Along with announcing an important update to the software that powers the last-year-introduced Roku Player models, Roku will also introduce a new Channel Store, which will give the owners of the digital video player additional channels to choose from.

The initial ten channels, which will enable users to conveniently access wide-ranging content sources and focus on independent and user-created media, include - blip.tv video publishing; Flickr; Facebook Photos; FrameChannel photo sharing and viewing; the Mediafly podcast aggregator; Motionbox video sharing; MobileTribe; Revision3 Internet television; Pandora Internet radio; and TWiT.TV.

The new channels, with more to be added in the “near future,” essentially mark Roku’s move in the direction of opening up its video player to outside developers - it currently allows the access of Netflix’s streaming video service on the TVs of Netflix customers.

Though the channels, as well as the content available through them, will be available for free; the addition of the channels will be possible only if the owners of the Roku Player create a user account with the company.

The accessibility of the new channels – which will eventually be pre-installed on new devices - by existing Roku Player owners will be initiated via a software update which will be sent to the devices by the company, over the coming two weeks; otherwise, the update can also be manually downloaded by the owners.