i won't belabor the point it needs some updating but it's still rock solid but at the end of the day what we really need to talk about right now is the roku ultra box itself and the remote that comes along with it that's what you're paying an extra 50 bucks for believe it or not well that and the availability of dolby vision and dolby at most but again you already get that with the chromecast at 50 bucks so what else are you getting well there is the convenience of the roku app which allows you to control the tv with your mobile device and you don't have to pick up the remote at all you can also do remote private listening with your phone whether you want to use your phone speaker to keep it a little bit more quiet and personal or plug in some headphones or even use wireless headphones then you've got the remote that the roku comes with which does control the volume and mute and power of your tv it also has a little headphone jack here so that you can plug in your own headphones or the supplied buds that come with it also this is a use anywhere remote you don't have to have line of sight and it's compact and usable enough and then we look at the box itself which has a little find my lost remote locator that's a handy little tool just press the button and a little chime comes out of the remote and then there's the ethernet jack which gets you much higher bandwidth capabilities than you can get with a wireless device on the other hand it's a box and it's not as portable and it needs to find a place on your shelf or you got to like velcro it to the back of the tv or something it's not as convenient as something that just plugs directly into an hdmi port and hangs there like the other two devices so i guess the big question here is whether all those extra features those sort of power user centric features are worth the extra 50 bucks all right that was a lot let's do a quick little recap here starting with the amazon fire tv stick which comes in at fifty dollars very affordable it has an upgraded remote with power and volume buttons on there it does 1080p with hdr which is also new and it leans heavily on the amazon prime experience although not too heavily and of course that voice assistant that we know and love so well very much an amazon product moving on to the google chromecast with google tv this device surprised me not only do we now have a user interface on the screen along with a handy remote with power and volume keys on there we also get a new recommendation engine that might just work we'll have to see how that works out in the long term most notably though you're getting dolby vision and dolby atmos all from a 50 device i'm a big fan as you can probably tell and now let's move on to the roku ultra which we're describing as sort of the power user streamer when having something like an ethernet cable and a remote control with a headphone jack in it and a really handy app that lets you control the tv and also listen in are all important factors it also supports dolby vision and dolby atmos as i mentioned before its user interface is even in dolby vision very simple and easy to use interface with a lot of power behind it now i've got to pick a winner in this battle and with this lineup i got to call it for the google chromecast with google tv i mean this device at 50 bucks is rather remarkable i like the remote i like the dongle itself and how portable it is i also enjoy the user interface it's very familiar like android tv but better but my two favorite parts have to be the recommendation engine i mean youtube looks almost exactly like it is on my phone and then the fact that you get dolby vision even a dolby vision interface along with dolby atmos with some apps all at 50 bucks i mean that's just a slam dunk thanks as always for watching everyone what do you think are you getting a new streaming device and if so which one are you going to get leave me a comment down below like subscribe hit that notification bell and as always visit digitaltrends.com for the latest tech news and reviewsamazon fire tv stick versus chromecast versus wait roku ultra welcome back everyone i'm caleb dennison and you might be wondering why are we comparing a 100 streaming box to a couple fifty dollar dongles well that is just one question that we need to answer here there are others too like what's each platform like may seem like streaming sticks and streaming boxes are fairly simple but there's actually a lot more to them so if you want to make the right choice i think you're going to want to see what's next now is the part where i would like to tell you that one of these devices is much easier to set up than the others but that's just not true with all three there's some different version of get an email click an activation code log in with your mobile device get a text message like there are a lot of steps to get these set up but once you do get them set up they're all three very easy to use just to have a little bit of patience now before we start covering the different platforms that are available here because that's a big part of the reason you might choose one device over the other why would you want to get a streaming stick or set-top box when you have a smart tv well i think two big reasons one is maybe you don't like what's built into the tv or maybe what's built into the tv doesn't give you access to certain apps let's say you have a roku tv and you want access to hbo max unfortunately hbo max is not available on roku so you might