Sky and Virgin Media facing increased threat from simple £30 device and no mandatory subscription fees

When it comes to cutting the cord and reducing your monthly bills, finding alternatives for your daily TV viewing is one option. Sky and Virgin Media are great – with the former even offering a very affordable £15 plan – but other manufacturers and services offer cheaper, even free choices.

Roku, for example, recently announced 40 live channels for UK device and TV owners, which are available to watch through The Roku Channel for free. It also added the ability to stream 55 UK TV channels through Freely on its TVs in June.

Now we're getting a whole swathe of new feature updates to all its devices – and considering they start at just £30, this could be the best way to get a whole tonne of TV shows and movies without a monthly fee in sight.

Released over the "coming months" are a number of new capabilities, including AI-enhanced voice search.

Roku Voice has been a mainstay of the brand's TVs and streamers for many years, but will be able to understand more natural questions and speech patterns. Asking questions like "What's Barbie about?" and "What kind of fish is Nemo?" will result in more conversational responses.

The results will appear on your screen and help you find out more about the TV shows and films you care most about.

Roku is also making it easier to see trailers for shows or movies you want to watch. You will be able to jump straight into a trailer from an onscreen preview, through a new Ways to Watch button.

And if you are worried about what content will require a separate subscription to the likes of Netflix and Prime Video, a new Roku feature will give you a heads up on where a show or movie is hosted when you browse for something to watch, before you have to enter any apps.

There will be two options, so you might even find one that offers it for free instead.

Finally, a new Bluetooth Headphone Mode is rolling out to the Roku Streaming Stick and Streaming Stick Plus. This allows you to listen through wireless headphones or earbuds, so you won't keep everyone awake with your TV viewing.

You can find out all about the new Roku features on the company's dedicated blog site.