Roku Streaming Stick: An MHL Dongle Providing All the Features of a Roku Box

Roku never ceases to surprise us with its highly innovative streaming media players, but this time the outfit has outdone itself with the launch of the Streaming Stick.

Basically a fully featured Roku media player, this tiny dongle packs everything its larger brothers includes such as built-in WiFi, processor, memory and software to deliver Roku's growing collection of streaming entertainment.

The only thing that is required is for this HDMI dongle to be plugged in into an MHL-compliant HDTV.

A new standard, that enables the HDMI connector on TVs to deliver power and other critical elements for tasks such as video streaming, MHL is increasingly popular among hardware makers with more than 100 brands supporting it.

If all this sounds just about right to you, then you should know that Roku plans to launch the Streaming Stick in the second half of this year, and Best Buy's Insignia HDTV line is the first one scheduled to get it.