Roku HD Player
by Roku, Inc.
|
Our Price: $75.50 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Home Theater See more product details |
|---|
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Roku HD Player
Customer Review: Roku
Summary: 5 Stars
Even though the remote control didn't work when the unit first arrived, I am still giving this product five stars. I called customer service, and they shipped a new remote. I received it in a couple of days. I bought the Roku to use in the bedroom. I already have a DVD player setup in the bedroom that's relatively new, and I didn't want to buy another expensive Netflix compatible Blu-Ray to replace it. The Roku fit the bill perfectly. It's small enough to occupy it's own little spot on top of the TV stand, it's simple to set up, and the picture quality is great. I now spend so much time utilizing Netflix's watch instantly feature, I forget about the watching the Netflix DVDs! In addition, the player allows movies to be streamed from Amazon, and there is a feature available for baseball. I use Cinema Now on my Blu-Ray player, and I think that would be an excellent addition to the Roku player.
I recently went on a 2 week business trip and took the Roku with me to see if I would be able to connect it at the hotel. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get it connected to my Netflix account. I could select the connection but that's as far as it would go. I would get a message that it was unable to connect to Netflix. I thought the hotel might have something blocking it, so I called the hotel's internet support line and they said that wasn't the problem. I tried a wired connection and wireless, but neither would work. So if anyone has had success with this please post a comment.
The Roku is a device worthy of owning if you subscribe to Netflix or would like to be able rent movies from Amazon.com. It's certainly a worthwhile purchase considering the high cost of subscribing to premium channels from cable tv providers and being stuck with the selections that they decide to air. There are no bell and whistles with this device, there's not even an on/off button. It's just a black box and a cheap remote that delivers video on demand. That's all it's designed to do, and it does a terrific job. I would definitely purchase this again, and I recommend it.
Customer Review: Tiny, but powerful!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am truly amazed that this little box that is not much larger than a paperback book can do what it does, and does it so well over a WiFi internet connection! If you don't have WiFi, you can use a conventional Cat-5 RJ-45 ethernet cable to connect to your router. You will want to use some type of router to use this device, be it wireless or wired, so you can keep your PC and Roku both connected to the internet. Video and sound quality are superb on my HDTV through the HDMI connection, which provides 720P HD quality (for movies filmed in HD). Standard definition movies look great too! You can also connect the Roku to a standard definition TV using a conventional yellow/red/white a/v cable. There is no internal hard drive, so I assume it must use the latest chip-type memory to buffer movies as they're playing. After watching around a half dozen movies, I found absolutely no tiling, skipping, or false stops. This baby can really keep up! It's video is much better quality than my Tivo, and it's response time to remote key presses is 100 times faster! I needlessly purchased the optical sound cable. HDMI carries high-quality sound to my TV without having to use the optical connection, although it might be useful for someone feeding sound to a surround-sound audio system. Setup was easy and fast. I thought I could choose movies through this device, but you have to use your PC (or Mac) to select movies on the NetFlix website, and that makes them available on this box. As a new NetFlix member, I was unaware when signing up that new videos would not be available through the Roku box, leaving me slightly disappointed with NetFlix. If you want new-release movies, you must set up a parallel account with Amazon.com, but they are pay-per-view as opposed to a once-a-month fee for all-you-can-watch (old movies) like NetFlix. But this review is about the Roku DVP, not the available services. The box itself gets a full 5 stars for functionality, ease of setup, and simplicity of operation. If you're not 100% pleased with this device, you must have a problem with your internet connection.Customer Review: Fantastic
Summary: 5 Stars
I received the Roku today - about $115 with shipping at Netflix. The unit is small about 6 by 6 by 2 inches. The controller is around ¾ by 1 ½ by 5 inches. The controller is a simple device. It is unit specific, so you don't have thirty buttons on the damn thing that you will never use. The package comes with a standard 3 wire RCA connector. If you want to use S-Video, HDMI, or optical cable connections you will have to buy those separately or in the $20 package sold at Netflix, if you buy the machine there. I used an S-Video connector that I already had.
The machine setup is painless. The player prompts you through the process, which involves little on your part other than selecting your broadband connection method - wireless or direct connect cable. I used the latter. You are prompted to activate the connection to Netflix and directed how to do it. It is easy to do.
