media center: Roku

[littleman]

Does it have a big hard drive to cache the movie where the roku does pure streaming?

That would be my guess,  The roku is solid state.

[rcjordan]

What's not in the Box:

No hard-drive – We discussed hard-drive at length with D-Link, and figured people already have storage solutions, and that we should do our best to reduce the price of the Boxee Box. You'll be able to connect your choice of storage devices directly to the Box using USB
No IR – While we realize many people are using universal remotes, we believe there is a greater benefit having a full QWERTY keyboard, and the right way to do that was RF. We really wanted to also support IR, for various reasons we could not get it as part of the build. We continue supporting this in software, so you can use any IR dongle and continue using your universal remote with Boxee.

http://blog.boxee.tv/2010/01/07/boxee-box-internals-revealed-nvidia-tegra-2-ftw/

[rcjordan]

(US/Jangro) Get her the $99 Roku. Just give it to her you cheap sumbitch, hhh.  Besides, it's stupid-proof. No support once you jack it in.

Gimp, the Roku/Netflix setup would be a simple and elegant solution to your landlord problems if it were available.  Outside that, Jason is right, just give them a DVD player otherwise you're going to be answering support calls on Friday night.

[jangro]

> Just give it to her you cheap sumbitch, hhh

hehe.

Actually it's the opposite problem.  When I want something I buy it, saving nothing for Christmas and birthday gifts making it very difficult come December.   It has taken incredible feats of will power to have not purchased one at this point.

<added>Thanks Jason for the excellent explanation.  Streaming is primarily what we do.  I do have a hard ethernet cable running to the TV.  I do think Roku is the way to go.  It's cheap enough that I won't feel bad going with the Boxee later.

[rcjordan]

Roku needs an aff program, IMO.

[bill]

Damn. None of this is going to work at all in Asia without a VPN. How does a Slingbox work compared to these setups? I might be able to persuade a relative in the US with a good cable package to hook me up.

[bill]

Would a Slingbox work atop a Boxee or Roku box? Or am I just complicating things too much? ;-)

[bill]

Thanks! I guess I will stray from that Slingbox idea then.

Are you making your own Boxee boxes, or buying the dedicated devices? It looks like you can throw up a mini PC box with HDMI out on it and do just fine.

[bill]

Danny Sullivan appears to think Roku + Hulu Plus = Pretty Awesome

[rcjordan]

Well, that kills the Roku for me, hhh.

[jangro]

I didn't let that Danny Sullivan endorsement sway me.  I got the Roku device this week and decided not to save it as a Homer Simpson-esque Christmas gift for my wife.

It's amazing if only as a Hulu Plus box.  The HD Video for the few shows that I've watched seems better than what comes through my Verizon FiOS.  Pandora through the Home Theater is great too.

I do have the ethernet hard-wired. I could see it being annoyingly slow through wireless.

[jetboy]

Running a couple of Xbox 360s as clients here. Just picked up a copy of TVersity to run on the server, which gets around the limitations of serving from Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center. I can now stream MKVs (and other formats which the Xboxes previously choked on) and videos with external subtitle files. TVersity also supports BBC iPlayer, 4OD and Hulu in the US. Not bad for £26! All streaming off a tiny Acer Aspire Revo box, although it's running nearly flat out. On a better network and PC TVersity will do full HD.

[creative666]

I just upgraded to the new Xbox 360 and will be looking into TVersity tomorrow.