Roku Digital Video Player: First Impressions (Review)

My Roku Digital Video Player arrived via FedEx yesterday (on a Saturday no less)! I have to say I am VERY impressed with this pint sized device. It is VERY small (as you can see by the picture of a hand holding it), contains output for HDMI, Component, S-Video and even composite. For audio out, it has HDMI, optical and plain old RCA R+L.

The TV that I hooked it up to is only an SDTV, so no HDMI for me yet. In fact, the TV is quite old (all things considered) and doesn't even have component inputs. Thankfully, it at least has S-Video input, so I went with that. The picture, I would say, is at least as good as my DVD player, and there are even HD videos through Netflix that look better than DVD (trust me, even though it's an SDTV, you *can* see a difference... even if it is slight. I first noticed the difference when playing HD channels from my Verizon FiOS TV set-top-box).

The Roku Digital Video Player was designed to work with a Netflix account and it's digital streaming videos. I've been a member of Netflix for a VERY long time, and have been a huge fan of the delivery model (mail-order video rentals; you pay a monthly fee and can have a certain number of videos out at a time; turn-around for exchanging videos has been 2 days for me). I hate having to leave the house, or worry about returning a video on time. The streaming video service from Netflix wasn't stellar at first, in my opinion, but since it's startup it has gotten MUCH better. And with faster home-based internet connections, and I'm sure storage costs coming down considerably since it's launch, the quality that I am experiencing is VERY good. I have Verizon FiOS internet at 15mbps down, 2mbps up. I test my connection fairly regularly and I get a pertty consistent 12+mbps. It all depends on where you are testing against, and the available throughput of the routes you take... but my connection has been very good.

The device has wireless built-in!! I actually wasn't even thinking about this when I bought it because I have network cable to many different areas of my house... but I set it up using the wireless and have to say that it is providing excellent quality with absolutely no stutter or apparent latency issues. So, for now anyway, I am skipping the wire.

The remote it comes with is very simplistic, and works just fine. I may be getting a Logitech Harmony 550 refurbished to control everything... but for now I'll use multiple remotes. Again, I am really impressed with the fit and finish of this device.

Once I hooked it up and turned it on, it starts up with a setup wizard that is VERY easy to follow and use. Once I got it hooked up to my wireless network, it downloaded and applied a firmware update (very quickly too). This update provides the ability to play Amazon Video On-Demand. I haven't messed with this yet, but from what I can tell, this provides you the ability to either rent or buy movies to be watched "on-demand" via the Roku player or your PC/Mac. This is a neat idea, and I could see renting a movie from here that isn't available via Netflix streaming, or that is a "long wait" through Netflix DVD, but I'm not sure I would "buy" a movie from this format... at least, not yet. Rental prices seem to be $1.99, however I'm not sure at this point what that gives you (e.g., do you only get to watch the movie once? Do you get to watch it as many times as you can over a 3 day period? etc).

All in all, I have to say this device is killer for me and my usage and only costs $99.99. A quick tip for you folks looking to buy one: If you go to Roku's web site and click "Buy Now", it will take you to an order page where there is a "Shipping Cost" listed. What I realized in discussing this with my friend is that this "cost" is not a static cost. For instance, mine was showing up as $14.99 for shipping, but his was showing up as $4.99 for shipping! At first I couldn't believe it... I thought he was messing with my head, but he sent me a screenshot of it. Then he gave me the idea of clearing my cache and cookies in my browser and trying again. I then started to see different shipping costs each time. The first time I did it, it came up as $9.99, then finally it came up as $0.00!!!! I stopped on that one and actually bought it! So, I paid $99.99, with no tax and paid nothing for shipping! They use FedEx and it actually arrived on Saturday around 1:30pm (shipped from California, and I live in PA... almost as far as you can get from CA. So, if you live closer, I imagine it would arrive sooner than 5 days).

For me, the ability to watch all kinds of classic TV shows and a bunch of movies, all without having to change discs in my DVD player, AND the fact that you get to see the box art as well as a description is pretty killer. I have a 400 disc DVD changer, but I have to say that it became more of a pain in the ass than beneficial. In fact, I've resorted to using my XBOX 360 as my DVD player in that room, and have a single DVD player in my other main TV room. Part of the problem with that beast is that any DVD movie data you put into it gets lost if there is a power loss (I didn't know this up front). So, originally, I thought it was great... there is a menu to browse your DVDs, and I hooked up a keyboard and spent hours inputting the movie titles and actors, genres, etc... then we lost power and all of that hard work was gone. I was furious and never did it again... so I had to keep a separate notebook of what DVD was in what slot. Needless to say, it didn't turn out to be all that it was cracked up to be. :-(

The Roku, on the other hand, gets all that data from Netflix and pulls info from my account. I only wish it could stream music and videos from my PC on TOP of Netflix and Amazon... but I'm okay with it not doing that.