want to go with the chromecast in that case also these devices are highly portable so if you want to take it with you on a trip plug it into the hotel room tv or maybe the guest room tv wherever you're staying that's possible with these let's start talking platforms and with amazon fire tv stick you're talking about amazon fire tv now it used to be that amazon was very forward with its own content and prioritized it over anything else but they've really backed off of that strategy and now you see you get your popular apps right here you actually have to go into prime video to see the prime video stuff the recommendations up top are definitely driven by the fire tv platform but it's not so amazon heavy as it used to be another reason you might want to go with amazon fire tv is if you like to bundle your subscriptions maybe fold in hulu and showtime in with amazon fire tv they make that very easy it's just one bill to pay and it all wraps in with prime as well the final reason i think that you might want to use amazon fire tv is because you're a power user of the a word we all know who we're talking about here if you have a bunch of those devices like echo echo show in your home the fire tv stick is going to integrate with them perfectly so you could ask the a word to show you your video doorbell and it would pop up right here on the tv also with an echo device you could control the television you can ask it to start playing certain pieces of content you can have it scroll through for you you can have it adjust the volume there's a lot of power there now to be fair on the tv stick you get the microphone button right here on the remote but if you don't want to have to pick it up it's nice to have that kind of voice control also while we're on the topic there is a power control and volume control for your tv now with the new fire tv stick that wasn't there in the past and just as a note there is a tv stick light that doesn't have the power or volume buttons and also doesn't do hdr which leads me to my final fact with this particular stick it does hdr at 1080p a lot of people think you have to get 4k to get hdr and that's just not true so you're going to use a little less bandwidth you're going to use a little bit less data but you can still get a punchy hdr picture next up is the google chromecast with google tv which that google tv part is what differentiates this from the standard chromecast which does not come with this little remote you know what i gotta say i'm impressed so far part of it is i'm an android phone user and so i use my google account for almost everything so instant access to the stuff i like is kind of inbuilt into this experience so i'm going to say right now if you're an android user and you want simplicity it's definitely going to come at you from the new chromecast with google tv so the main difference between this chromecast and other ones aside from the remote is the on-screen interface that it controls and the main difference between this which looks a lot like android tv is this the for you section this is google's recommendation engine and the idea here is to put the content that you want to watch right here whether it's the next episode of whatever show you're binging or a movie that is related to a movie that you watched before it's going to pay attention to your viewing habits and make it so that you can get right to the stuff you want without having to navigate to an app you just click on the content and it plays and you don't have to worry about what app it's in but it does give you immediate access to your apps right here it's the very next thing down after the recommendation section i do want to pop up here and scroll across the top and point out there is a dedicated apps section but as long as the apps that i use most often are right here uh in the second row i'm actually good with that now in terms of speed this is not a lightning fast experience there is a little bit of lag here but let's remember we still have chromecast capability where you basically cast content from your mobile device or your laptop in a chrome browser tab but i like this way better this is what i've always felt was missing from the chromecast experience was that on-screen user interface with a remote so that you can click through stuff find what you want to watch real quick and then you're watching and also let's not forget that you get the google assistant so if you want to search by voice you want to get information through this that's just the same as it was with android tv so really it's all the best things about android tv with all the best things about chromecast and let's just throw youtube in there while we're at it like this is going to straight pull all of your youtube recommendations right into the chromecast so that you can watch them on your tv or your phone doesn't matter and in fact i imagine it's using a similar algorithm to fill this row up as you watch more and more now outside of the platform the ui and the remote to control it one of the things that excites me most here is the presence of dolby vision hdr also dolby atmos is along for the ride but with dolby vision hdr you get a remarkably good experience i mean even the ui is in dolby vision which looks really cool at first but it's actually kind of problematic see that means everything you watch will be in dolby vision and when you watch non-dolby vision content it doesn't look right so i want you to go into the display and sound settings click match