Thursday, March 03, 2011

Roku: First Impressions

I bought a Roku from Amazon – it arrived yesterday.

Setup took less than 10 minutes. The reason I bought it over the Apple TV is that it works with our old SD TV but it’s also capable of streaming 1080p HD.

First thing I did was Netflix and streamed the kids favorite Busytown Mysteries for free. Loved it.

Next thing was hook up Pandora. Nice interface, connects to your existing account and remembers your stations. It works with or without the TV on and hooks to the stereo with an optical cable. Sounds great through the house.

Then, a free kids movie via Amazon. Amazon has started streaming some content free for Prime subscribers.

Finally: The big creshendo - Breaking Bad Season 3!! I bought the season from Amazon in SD for $16.99 (13 episodes) less a $5 credit I had for some past Amazon digital purchase. Haven’t been able to find that anywhere else yet.

It doesn’t have YouTube, it doesn’t stream podcasts, it doesn’t play nice with Apple products, and it can’t stream from our music collection without some effort.  But for $99 it does a whole lot of stuff that I like. They make a $59 model too but I liked the optical audio out, the better wireless networking, and the 1080p streaming for the future.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...