Roku Review
Via Glenn, Amazon has the Roku streaming player for $79. That’s about what I paid for mine. We’ve had ours for several months and use it to stream Netflix. Picture quality is good but, I guess based on Internet connectivity, is not HD quality.
Also, we’ve had a few days where it just doesn’t work. It will not connect or times out every few minutes. Mind you, we can log in to Netflix on a laptop and hdmi it to the TV and it works fine. But the Roku doesn’t work. So there’s something going on with the Roku, if the computers pick it up fine. This has happened on at least four occasions.
It seems to reset itself a lot. That is, if we turn it off a few days then power it back on, I have to go through the 2 minute set up again.
The kids love it. They can navigate Netflix easy and watch every Scooby Doo episode ever.
Overall, I like it. It’s a handy thing to have and you can watch a lot of different things using Netflix. But I wouldn’t invite all my friends over for movie night and expect it to work flawlessly.
December 21st, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Mine used to flake out on me from time to time, over wireless, but since the last firmware update, it seems to be pretty solid. Netflix picture quality is my biggest beef as it varies incredibly from very good (not great), to average. I know it’s Netflix’s fault for overcompressing their content, because if I switch over to HuluPlus on the same box, content is great.
December 21st, 2010 at 12:10 pm
What, no Roku Haiku?
December 21st, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Does the Roku play media on your network?
I lurv me some XBMC. I had it running on some old Original XBOXes until about two weeks ago. Works great for media on your network, and there are scripts out there for all kinds of online content.
I moved away from the xbox to a dedicated windows box since the xbox doesnt do HD very well. I’m pretty happy with it.
December 21st, 2010 at 12:13 pm
dunno, wizard. never tried.
December 21st, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I just ordered one Sunday night–be here Friday they say. I got it instead of AppleTV because it has compsite AV out so I can use it on an old, non-HD TV that the kids watch.
Amazon has a promotion going. Buy a movie on their video-on-demand service for over $5 and get $20 off your ROKU. Mine is coming for $59 less the cost of The Hunt For Red October.
December 21st, 2010 at 12:48 pm
The wife and I like ours, but we bought it before there was netflix for wii. Initially it was kind of annoying because you could watch instant play stuff on the box, but you couldn’t update your queue using it. Now that they’ve updated the interface it’s a pretty useful little set-top. We’ve moved ours upstairs off the main tv after the wii disk and app came out though.
The big issue with video quality seems to be network traffic. If your wife or kids start watching youtube clips or clogging the wifi with something, then you can actually see the picture get worse.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Our TiVo has a Netflix capability (and some music stuff too) which I imagine is similar, but I’ve never watched anything from Netflix. Movies today kinda bore me.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:50 pm
Gotta be a Roku thing. I get HD from Netflix about half the time on my TiVo, and almost 100% uptime now.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:03 pm
It’s a Netflix fail. When ever my parent’s Roku failed to get Netflix to play, I was able to get other services just fine.
They get stupid about authentication at times. Doing a factory reset forces Netflix to re-authenticate the unit.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Love my Roku. I actually use it more for Pandora radio than I do Netflix. But, yeah, I’ve had some weird connection issues from time to time. I had to do the highly advanced “unplug-wait-plugbackin” procedure. I know, it sounds complicated, but I got detailed instructions from “Kevin” at Roku customer support.
December 21st, 2010 at 5:32 pm
When you have connection problems you can check the forums at http://forums.roku.com/viewforum.php?f=28
Also note that the box really isn’t meant to be turned off.
December 22nd, 2010 at 12:54 pm
I’ve had my Roku (with WiFi and HMDI out) for over a year now and have not had problems with it. Netflix glitched a while back and gave me a credit for the service outage, but it wasn’t a Roku issue. Net speed does have a big effect on picture quality though. I did take my Roku to my father’s house earlier in the year and the picture does improve with better net speed (he has FIOS).
December 23rd, 2010 at 12:47 am
I just got myself and apple tv (V2) and I love it. HDMI right into my TV and a dead simple interface.