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From time to time, I have confessed my love for the Vudu set-top box that instantly streams up to 720p quality HD movies (or 1080p quality non-instant) over the Internet to your TV. The Vudu player is not subscription-based, so in addition to ponying up for the hardware, you have to pay an average of 3-5 each time you want to rent SD or HD quality movies. After a while of spending over 50 a month with the Vudu box, I decided check out the instant streaming landscape and take a look at the popular subscription-based Roku player. While the Roku player is often called the Netflix player, that is starting to change as it supports more services, most recently with the addition of Amazon Video on Demand.
Notice: During my review of the Roku player I was using an 80Mbps down Internet connection. Obviously this plays a huge role in the performance of a bandwidth-dependent streaming device. Your mileage may vary.
Ergonomically-speaking the Roku remote gets the job done and is the perfect size for natural placement of your thumb in the middle of the control. While I slightly miss the scroll wheel of the Vudu player's remote, the large Roku remote buttons provide ample tactile feedback with a soft yet noticable clicking feel. Only 9 buttons inhabit the Roku remote and all are self-explanatory.
The next step is linking your Netflix account to the Roku player. I was supplied with a confirmation code to link to my Netflix account. That required logging into Netflix on my computer, but was all of a 15 second affair. A similar procedure is also required for linking the Roku player to Amazon for Video on Demand support. Regardless of these requirements, setup took just a few minutes.
After doing a bit of research, Roku's decision to not allow Netflix browsing on the player was almost intentional. They wanted to keep everything about the Roku simple, and leave the complex bits to the Netflix website, which it's very capable of handling already.
Roku's implementation of Amazon Video on Demand is a bit different. You have some limited browsing ability but not searching. Filtering options include sorting by new releases, genre, popularity and alphabetically, but if you're looking to find something that isn't really popular you will have to do lots of annoying side-scrolling.
Fast-forwarding and rewinding through both Amazon and Netflix movies and TV shows can be burdensome due to the streaming nature of the Roku player. Whereas the Vudu player would buffer the entire movie on its hard drive, making rewinding and fast-forwarding quick and seamless, the same cannot be said about the Roku player. To get around this issue, Roku engineers implemented a visual timeline of sorts. After selecting the frame you want to jump to, there is a 5-10 second loading delay, obviously dependent upon your connection. It's an innovative solution, I'll give them that.
As you would expect with a digital video player, the Nexperia media processor has support for hardware H.264 video decoding as well as WM9 among others. You can blame Netflix's sub-par streaming quality to the Windows Media 9 codec they're using, presumably to take advantage of its DRM features [sic].
On top of that set-top box platform, it appears that Roku expanded to a daughtercard via a USB header to introduce 802.11b/g Wi-Fi support with the Atheros chip. Interestingly enough, there are connections for external antennas. If you are getting bad wireless range with your Roku, you could try hooking up two antennas to those (you'd likely need two U.FL-RSMA pigtail cables).
I give the Roku video player 8.5 out of 10 Stammys. It has its fair share of drawbacks but damned if it isn't cheap! The Roku hardware itself supports 1080i streaming, so hopefully a future software update will bring this to fruition.
Over the weekend, without telling users, Netflix decided to stop displaying all titles from users instant watch queue if the rights to stream the content has expired. In the past, these titles remained in the queue and if they were to expire soon, they would also list the date when they would no longer be available for streaming. While Netflix took to their blog on Saturday saying they made this change to, "make the instant Queue easier to manage", clearly all they are trying to do is hide the fact that so many titles are expiring.
Even though Netflix says they didn't actually remove any of the titles from the queue and that they will reappear once again if they get the rights to stream the title, the fact is users can no longer see them, or manage them. And since most of us probably don't remember what all those titles were, how are we suppose to add them to our DVD queue since they are no longer available for streaming? Not to mention, the titles that we can longer see in our queue, count towards the limit of 500 titles you can have in your queue at any one time. So if we can't see them, how are we suppose to delete them so that we can add more titles to our queue?
