Adding a headphone jack to the remote is a smart idea. When watching movies late at night I string a long audio extension cable between my headphones and the DVD player, but this solution is much more elegant. It's one of those "of course!" ideas that seems so obvious once you see it.
Ok, this is something that I <i>cannot</i> seem to understand - why is it impossible to create a well-designed remote for a TV device? Look at (seriously, look at them now) your remotes for your TV. What the hell? Compare this to the design of your actual TV. Or how about your laptop or phone.<p>I'm blown away that they insist on designing their remotes like kids' toys.
Has anyone here done any app developing for the Roku? Does this open up new avenues for that, or is it the same SDK as before?<p>I remember taking a brief look at the SDK a few years ago and deciding that it was too much of a mess for me to work with it and keep my sanity.
We just bought 2 XS but hey maybe we will upgrade in 3 or 4 years to what's out then, we enjoy Roku, with that and free HD over the air we dropped cable. The channels on Roku are great like NetFlix, CNET and IGN. The big news outlets are on there but usually just have clips. Still interesting to keep up to date. If only the History channel was on there, I miss at least two of their shows.
Do you think we'll ever be able to pay HBO directly for an HBO Go subscription? It's the only reason I still pay for cable -- would jump on this Roku immediately if it let me cut the cord.
Neat little device. However, if you buy a new tv, they have most of these built in apps to stream movies already. I'm not sure why they focus on those features so much?<p>Depending on how you consume your content, I suggest looking at building your own HTPC (Home Theater PC) running XBMC. If you want support for DTS-HD and blu-ray content then an HTPC is the only way to go.<p>The biggest benefit is that an HTPC + XBMC can play anything you can throw at it in just about any container. Build it once and it's future proof for quite awhile.
Since the 3 is coming out, here are some ideas for the 4:<p>* Voice recognition from a mic on the box and/or in the remote with commands that are natural to speak in each language it supports<p>* Cheap subscribe per channel model for each channel currently provided via Cable, etc. with month-by-month contracts (for HBO, etc. so you can quit when the season is over)<p>* More quality control over the channels. Don't shut out the channels that can't hack it, but instead help them not fuck it up so much. Watch their content regularly<p>* Parental control via something other than having to type in a pin (maybe a "safe word" if doing voice recognition)<p>* Streaming games, with some free<p>* More streaming channels that don't require as much interaction but with cloud-powered DVR rewind, etc. and commercial skipping, maybe even as a paid feature per channel<p>* Optionally completely wireless except for power (the box is so small that it flops around with the HDMI cable)<p>* Make Pandora stream music videos :)
This is neat, though I still prefer the Android-based Google TV boxes. It's had the same ability to search for shows, movies, actors and tell you what app or site to use to watch it now for years. The <i>only</i> reason I have both that and a Roku 2 is that someone's still holding a grudge against Google. It's practically the only STB completely locked out of Hulu Plus.
I so wish there was a 100$ device like Roku that would have the media capabilities of Roku or XBMC and airplay mirroring. Rasberry Pi could be that one, but unfortunately doesn't support mirroring.<p>If someone can build me a 100$ box with xbmc and airplay, i probably buy 5 of them
I have a Roku and like it but really wish it had better support for playing off of USB and network shares - this is the one reason I still use my WDTV Live as often as I do. Oh, not to mention the WDTV supports every format under the sun and streams my 3DTV with zero issues too.<p>I know there is a USB app for Roku but it sucks and doesn't work consistently.<p>I know I could use Plex to retrieve files from my shares but I don't care for navigation in this app much.<p>Anyway, glad to see Roku continues to make nice updates, I just wish there was a single solution at this point.
On my existing Roku 2 I've found apps misbehave unless I reboot the device. Even the FAQ for Vudu mentions rebooting due to memory issues. I found similar problems with a channel I tried the other weekend. Unfortunately the problem is that the channels misbehave in bizarre ways (eg Vudu will say there are network problems, the other channel I tried had random video corruption). Hopefully Roku can fix this and at least make channels crash when running out of memory.
Disappointed it still doesn't seem to have native DLNA support? I'm in the market for new wireless headphones and this would have solved the problem nicely.
I can't find any documentation stating if it plays from network shares? Samba? NFS? Currently, I have an external USB drive connected to my PlayOn! media player, but I'd like to move that to a computer so I don't have to swap the drive back and forth to copy new shows to the drive.<p>And the headphone jack on the remote is brilliant! I might buy one just for that feature alone.
I like Roku - They have been affordable from the beginning and allowed non-gamers like me to enjoy Netflix while the company blocks Linux.<p>The real ultimate feature that's missing here though - the one that no one else has and would make go out and buy 3-4 of these things is the ability to sync audio and video playback across multiple devices throughout my house.
I'm quite pleased with the device overall, but the interface, although certainly an improvement, still appears inferior to the Apple TV (which itself has a large number of intolerable flaws.)
compare to the slow progress of Google TV and Apple TV recently, Roku’s evolution pace and focus on entertainment (rather than crappy "social", or vague “second screen") is simply amazing.