It was six years ago today when a small team at Roku Inc. unveiled the streaming player, the very first device to stream Netflix to the TV—but what a ways we have come since then. According to Experian, almost half of all U.S. adults and 67% of young adults now watch streamed or downloaded video at least once a week—and more and more of that is via streaming devices like Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google (News - Alert) Chromecast and a range of connected DVD players, gaming consoles and television sets.

But Roku was a first mover, and to celebrate the innovation of delivering video over the Internet straight to the big screen in the living room, Saratoga Mayor Emily Lo has declared May 20 to be National Streaming Day.

“We’re so proud to be the platform that introduced streaming entertainment to the living room,” said Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood. “The innovations that grew out of that introduction have shaped where TV is today. Consumers now benefit from more entertainment choice than ever before while content creators of all sizes reap the benefits of being able to bring their entertainment to the TV using the open Internet. We’ve always believed that all TV will be streamed and today we are thousands of channels and billions of streaming hours closer to the goal.”

About 42 million households have a TV connected to the Internet, and Experian said that 7.6 million households in the United States have cut the cord, using Web streaming and downloading exclusively instead of cable, satellite or broadcast for their television viewing.

“Roku anticipates that the pace of streaming entertainment available for the TV will continue to rapidly increase in the coming years to the point where all TV will be streamed,” the company said in its blog.

Meanwhile, original series created just for streaming paved the way for a new model of production and distribution with full series releases, and created Emmy award-winning programs along the way, like Netflix’ House of Cards. Also, favorite TV shows from the past including Veronica Mars, Arrested Development and 24 now get a second life in the new TV economy.

Roku also noted that streamed content has allowed the Internet model of “long-tail” content to flourish in living rooms. “Streaming has enabled new channels – TED, The Autism Channel, Kaplan Prep, DogTV Anywhere and others – that would have never otherwise had a path to the TV,” it said. “While movies and TV shows are widely popular categories, consumers also enjoy music, sports, news and weather, fitness and outdoors, science and tech, food, kids and family, travel, foreign language and religion and spirituality options.”