I've become a bigger fan of Flixster since downloading its Android app a couple of weeks ago to my new Droid X. It offers basically everything you need to know about movies already released and those upcoming. So I welcomed the news late yesterday that Flixster had launched a free channel to watch movie trailers on Roku.
I've played around with the Flixster channel and though there are still some quality and formatting issues (especially for older movies), for the most part, it's a welcome addition to the Roku channel store. You can browse trailers in categories including, "Now in Theaters," "Coming Soon," "New on DVD" and "Certified Fresh" (which offers ratings by Rotten Tomatoes). You can also use your remote control to search the full database of trailers.
These trailers are already available on Flixster.com, where they can come with pre-roll and/or overlay ads, which can be annoying given how short trailers are in the first place. On Roku I didn't see any ads - at least not yet. It's great convenience to be able to watch trailers this way, especially when you're making plans to go to a movie, rent one online or stream one from Netflix and others. Flixster on Roku is another great example of creating incremental value from existing content on new platforms. And for Roku, it's another differentiator relative to other connected device choices.