Sure, Roku’s streaming players and smart TVs have long included advertising on the home screen, and the app shortcut buttons on its remote controls are paid placements. Yet for the most part, Roku has avoided making drastic changes to its products for the purpose of serving up more ads, even as the company tells Wall Street that it’s sitting on a huge advertising opportunity.

That changed earlier this month, when Roku began rolling out a major update to its home screen. With a new section called “Featured Free,” users can find ad-supported video from apps like ABC, Fox Now, The CW, Sony Crackle, and Pluto TV. It’s Roku’s first attempt to recommend content right from home screen, which until now has focused more on a traditional grid of apps.

This isn’t necessarily bad for cord-cutters, but is does reflect Roku’s changing priorities in a way that previous hardware launches and software updates haven’t. More than any other streaming TV platform, Roku is now trying to establish itself as a source for free, ad-supported video. The big question now is whether that will ultimately come at the expense of ad-free content. Read the full column on TechHive.

The Bloomberg piece frames this rumored product as a competitor to TiVo, but it sounds more like Nuvyyo’s Tablo, Sling’s AirTV, and SiliconDust’s HDHomeRun, all of which stream broadcast channels to other devices over Wi-Fi. (Tablo also offers DVR; AirTV is still working on it, and HDHomeRun’s DVR features require additional hardware.) Tablo is currently my pick for best over-the-air DVR, but Amazon’s product could stand out by integrating more deeply with the Fire TV interface and the Alexa voice assistant.

At the moment though, this is all hypothetical. Bloomberg’s source didn’t give a launch timeframe, and said the project could still be delayed or cancelled.

HDHomeRun’s streaming bundle surprise: Last Friday, SiliconDust quietly started promising a live TV streaming service for users of its HDHomeRun tuners. For $35 per month, subscribers will get 45 cable channels, including ESPN, HGTV, and all the major news networks.

If you’re already using HDHomeRun to stream over-the-air channels throughout the home, the idea is that you can now supplement them with live cable channels, all of which stream through the same HDHomeRun apps. And while the streaming service doesn’t offer video on demand or cloud DVR, you can still record those cable channels onto a local hard drive–something no other live TV streaming service offers today. The service also reportedly works with other apps that support HDHomeRun hardware, such as Plex DVR and Channels DVR.

Fair warning: I haven’t tried any of this yet, but I’ll have some impressions to report next week once I’ve spent some time with the service and asked SiliconDust some questions.

Bear in mind that ESPN+ offers none of the content that appears on ESPN’s cable channels, but it does offer all out-of-market Major League Soccer games, a grab-bag of other live sports, and original shows such as 30 for 30. Read more about what ESPN+ does and doesn’t offer before committing to that annual payment.