content and then click match content dynamic range that means that you'll only get dolby vision or standard hdr when you're supposed to and dolby vision is available on a lot of different platforms netflix has got it and so does disney plus and there's more out there and more coming as well it's a really stunning experience if your tv supports dolby vision so keep that in mind 50 bucks for dolby vision that's never been done before now we come to roku which i know is a platform a lot of you are probably familiar with already might even be built into your tv that's part of how they got to have so many millions of users and i think the other reason is because it's really approachable and understandable it's got a very simple tile-based interface that you see here it's customizable to a certain point where you can put the apps where you want them where you can change out the theme or the wallpaper if you will from the basic boring purple roku background to any number of different things but then we start getting into some of the limitations of the roku or at least what i feel like is sort of a stale interface it's been this way for a really long time i've been using it for a really long time so maybe i'm a bit biased there but i do want to see some more convenience features something like it automatically logs me into apps and every time i set up a new roku it looks exactly the same as the last one i set up i've talked about that before i won't belabor the point it needs some updating but it's still rock solid but at the end of the day what we really need to talk about right now is the roku ultra box itself and the remote that comes along with it that's what you're paying an extra 50 bucks for believe it or not well that and the availability of dolby vision and dolby at most but again you already get that with the chromecast at 50 bucks so what else are you getting well there is the convenience of the roku app which allows you to control the tv with your mobile device and you don't have to pick up the remote at all you can also do remote private listening with your phone whether you want to use your phone speaker to keep it a little bit more quiet and personal or plug in some headphones or even use wireless headphones then you've got the remote that the roku comes with which does control the volume and mute and power of your tv it also has a little headphone jack here so that you can plug in your own headphones or the supplied buds that come with it also this is a use anywhere remote you don't have to have line of sight and it's compact and usable enough and then we look at the box itself which has a little find my lost remote locator that's a handy little tool just press the button and a little chime comes out of the remote and then there's the ethernet jack which gets you much higher bandwidth capabilities than you can get with a wireless device on the other hand it's a box and it's not as portable and it needs to find a place on your shelf or you got to like velcro it to the back of the tv or something it's not as convenient as something that just plugs directly into an hdmi port and hangs there like the other two devices so i guess the big question here is whether all those extra features those sort of power user centric features are worth the extra 50 bucks all right that was a lot let's do a quick little recap here starting with the amazon fire tv stick which comes in at fifty dollars very affordable it has an upgraded remote with power and volume buttons on there it does 1080p with hdr which is also new and it leans heavily on the amazon prime experience although not too heavily and of course that voice assistant that we know and love so well very much an amazon product moving on to the google chromecast with google tv this device surprised me not only do we now have a user interface on the screen along with a handy remote with power and volume keys on there we also get a new recommendation engine that might just work we'll have to see how that works out in the long term most notably though you're getting dolby vision and dolby atmos all from a 50 device i'm a big fan as you can probably tell and now let's move on to the roku ultra which we're describing as sort of the power user streamer when having something like an ethernet cable and a remote control with a headphone jack in it and a really handy app that lets you control the tv and also listen in are all important factors it also supports dolby vision and dolby atmos as i mentioned before its user interface is even in dolby vision very simple and easy to use interface with a lot of power behind it now i've got to pick a winner in this battle and with this lineup i got to call it for the google chromecast with google tv i mean this device at 50 bucks is rather remarkable i like the remote i like the dongle itself and how portable it is i also enjoy the user interface it's very familiar like android tv but better but my two favorite parts have to be the recommendation engine i mean youtube looks almost exactly like it is on my phone and then the fact that you get dolby vision even a dolby vision interface along with dolby atmos with some apps all at 50 bucks i mean that's just a slam dunk thanks as always for watching everyone what do you think are you getting a new streaming device and if so which one are you going to get leave me a comment down below like subscribe hit that notification bell and as always visit digitaltrends.com for the latest tech news and reviews\n"