Roku does have this, but you’re right it’s better on the Firestick. If you use the Search option on Roku it will look through all possible services and apps for a title and let you know where the title is, if you are already subscribed to the service and if not how much it would be to rent.
This. A thousand times this.
My Samsung Smart TV has all the streaming apps built-in, and they all work reasonably well. But I discovered early on that my Firestick and my Chromecast were far more reliable and far less apt to buffer. For 30-40 bucks, it’s well worth the investment.
We were really early Roku adopters and just discovered this feature. It was like “oooooh! I don’t have to go look it up online, I can search from here!”
We use the Roku for Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Apple TV - and then use the Amazon account to add channels that Amazon carries so we aren’t searching across a lot of platforms.
Another vote for Roku, it’s great for paid services like Netflix. There will always be compromises for watching free content but Roku makes it as easy as anyone. Here is a sample video of the Roku interface: Roku Streaming Stick+ (4K) User Interface Walkthrough - YouTube
The remote is nice and simple, everyone I’ve introduced to Roku has found it easy to use even if they aren’t good with computers.
Yeah, I agree with this, Samsung smart TV throughput is generally crap. The only reason it got good for us is because for unrelated reasons we relocated the router to behind the TV, and now it’s wired directly via ethernet. Still, the fire stick is so convenient that we mostly use that anyway.