Roku is a small box you connect to your television that allows you to stream movies, TV shows, and music across the internet. It works in conjunction with Netflix streaming, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video on Demand, and many other content providers. Essentially, it allows you to watch a lot of content on your TV that you would usually only be able to watch on your computer.
About a year ago, we ditched cable and opted for network stations only. This was fine since during the week we usually only watch primetime anyway, however the weekends are usually pretty sparse of good programming. Netflix streaming breathed new life into the Nintendo Wii, but for now it’s only past TV seasons and movies can take longer to become available.
A deal on the Roku player showed up on Amazon, so we decided to get it. Since we are waiting for our TV’s to die before we buy again, all of them are old “tube” style (standard definition) with limited ports. The Roku player is currently the only streaming player on the market that has the old RCA connectors, which is the only connection our televisions will take.
Price/Model
There are three models to choose from: the HD, XD and XDS. The HD is $59.99, XD is $79.99 and XDS for $99.99. We went with the XD, because we wanted the instant replay feature and didn’t require the USB port.
Setup
When you first plug in and turn on the Roku, you have to setup basics like the time zone and internet connection. Since I have a super secure 64 character random wireless password setup, this posed a time-consuming setup process. The Roku does not have a keyboard, so you have to use the remote control to navigate an on-screen keyboard. Needless to say, entering this password took some time, but you only need to do this once. A nice change from the Wii is that the Roku is always on. There is no power switch to turn it off which makes it even more like a regular television channel. It will go into a sleep mode which I assume saves some power.
Channels
Once you are at the home screen, you can go into the Channel Store and start adding channels. Channels like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Video need to link to your internet account. I’m guessing since there is no physical keyboard they wanted to avoid having the user type in email addresses/usernames and passwords directly into the system. So instead an activation code is displayed on screen and instructs you to enter it at a website. This will link your Roku player with your internet account which will then be able to display your queue or purchased items.
Netflix streaming works just like it did on the Wii. Amazon Video is great for renting and purchasing newly released DVDs (sometimes ones that are not on Netflix yet). With Hulu Plus, I get network TV shows the next day after they air. There are still commercials with Hulu Plus, but it’s not as many as real TV and they are shorter. I used to watch several tech shows as podcasts or streaming on the web, now I can access most of these shows through a Roku channel.
Pricing: Netflix plans start at $7.99/month for streaming only and there is no additional cost to stream to the Roku. Hulu Plus is $7.99/month. Amazon Video typically charges $3.99 for rentals. You have 24 hours to finish the movie within 30 days. There are many more channels that are free as well.
Watching
Like I mentioned above, we haven’t splurged on any new flat panel huge HD televisions just yet. So the quality we are seeing with the Roku looks great and there is no noticeable difference from DVD’s or broadcast TV. Even over wireless, we rarely if ever see buffering. Once and a while the Hulu Plus channel will stop responding, so I’m going to guess that is a Hulu-only problem.
Multiple Roku’s
We recently decided to purchase a second Roku for the bedroom. Initial setup was the same, yes I had to enter that damn wifi password again! It gave me a new Roku.com code to link this player to our account. This then synced over all of the channels I had added to the home screen on the other Roku which was pretty nice. I noticed the channel order wasn’t the same, but no biggie. Again, I had to activate each channel with the respective service’s website. So now I can start a movie or TV show in one room and it will remember my position and let me finish it in the other room.
Some bad things
Freeze ups: The first month or so I had the Roku completely freeze up and stop responding a few times. This would require pulling the power cord and rebooting. Every time it has been with the Hulu Plus channel. So I can only guess this was an isolated problem. There was recently an upgrade to the channel, so I believe this is fixed now.
Small on-screen text: Often text is hard to read on our TV in some channels. This is most likely because we do not have HD and our TV isn’t 50”. This is especially noticeable with show descriptions in the Hulu Plus channel.
No global queue/search: Since each service is segregated in it’s own channel, you are often bopping in and out of channels if you are looking for a particular show or movie. Each individual channel usually has search and it’s own queue, but it would be nice to be able to see your Netflix queue, Hulu Plus queue and Amazon Video rented movies in one global list instead of having to go into each channel. Or be able to search for a particular movie and see if it’s on Netflix or Amazon without having to do two searches. This is already possible with Google TV, so hopefully this type of feature will come to Roku some day.
Hulu Plus show availability: Apparently some movie studios seem to think you shouldn’t be able to watch their TV shows on whatever device you want. TV shows like NBC’s Community and Fox’s Fringe are not available on the Hulu Plus channel. You can watch these shows just fine on Hulu.com on your laptop, but not on the Roku. There is also the non-existence of CBS shows as well, which is a bummer.
As a cable/satellite alternative: If you are a cable or satellite subscriber and plan on switching, this may not be for you if you rely on cable programming or sports.
Recap
Overall, we have been pretty happy with the Roku so far. It allows us to watch new DVD releases, day after air TV shows and internet shows ranging from cooking, yoga and tech. For the price it was definitely worth it and we don’t miss our cable shows as much any more.