I was apprehensive about the quality of the picture. My computer viewing is marginally acceptable. My broadband is $30 ATT DSL, running at about 2.5 MIPS. You might get a sharper picture with a Comcast Roadrunner connection, which is reputedly 25 MIPS for $50 a month in Houston.
The Roku delivered picture on a Sharp 42 inch 120 HZ HD LCD (Amazon purchase, reviewed elsewhere) is better than you get on regular non-digital cable TV, assuming you have that, which I do not. (The Sharp has 7 HDMI connections plus an array of other input modes.) As expected, the picture is not as sharp as broadcast digital TV, but is almost as good as playing a regular DVD in your DVD player. (Broadcast digital TV is the sharpest picture you can get. Cable and Uverse are not nearly as crystal clear. I don't have Blu-ray, so I can't comment on the comparison there.)
I highly recommend this unit. Other devices, such as the $330 Samsung 2550 Blu-ray player, are much more expensive and come with problems that the Roku does not have. I don't have an Xbox. But given the expected life span of those, it is not a smart move to buy one specifically to watch Netflix movies.
Customer Review: Great little device
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great little device.
I haven't watched broadcast television for almost five years now. I feel that television has gotten so bad that I don't need to waste my time with it. What I do is purchase DVDs when I want to watch something. I got to spending about $40 a month on used DVDs from local video stores.
I was told about this little device from my boss. I was more than interested in this. I started reading the reviews on this site and on the Roku site. I started searching the Internet for any other information I could find on this product. Since the good outweighed the bad so much on this product, I ordered it, and opened up a Netflix account (1 DVD out, unlimited streaming for $8.99 per month).
The day I got the Roku, I hooked it up to my router via Ethernet cable, and to my television via component cable, to my receiver via supplied AV cable. Registering it to my Netflix account took seconds after the couple minutes of setting it up.
My biggest worry was that, I am running a 58" wide-screen Digital rear projection television, and I was worried about pixelation, while running 3.0 mbps DSL. Well, I an getting near DVD quality with this setup. Every once in a while, I will get some pixelation on a dark and fast moving scene, but that's about it. I get so into the movies I watch that I don't even notice it much anyhow.
The other thing I love about this little device is that, as long as I have a high-speed internet connection, a quick register with the router, and I can watch the movies from my instant queue. In fact, I took it to my mom's house, with the exact same setup I have, with the exception of using this thing through the wireless router, and she immediately purchased one for herself.
Since I purchased this little device, I have purchased absolutely NO DVDs. This thing is paying for itself. I went from around $40 per month (give or take), to $8.99 per month with absolutely no regrets. Best little device around.
Buy one, you won't regret it.
Customer Review: Great Value!
Summary: 5 Stars
Just subscribed to Netflix because I was dropping 5 times the amount of $8.99 I am paying now on video rentals. I had heard rumors of the ability to watch shows/movies on your computer and your tv if you connected it right and figured I would have to hook it up with a cable from the pc and control it all from the pc itself, when I heard of the roku player I thought it sounded too good to be true...but honestly it is SO WORTH THE MONEY we can't really afford cable/satellite anymore and with all the garbage on there we really don't mind, but with the roku player just using the ethernet hookup and hdmi cables we have great quality without any problems at all. Haven't tried the amazon on demand yet, but did browse through and looks very easy to purchase rentals on. The setup is as others have said the easiest thing I have done in a while. The setup took maybe 5 minutes if that and had my player up and running. I would recommend using ethernet instead of wireless, just a little more stable and less interference possible but wireless should work just fine for people with good internet connections. No search feature for netflix so you have to scroll through your movies (but you can do that 7 at a time which makes it pretty quick) but obviously because it is hooked up to the internet it should be able to be updated eventually if this becomes available, even when my internet connection slows it just pauses the movie and adjusts the video quality to allow for no breaks in the playing when it loads again (takes max 45 seconds), even then when the connection slows I don't really notice much of a difference at all. This player is great, you forget its off the internet because it is truly DVD quality video and the best thing is there is no further cost to use this with your netflix account if that is what you are using it for. We will be purchasing another eventually for the upstairs bedroom. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is in the market it is a great find, I only wish I had discovered it earlier....