The Glade 4.0

So I went over to pick up a cheap DVD player at the radio-shack across the street, and saw that they were carrying Roku XDs- not the Netgear branded boxes, but actual Roku XDs. I'd been interested in getting one, but hearing the *cough* interesting *cough* stories about their CS in the event of a bad player, I wanted to get one locally.

It rocks! After updating its software, it took me about 5 minutes to get activate on my Hulu, Netflix and Amazon VoD accounts, and it works great.

I'm playing it through composite AV cables atm (need to get an HDMI to DVI cable), but the picture is still quite good, and the interface is pretty snappy. I've heard people saying the playback can get pretty choppy, but with my (pretty) slow 1.8 mpbs connection at home I was able to stream from all three services with no issues, with the box set to display 720p when available.

Anyway- for $90, its a great little machine to pick up, sits right on top of my stereo, and provides access to almost everything I would want to stream.

It's like the Apple TV, but with more channels, and access to Hulu+ and Amazon VoD instead of iTunes.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I love my Roku's. I gave them as Christmas Presents last year after discovering them.

Picked up one several months back for the bedroom TV. Nice little boxes. We're working on putting our TV network on the box as a stream, in fact.

Do you guys worry about yours overheating?

When we watch things in the evening, it can often be a few hours in a row, it seems like the box is a bit hot, but not sure if it's too hot or not. Was thinking about rigging a little cooling pad for it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Mine is the older model (Component out only), but I've never noticed it being particularly warm...

It's not too hot, but I know different devices have different tolerance levels. It's not as hot as my LCD monitor, but hotter than, say, my router .

After having at least one laptop fry from overheating, I'm a bit paranoid about keeping things really cool- especially since there's no "off" on the Roku other than unplugging it.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I'm sure it's operating well within safe parameters. These devices are made to never be turned off.

I don't get the benefit of a roku box..

Is it cheaper to get this box and buy Netflix and Hulu Plus? Rather than getting cable?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Yes. $60 for the box, and $16/mo for netflix and hulu+ combined. Boxes range from 60-80, depending on where you get it (and what features the box has besides streaming video).

And whatever you choose to spend at Amazon VoD.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Let's just hope this comes to fruition:
http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/amazon-netflix-unlimited-videostreaming-service/19825781/

Looking forward to it.

Sweet. I've got a free year of prime and a box... More free streaming!

And Amazon has all the BBC stuff that Netflix doesn't have.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.