Netflix dropped it’s first set-top box, dubbed “The Netflix Player by Roku” (Roku is a CE company founded by ReplayTV’s Anthony Wood). The device is strictly for watching “Instant Viewing” streams from your Netflix account.
The Pros:
- Cheap ($100)
- 802.11g wireless
- Firmware upgradeable (to what extent remains to be seen)
- HDMI
- optical audio (though no surround–the Netflix streams aren’t surround anyway)
- Movies are encoded to VC-1
- Supposed easy setup
The Cons:
- 480i output
- Very limited functionality (Netflix online streams only)
- Limited selection
- Films are cropped to 4:3
- Another unattractive limited-use box in your living room
From Stacey Higginbotham @ NewTeeVee:
Tim Twerdahl, VP of consumer products for Roku, says the selection will improve, but I was disappointed to find few new releases and a bunch of the same content I’m already watching via Hulu. By the way, if Roku could make it easy for me to port my Hulu content to my TV, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Twerdahl says they’re working on that.
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