What Netflix has done is take the problem of too many streaming movies becoming unavailable and turned it into two problems; we can't keep track of them to add them to the DVD queue and hidden movies count toward our queue count but we can't see them to delete them. How dumb. Not to mention, Netflix says while it "looks like some titles are gone", they didn't "remove" them. Really? So we can no longer see them and we have no way to manage them yet Netflix says it only "looks like" the titles are gone? The titles are gone if w can't see them! I am getting so tired of Netflix's blog posts lately which are starting to sound like they are written by a bunch of lawyers being creative with words.
Netflix can try and spin this any way they want but the bottom line is that the Starz contract is due to expire in about five months and at that time, a lot of users would have a bunch of titles showing up in their saved queue and would starting realizing just how many movies are becoming unavailable for streaming. And some Netflix users would reconsider keeping their account active or not. This is simply Netflix's way of trying to make sure we don't notice what's expiring, by not letting us see all the movies in our queue. Brilliant job Netflix. You just made your service harder to use and you announced the change only after people noticed it and started complaining. You may be in the driver's seat now, but I can't wait till Amazon eats your lunch.
OK, we ditched netflix when they went up on the price. Maybe we should look into again for the streaming only, which is mostly what we used it for. I am just exasperated with the LACK of choices on cable. We have ditched that in the past (we have the very basic we can get), but when we do we end up paying more for just phone and internet alone than getting the bundle which includes basic cable (I did call and have some stations completely blocked which helped a lot).
tristan, thanks for the tip on prefs. I just spent a little while rating some stuff as it is quiet hour here. I also added about 50 shows/movies to our queue. And I downloaded the mobile app. to put on my iPhone. That could come in very handy.
Yes, you can use it anywhere with wifi BUT each account only allows so many 6 devices to be approved at once and only 2 streaming simultaneously. All you have to do is go in your account to handle that stuff.
When my husband and I spent 10 days in the NICU with Mason in January we were able to watch Netflix on the laptop we had brought and the kids could watch Netflix back at home on the tv with grandma if they wanted to.
pinkchopsticks, I hear ya on the library fines. Oops! Ours charges $1 per DAY that DVDs are late. That adds up fast! I always got confused b/c DVDs are only 7-day rental while books and audiobooks are 21 days. So yeah, no DVDs from library for us though we get a lot of audiobooks there.
You boot up the box, set the network to wireless or Ethernet connectivity. You get a five digit code, head over to netflix.com/activate using a browser on a PC or other device, log into your Netflix account and enter the code. The Roku box gets your queue and the movie/show cover art. There are HDMI and optical connections on top of the standard video outs, but those cables are not included.
For the last year and a half I've enjoyed watching Netflix movies in Windows 7 Media Center. Within the last few days I've encountered a problem where the play button no longer shows up reliably. I can open my instant queue, select a movie or episode, get the information, but not play it. If I browse around my queue I may eventually get a movie that has a play button. After watching the movie, however, the play button may disappear.
This is a problem from Microsoft, calling Netflix technical support will get you punted to Microsoft technical support as they created the plugin for Windows Media Center. New real information can be obtained from contact technical support, however.
As per @Rachel's comment, you can still hit CTRL+SHIFT+P to play videos. Likewise, if you're using a IR remote control you can hit the "Play" button on the remote and it will place regardless of whether or not the play button is visible.
I agree totally... 1st apple tv loving it for me and the wife. But parental support for restrictions for my 3 children not very well thought out. Family movie night browsing movies selections don't want see MILF or the blood covered movie title and the other inappropriate titles while looking at new arrivals looking for Disney movies or other G,PG, PG-13. Something should be done ASAP.? I love what apple has been offering for the devices but more control over them in the user hands would be more appreciated then these devices could be in every childs room... IJMS
4. Configure your new profile with whatever name you like, and a different "sign-in" name than your normal account. This is where you can set the profile to only allow certain content ratings. Set them up as you see fit. Click "Save."
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