New Toy - Roku Netflix Player

Some time ago, Netflix started an on-demand streaming video service which allowed members to watch movies on their PC. Not all of their titles are available, and they didn’t support Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, nor did they support Mac OS X, but it was still a cool idea (aimed squarely at the likes of iTunes and Apple TV no doubt.) Then a few weeks ago I saw a few reviews of a new set-top box called the Netflix Player, by a company called Roku. Basically you plug the box into your television (standard def or HD) and your broadband connection (wired or wireless,) go to your Netflix account, add movies to the “Watch Immediately” queue, then use the Roku Player to watch movies on your television. As long as you have a Netflix account that lets you have 2 DVD’s or more at a time, you can watch as many movies as you want at no additional cost. Okay so the player is $100, but if you watch a lot of movies it pays for itself in no time.

I went ahead and ordered one, which arrived today (just in time for Paula’s birthday.) I had purchased a new video switch box last week in preparation for this, so now that I had all the components in the same room, I attempted to hook it all up. Now, anyone who follows my blogs knows that nothing EVER goes easy for me. EVER.

A brief description of our home theater setup is in order. We bought a Mitsubishi 55″ widescreen rear-projection television in 2002, back when HD was still barely taking off. It has one input for a High-Def 1080i feed (initially this was DishNetwork, but we later switched to Comcast) and two inputs for 480p, as well as the standard inputs for cable and S-Video. We hooked this up to a Sony Receiver for Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, and added our old Sony VCR, Panasonic DVD player and a CD changer. The DVD player started to give us problems, so we upgraded to a Toshiba Progressive Scan player, which had its own 480p input on the television. Everything was fine until I added an XBOX, which supported 1080i. Found out quickly that I was out of 1080i inputs on the television. At first I just connected it to a 480p connector, but any games that tried to use 1080i wouldn’t work (and thinking back I think Enter the Matrix was the only one that gave me trouble, although the game wasn’t all that great anyway.) I eventually added a Psyclone switch box, which had 8 different places for 1080i inputs, but only three of those had optical connections for Dolby 5.1. This was fine, as all we had was the Comcast HD box and the XBOX. Then I added a PlayStation 2, which used up the last optical input, and upgraded to an XBOX 360. Now I want to hook up this Roku box, which needs an optical connection – oops, we’re all out. Plus there was the matter of the switch box using a series of buttons on the front, which make no sense to Paula. She wants to be able to hit a button on our Harmony Universal Remote and have it set everything automagically, which is only going to be possible if I get a switch box that can be changed via remote. After ordering the Roku box, I went to Best Buy and bought the remote controlled version of the Psyclone switch box (which was only $47 now, drastically dropped in price I assume because the latest version is HDMI.)

The new switch sat in the box until today when the Roku box arrived. I got home from work and started hooking things up. Removed the old switch box and started moving connectors to the new box, but immediately noticed that two of the optical inputs were damaged. There is a small plastic door covering the TOSLINK jack, which swings out of the way when you connect an optical cable. The little door things were mashed in (it looked like soemone had tried to plug the cables in backwards and wouldn’t take no for an answer,) which prevented me from connecting anything to two of the inputs. To make matters worse, the switch box didn’t come with a power adapter. Nice, so much for quality control on returns (it wasn’t even marked “open box” when I bought it but apparently it was opened at some point.) So I had to drive all the way to Best Buy to exchange it, in addition to buying the cables for the HD and optical connections of the Roku box (which only came with the standard definition cable – none of Netflix’s content is HD yet, but when it is, I want to be ready for it.) I had the girl at the exchange counter open the box so I could inspect it this time around.

Got back home, hooked it all up, this time it works. Connected the Roku box and remembered, this thing needs to connect to the Internet somehow. Started tearing my office apart to find a wireless bridge adapter I use for stuff without their own wireless connections (IP phones, my PS2, etc.) After an hour of searching, I finally found it (in the same room where I already was, under a pile of stuff on the coffee table.) Hooked it up and then realized the Roku box already has a wireless adapter built in. Sigh. I suppose I could connect the bridge adapter for my PlayStation, but I don’t even have a controller that works at the moment. Eventually there will be a PS3 there, when and if Sony can make up their mind what they are selling (don’t drop the prices, just retire and reintroduce the models every 6 months.)

The setup for the Roku is pretty easy. It asks what kind of network connection you are using, then scans for a network. In my case, I selected wireless, then it gave me the MAC address for the wireless adapter – nice touch, as I needed to add that to my router’s address list so it could access the Internet. It either finds the network or you can to enter it by hand (in case your wireless router does not broadcast the SSID.) It connected, downloaded a software update, then restarted. It connected to Netflix, gave me an authorization code which I had to enter into Netflix’s web site on my laptop, then it gave me the typical “congratulations!” screen. I was now able to access my queue, which had one title in it (I stuck it there a few days ago so I could test it.)

Picture quality is pretty good when you consider it’s being streamed over the Internet via a wireless router. None of the movies I tested supported surround sound, but the connection is there when they start offering that as an option. You can flip through your queue and watch any or all of them, resume where you left off if you had to stop in the middle, and even rate the movie. You can then delete it from your queue. What you can’t do is add movies via the box – that still has to be done on your computer. Giving a quick glance at their offerings, there are a lot of television series, which is a GREAT idea – instead of getting a disc, watching 3 episodes, sending it back, waiting 3 days for the next one, lather, rinse, and repeat, you can sit down and watch an entire season in an afternoon with no waiting. Also, a lot of “Masterpiece Theater” type movies are available, which Paula loves, along with stuff like “The Office,” which she has recently started watching. She can add a series to her queue and watch it when she has time instead of feeling presured by a disc that is sitting on the shelf for a month waiting to be watched and sent back.