Netflix With Roku Hardware
NewTeeVee has a report on the new hardware device built by Roku that mates to Nextflix streaming online service. At just $99 it’s not expensive but it looks to be only SD. There is an HDMI output so perhaps it may be HD capable in the future. Without HD there’s just no point.
NewTeeVee quite rightly points out that Netflix has a woefully limited, and only SD library of content available online. We watched a couple of shows this way some months back. Not only were the available titles limited, but the compression scheme used to stream the video resulted in poor quality video. That was further exacerbated by watching it on a 42″ LCD TV. It was even really competitive with Comcast Pay-Per-View.
With large TVs (>37″) getting to be the norm anyone operating in this space is going to have to make HD a priority. At least if they propose to offer set-top hardware they should have a clear understanding of a current typical TV set.
I still hope that Amazon get it right with their Unbox service so that Tivo can compete with AppleTV & iTunes.
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As a long time Apple TV owner, The Roku box is a little too single purpose for me. For a little over twice the price, You can not only rent movies in HD (and display them) but also surf Youtube, FlickR, your own photo library and iTunes library, and use the device to digitally connect to your home stereo from your laptop or desktop machine. Plus like all Apple stuff, It just looks COOL!
Agreed. Further, the box doesn’t even have a hard drive. So if your internet connection is troublesome you lose access to the service.
Myself I prefer Slim Devices Squeezeboxen for music. We have (2) Tivo and TivoHD for video. If Amazon and Tivo don’t get their act together wrt downloadable HD movies I could see an Apple TV in our future.