A relative received one for Christmas and I couldn’t resist and ordered one with a six month subscription to Netflix. I of course justified the expense by planning on dropping cable movie channels.
Any current users?
I had one,but now I can do the same streaming with xbox 360. It works really well and simple to use. I would suggest looking on netflix to see what is avalable to watch instantly,as those are the only movies and tv shows,that you can watch streaming. You cant watch just released movies on Roku.
We have one – as I said in Cable : DVR :: Netflix : Roku, it’s an evolutionary step forward. It’s that good.
Make sure you check out the message boards on Roku’s site – there are lists of upcoming and expiring movies, news on the player (e.g., what’s going on with their APIs) and other interesting bits.
We sometimes go a month or two between DVD exchanges.
tattman40, can the X-box pull in other Web site (e.g., Hulu)? Roku has released APIs for development, but nothing has been produced yet (AFAIK). The benefit of multiple sites would be great.
There is a PC program called PlayOn! that’ll let you view Hulu and other sites on your 360 or PS3, but you have to keep it running on a PC. It basically streams the movie on your computer, converts it on-the-fly, and shares it to your 360. I haven’t used it personally so I’m not sure how well it works.
Not natively (the post above explains one way of doing so, however); though you can watch movies via the included Netflix application, as noted, as well as “renting” movies (including just released ones) via Xbox’s own movie service, which is independent of the Netflix portion.
Got it, love it. I pushed my DSL speed up to get better quality.
Thanks for the information. Looking forward to receiving the unit.
I was just looking at one of these, based on what I’ve heard, it’s a great value. BUT, having done enough early adopting in my life, I have to wonder. Am I better off giving it another year or so for a second generation to come out, or is it updatable enough that it’s not an issue. OTOH, for $100, it seems like a steal. And should pay for itself in my wifes blockbuster rentals fairly quickly.
Assuming that a hundred bucks to you isn’t chickenscratch but not exactly a large investment, I’d say the latter. Go to your Netflix account, click on Watch Instantly, and take a look through the catalog. It’s clearly not coextensive with the DVD selection, but it’s pretty deep. It also changes a lot (like I said upthread, check out Roku’s forums for lists of what’s coming/expiring).
You can also see from their forums what’s coming down the pike feature-wise. The box has HDMI and component outs, but I believe the image quality is limited by what Netflix is streaming, not the hardware. I think the feature we’re mostly looking forward to is closed captions.
Update:
The player had an announcement of new features. The confirmed one is that they are adding Amazon Video On Demand to their menu/home screen.
From Roku’s home page:
No Hulu or YouTube (yet?), but it’s nice to have the additional options.
What’s the difference between this Roku thing and regular streaming internet? All I can see is that it’s a bridge between a PC and a TV.
I just got the LG BD300 which is basically a Blu-ray player and the Roku box integrated together. It’s a neat concept and is well implemented. The player simply worked out of the box with minimal set up. The hardest part was running a CAT5e cable over to the player.
Adding a show to your Watch Instantly queue and seeing it appear as options on the TV is very satisfying. The immediate gratification is addictive.
I do have two complaints. First, the quality of the streamed video is only fair – I can easily see compression artifacts in dark scenes. Also, most of what is available on Watch Instantly are episodes of TV shows. There are still many shows available on Hulu which are not on Netflix.
Nothing. Actually, the Roku is a heck of a lot more limited than a PC.
If you have a PC in the same room as your television, and your graphics and sound cards support the right output signal, you’ll be much better off going that route. You even have a budget of about a hundred bucks to work with if you need to bring someone in to fish wires through walls or set the PC up with a remote. The PC will let you go out to the entire Internet, not just the sites that have adapted Roku’s APIs to show their content.
I think the video quality may be more affected by your internet connection quality/speed. I use the Netflix Watch Now at home, get the max video quality, and while catching up on Heroes recently I watched older eps on Watch Now, and newer ones from my DirecTV Tivo, and the DirecTV compression was much, much, much, much, much worse looking than the Netflix.
We’ve got one. And it was timely, because our PS3 is now in the shop, so at least we can still watch stuff!
I jones for the day that we can browse and add things to watch via the Roku. We also have 3 separate queues, and to watch anything, it must be in the “main” queue. Since my personal queue isn’t the main one, I can’t even see what’s available to watch instantly, unless I log in under the main. So on that front, it could be easier, but it’s still a price I’m okay with paying right now.
(for the record, we do not have cable or any decent TV reception, so Netflix is our sole TV entertainment)
I bought one for myself, as well as one each for my father, father-in-law and brother-in-law for Christmas. It’s been universally hailed as the best gift of the season. I am seriously considering cancelling or cutting back my DirectTV service, as we haven’t watched a minute of broadcast TV since we got it. That said, I’m a huge fan of old movies, cheesy old detective shows and cheaply made sci-fi, so it may not be everyone’s cup of tea.