In a Word

Roku Netflix Player – Returnable

By skidvis ⋅ May 29, 2008 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

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The Roku Netflix Player is a device that lets you watch as many movies as you want on your TV for as little as $8.95 a month. I currently own an AppleTV and I’m very pleased with it.. the only problem is that I may watch way too many movies and at $4.99 a pop for the HD ones, that can add up. I was super excited to hear about the Roku Player because I’d much rather pay 9 bucks a month and watch unlimited movies. Here are my thoughts on the Roku Player:

The Good

• Lots of output options! Has HDMI, SP/DIF, RCA, Component, every kind of TV connection you could want.
• Easy to install. Just plugged in my power cord and HDMI cable, and enter a code on my netflix account.. done.

The Bad

• It requires a computer! In order to use this, you need a computer to activate it and you need a computer to pick what you want to watch! You log into the netflix site on your PC and add movies to your queue, which then show up on your player. This is a pain and also limits their market a bit.
• No movies! Netflix claims to have over 100,000 movies in their library.. yay! But only about 10,000 are available for the player! To  make matters worse, the movies that ARE available are movies noone has ever heard of! If you’re looking to see any blockbusters, keep looking because they’re not here. Just weird flix like the Kama-Sutra and “How to give back rubs”-type of videos. WTF?
• Streaming. On the AppleTV, when you rent a movie it gets downloaded to your device so you can easily pause, forward, or rewind. Not the case here.. your movies are not stored on your device, they are streamed, which means that there can be an extra lag if you pause, forward, or rewind. As a bonus, you internet connection determines the quality of the video.. so if you’re having a bad ‘net day, your movies will suffer. Nice.
• No HD. Not only is the selection of movies limited, there are no HD titles either.. what’s up with that?!

All in all, I’m not too pleased with this player.. but it’s only $100, right? Luckily the device has the ability to update itself, so maybe in the near future all the things I griped about will be resolved.. only time will tell.