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Netflix Player by Roku

The long rumored set-top box for Netflix movies has finally arrived: Roku's Netflix Player. At $99 it doesn't look like too bad of a deal and along with a $17.99 Netflix account, it'll allow you to watch an unlimited number of movies and tv shows instantly through the device. Of course, the selection at Netflix for instant streaming isn't their complete library, but it's a decent chunk of my personal queue there. I'm curious about the picture quality and speed to get movies streaming from the time you select them for viewing, hopefully they struck a good balance between picture quality and filesize. As a Netflix customer myself, I've gone ahead and ordered one and will post some screenshots and impressions on the video quality once it arrives. [via uncrate]

by Matt Haughey May 20, 2008 in News

Comments

The engadget story on this had links to 4 sites' reviews, some with video. After looking at them all and seeing the pros and cons, I think it will make for a good purchase. I do wish they'd have given current Netflix customers a little break on the price but at $99, it's hard to complain too much.

I'm definitely getting one and I look forward to your review.

Posted by: Brian at May 20, 2008 9:21:58 AM

Ohhhh, exciting. I'm a long-time Netflix subscriber and haven't bought into any of the movie download hardware options yet.

The Roku FAQ says that the movie quality will depend on your download speed, so I guess they do some sort of speed test and then offer you a bitrate accordingly. Personally I'd like the ability to trade off immediacy for quality -- to be able order a higher-bitrate version ahead of time. My 1.5 Mbps DSL is not going to give me watchable HD, nosir.

Note that Netflix doesn't offer HD movie downloads yet.

Posted by: Chris C. at May 20, 2008 10:13:41 AM

Well the current Netflix Watch Instantly feature uses a speed test to determine quality, but IMHO it's a bit flawed. When I first used it, the picture was decent, good enough to watch full screen on my laptop. The next time I tried, I couldn't get a decent picture to save my life. It was NOT watchable at full screen. Apparently Comcast was being stupid and my connection was registering as pretty slow (I did speed tests on other sites, and it was indeed slow). But Netflix has (I think) only three quality settings and no option to use caching and a higher quality if you're willing to wait a bit for a decent picture (sorry Chris C).

I hope they have a somewhat better system for the device. And higher quality video than the regular streaming offers, since most TVs are much bigger than most computer screens.

Also, their selection is still pretty poor.

Posted by: Josh at May 22, 2008 8:31:32 AM

Gizmodo has a review on it, and it's looking pretty dang sweet. I want one. And it's hard to think about it too hard at that price point. Plus, no hard drive or fan to go kaput?

Review of it is here: http://gizmodo.com/389698/first-netflix-streaming-box-review-100-and-unlimited-downloads

And lifehacker.com has some project they're linking to where you can play netflix streaming stuff on an xbox360, but I don't have a game console yet. And I'm getting a wii before I get a 360.

Posted by: Daniel J. Doughty at May 23, 2008 10:02:51 AM

Folks do realize this is for streaming only. You cannot record.

Posted by: Eideard at May 24, 2008 4:01:40 PM

On our 2.5 DSL the stream to PC looks better than standard DirecTV. Our PC is hooked up to a projector and we watch on the big screen and have been impressed by the picture quality.

Not great, but very good.

Posted by: Murdoc at May 29, 2008 11:29:33 AM

If it had the full rental library and offered movies in HD I would definitely get one. I currently use blockbuster.com for movies because of the ability to exchange them in the store. I always forget to mail them back and then don't have anything new to watch. As for now I use Amazon Unboxed to get TV shows I happen to miss during the week. But they don't have everything. I watched Ice Road Truckers on my Xbox 360 because I couldn't get it on Amazon Unboxed for the Tivo. I hate having to go multiple places to get everything! The first company that offers everything in one place will definitely get my $.

Posted by: Trellix at Jun 17, 2008 8:03:17 PM

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