Roku Rocks
I picked up a Roku DVP box last week, it is a little box about the same height and 1/4 the size of your standard DVD/VCR. It handles wired and wireless networking to get the internet. What sparked this is that for awhile I’ve been  thinking we are paying way to much for our cable service that we rarely watch.  In fact the only things that get watched are shows recorded from Sprout/Nick for the kids and Nebraska football games. Most of the content we watch day to day is centered on a file share and circulated to XBMC machines in the house.
So getting the Roku out of the box and hooked up took no time at all, it’s dead simple if you know how to hook up standard TV components. Once in I must say I was disappointed that there isn’t an out of the box solution for reading from our share on the Roku, but I did find a good tutorial on getting MyMedia up and running which adds this functionality. About an hour of work (after finding the tutorial) installing Python and putting the box in developer mode and now I have access to my shared structure. I am having to recode a lot of the previously ripped things from .avi to .mp4 h.264 but found a handy batch script to allow Handbrake to iterate through a whole directory of files and fix them up.
The big wins on the Roku are the Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand services. With Netflix it will pick whatever you’ve dropped into your instant queue and allow you to watch it. This makes Netflix a million times more valuable to us as it’s not tied to ordering DVD’s or streaming them through a laptop and the interface is simple enough the kids could work it. Additionally the Amazon Video on Demand service is amazing. For under $20 I bought a full season of Super Why and did similar for a full season of Blue’s Clues. In the future I can get at the Amazon service behind any flash enabled internet connected device, so all of our laptops and I’m thinking my Android phone once it gets the FroYo update.
The only want I have for this device right now is to see some way for me to get Big10 football games now that the Huskers have moved over. As far as I understand the Big10 network does streaming of broadcasts so I don’t think it will take much for that piece to become a reality.
Roku = Win
2 Comments
Hey, Scott, I just ran across this when I searched on “Nebraska football roku”.
I just got a Roku and love it so far but I’m hesitant to cut ties with Time Warner until I figure out a dependable way to get my Husker games streamed. Your posting is a few years old, have you figured something out?
I haven’t found a good way yet. I keep hoping I’ll be able to subscribe to the B1G network but they seem to be stuck on going through a provider. There are a few places that will rebroadcast programming if you do some searching, but I wouldn’t really call those good solutions.